Exit Wounds (2001)

Starring:
Steven Seagal
DMX
Tom Arnold

Plot Summary:

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A young rapper with aspirations of becoming a rapper/actor must hitch his wagon to a proven box office star. For DMX in 2001, Steven Seagal was that star. They combine for Exit Wounds, Hollywood's long awaited Detroit martial arts cop thriller fusion masterpiece.

We open on a stump speech by the Vice President on gun control. The people of Detroit promptly try to kill him. Specifically, the VP's convoy is ambushed on a bridge by a militia group using a fake police escort, a yellow delivery van, and a red helicopter with a smiley face painted on the side. Throw in some very advanced-looking explosives and a whole lot of machine guns, and you have the biggest budget assassination attempt ever. It just can't fail. Except they haven't accounted for one man: Steven Seagal. The Secret Service closes off the bridge, but they haven't accounted for Steven Seagal either. The delivery van driver/assassin definitely doesn't account for Seagal, and is shot for his troubles. Seagal steals the van, runs over half of the militia members, and shoots the rest, in a coy nod to the growing popularity of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. To ensure the safety of the Vice President, Seagal throws him over the bridge, despite protests that he couldn't swim and was several stories above the water.

After saving the VP and making the world safe for gun control, we would think that Seagal would return to fanfare and medals. Instead, he is dressed down just because he "disobeyed federal orders" and "threw the Vice President of the United States off a bridge." Seagal may be a loose cannon that doesn't play by the rules, but you can't argue with the results. You can however, transfer him to the 15th precinct, a violent and corrupt hellhole even by Detroit standards.

Even worse, Seagal is sent to anger therapy. You'd think that nothing kills momentum like group therapy, but that's before you discover that group includes Tom Arnold. After destroying the desk he was wedged in as part of a brilliant anger-therapy-outburst-irony/Seagal-fat exacta, Seagal leaves to find a gang of five punks breaking into his truck. He promptly flattens the five heavily armed youths with his bare hands, as is his custom, and turns around to the realization that the anger group has named him their king. Especially enthralled is Tom, whose character I'm sure had a name, and he gushes of Seagal's strength and bravery in a scene with rather impressive homosexual tension. And I've seen Jackass.

Meanwhile, we meet DMX as Latrell Walker, visiting Shaun Rollins, played by Drag-On, in the county jail. In one of the best prison scenes involving two actors with silly names, we learn that Mr. X (possibly Mr. MX, I am not sure what DMX stands for) is on the "outside," taking care of everything for his brother. Assisting Mr. X is his overweight comic sidekick TK, played by Anthony Anderson, notable not only for having a real name, but also for playing the overweight comic sidekick in the 2003 Outback adventure Kangaroo Jack.

We next see TK outside an office building in the middle of the night holding a pair of binoculars. However, instead of the predictable comic peeping tom scene, he is keeping an eye on Mr. MX who is making a heroin deal. Seagal happens to be driving around the area, and decides to savagely beat TK on suspicion of being a black man holding binoculars after midnight. TK responds by shouting out a string of pop-culture references on the top police brutality stories of 2001, which some may argue dates the film, but I say joking about racially-motivated police brutality is timeless. Following standard operating procedures, Seagal handcuffs TK to the grill of his truck and wanders off to check out the drug deal.

Seagal breaks up the drug deal with ruthless efficiency, except for letting Mr. X escape. Unfortunately, it was an undercover drug deal, and Detective Montini promises to have Seagal busted down to directing traffic. This begs the question, if off-duty cops aren't allowed to charge blindly into dangerous situations without calling for backup or telling anyone, how do they expect to fight crime? To make matters worse, TK tears off the grill with his bare hands, thus ruining both Seagal's truck and any chance of a promotional tie-in with Ford.

Matching a soundtrack to the action on screen is a lost art. In recent years the soundtrack has become just another heartless way to make money off a film. At least that's what I thought until I saw a long montage of Steven Seagal directing traffic to James Brown's "I Feel Good."

Getting back to the plot, a well-trained team breaks into the evidence locker to steal fifty kilos of heroin. Johnny-on-the-Spot Seagal is visiting the hall of records in the same building, so he beats SWAT onto the scene. After saving the janitor, Seagal is rewarded with a new beat and a new partner George (Ghost Ship's Isaiah Washington).

