A Dangerous Man

Directed by: Keoni Waxman

Starring: Steven Seagal, Byron Mann, Jesse Hutch, Jerry Wasserman, Vitaly Kravchenko

Synopsis:

After serving 6 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, ex-special forces hard man Shane Daniels (Seagal)is finally released from prison thanks to DNA evidence. Angry and bitter at the world, he loads up on booze, beats up a couple of would-be muggers and goes off to a rest-stop motel to console himself with alcohol. Meanwhile, two young second-generation Russian hoods also pull in to use the toilet, while a third car driven by two Chinese is followed in by a Highway patrolman. Chaos ensues as the patrolman and one of the Russian guys is killed by the Chinese. The second Russian, Sergey, is rescued by Shane, as is a young woman tied up in the trunk of the Chinese guy’s car alongside a bag full of money. Soon Shane finds himself in the middle of a fire-fight involving crooked cops, triads, Russian mobsters and a covert team of Chinese special forces...

Review:

A Dangerous Man unfortunately starts off rather poorly, with a rather naff title sequence which makes the movie look more like a tv special but gets better pretty quickly, only to lose the audience again in the closing scenes (we’ll get to that in a moment).

Seagal plays the usual misunderstood hardman who only wants to be left in peace. It’s the same persona that he usually brings except here there is a little more bite, especially in his dealings with the girl he’s trying to protect.

What amuses me about Seagal movies is that there is always a bottom-rung hard man who must totally mis-read Seagal’s body language and bearing. Two guys try to mug Shane at gunpoint. Watching it I was wincing for them. Text-book error. Beginners mistake. It’s like they just finished Mugging school but had failed the “how to spot an easy victim” class. Needless to say, Seagal teaches them a lesson they might not survive.

Seagal’s films of late have contained a number of interesting co-stars and this is no different. Vitaly Kravchenko plays Sergey’s father, Vlad, owner of the Little Russia bar. His early confrontation with the crooked cops is excellent – so much so that you wonder if the movie’s title isn’t referring to him and not Seagal. Byron Mann plays the Chinese Colonel with suitable menace but proves no match for Seagal in the fighting stakes, unlike Mikhail (Igor Jijikine) in Driven to Kill. Jerry Wasserman plays Richie, the senior crooked cop. A Dangerous Man has the most expensive look of Seagal’s recent films, thanks in part to the crisp cinematography which renders the small mountainside town bleakly beautiful. The gunfights are edited together well and the sound effects for the weapons sound authentic. However the fight scenes involving Seagal were edited in a choppy, speeded up style which just didn’t feel right.

The film’s epilogue gives me a couple of problems. It’s no surprise to see Seagal survive (duh), but he seems to have hooked up with the girl he was protecting. Seagal’s not so old that she could have been his granddaughter, but still, the age gap is rather significant. Now, the scene is quite short and a little ambiguous so I could be misinterpreting it. However it reminded me of a scene in A Bunch of Amateurs where cinemagoers react unkindly to seeing an ageing Burt Reynolds making out with a starlet.

Verdict

The look and sheen of Seagals movies are certainly on the up but this wasn’t quite as engaging as Driven to Kill for me. However, the quality cast and picturesque cinematography kept me hooked in for the whole running time.

6 out of 10 (MikeOutWest)