Having regained his job for several hours, Seagal decides to rip shit up at Mr. X's business front, a dance club headed by TK. The booty shaking is interrupted by a gripping, if not entirely explained, fight between Seagal and the bouncers. While they beat each other with surprisingly deadly objects decorating the club, TK screams encouraging nonsense at his goons. However, three goons armed with iron chains and fluorescent lights are no match for a master of the deadly arts, and Seagal has soon broken into the main office so he can rummage around. George waits outside so he doesn't have to commit any felonies.

The illegal search and seizure leads to Mr. MX's name. The always savvy Seagal, knowing that judges tend to get hung up on legal technicalities like search warrants, takes the name to an incognito Tom Arnold in a strip club. In one of the better Tom-Arnold-receiving-a-lap-dance sequences I've seen, we learn that although he is a morning talk show host, he has deep connections to the local private eye community. We also learn that with a big fake mustache and low lighting, Tom Arnold looks a lot like Cheech Marin. Makes you think.

The dirt that Tom digs up is this: Mr. DMX's brother was arrested for heroin possession under sketchy circumstances, but is the beneficiary of a huge trust fund established by Mr. X. This money comes from Mr. MX's fortune as an "Internet start-up billionaire," but neither Tom nor Seagal believe this because (a) Mr. DMX is black, and (b) his name is an acronym. So they conclude the more plausible version that Mr. DMX invented the Ebay of heroin.

At this point director Andrzej Bartkowiak, hip-hop/action crossover specialist, lets us know that it was a bunch of crooked cops who pulled off the drug heist. Specifically, it was every cop in the 15th except Seagal and his partner George. The cops let Seagal know by grabbing him off the street and driving off in an unmarked van. They threaten him with a large syringe, presumably because the van is a rental and if they shoot him and mess up the van they'll get in trouble. Seagal asks if the syringe is "to make me talk?" and Montini responds, "No, it's to make you die." Much like Goldfinger, this exchange was written to reassure the audience that Seagal is not actually in any danger. Despite being handcuffed to the inside wall of the van, Seagal is able to force the syringe of liquid death into the driver, savagely beat the three other cops, free himself from the handcuffs, and jump clear from the van before the now very dead driver crashes and burns.

Feeling confident, Seagal confronts Mr. DMX, and we finally reach the pinnacle the movie has been building towards: Steven Seagal beating the crap out of a rapper half his age. As Seagal has decades and decades more practice, things look bleak for Mr. MX, until he abruptly stops fighting and invites Seagal into his apartment building. Showing once again that politeness wins over even the most psychotic cops, Seagal agrees and is shown that Mr. DMX is not a heroin dealer as was assumed. He really is just a typical useless Internet billionaire. The only difference is that he amuses himself in his retirement by exposing the corruption of the establishment. Incidentally, that's also printed on most of Mr. DMX's album liners. He is surrounded by a crack team of high tech surveillance experts, including TK and a sorely underutilized Eva Mendes. The culmination of the sting, the purchase of the stolen heroin from the cops for $5 million the next night, will be the greatest episode of Punk'd ever. Seagal offers backup.

The cops have developed the most innovative smuggling operation in movie history. They have taken control of a t-shirt factory, and invented a process in which each shirt is soaked in a dilute solution of heroin and sealed in plastic. All Mr. X will have to do is wash, separate, and purify the heroin stains from a few million t-shirts. I find it surprising that the DEA allowed the film to suggest this method to the drug community, but I guess this is just one of those sacrifices of public safety for the sake of art.

The gripping finale involves gun play, kickboxing, George coming in with what seems to be the National Guard as backup, TK getting shot in the leg (surprisingly, not by Seagal), some very convincing bluescreen shots of Seagal on a motorcycle, and a fire sprinkler scene with Mr. MX symbolic of both his baptismal cleansing and his being very hot.

Mr. DMX delivers the evidence to the Chief of Police (played by Bill Duke, veteran of both Commando and Predator). Although it will not result in any investigation since every cop in Detroit besides Seagal and George has been killed, it does clear his brother.

Then we see what separates Exit Wounds from your run of the mill action film. The director takes the time to wrap up all the loose ends, and as TK is being lifted into a waiting ambulance, he spots Tom (soon to be a first-ballot inductee to the overweight comic sidekick Hall of Fame) and exclaims his love for Tom and his show. Tom offers to do TK's surgery live, and one jump cut later, we find the two have become co-hosts. At long last, Tom Arnold has found a partner he can share a highly ambiguous relationship. The credits roll as they joke, and laugh, and tease, and fall in love.

I would have to say that Exit Wounds if the greatest movie I have ever seen.