Starring:
Steven Seagal
Keenen Ivory Wayans
Plot summary: Steven and Keenan Ivory are together again for the first time.
I am often accused of being a sentimental man, old-fashioned to a fault. I admit it, as clichéd as it may sound, my favorite movie is still "Them!" I miss the days when Steven Seagal weighed less than 300 pounds and Keenen Ivory Wayans had a career. So to be transported back to 1996 when all that were true is a film experience not to be passed up.
Steven Seagal is Jack Cole, a New York cop who has atoned for his shady past by adopting a New Age outlook. He is a Buddhist, an ass-whomping Buddhist, but a Buddhist nonetheless. The first we see of him, he is wearing a multi-toned gold lamé Mandarin jacket designed by MC Escher, looking like a kung fu pimp. He moves to L.A. and meets Keenen Ivory Wayans as Jim Campbell, in a rare break from directing his brothers' films.
It's New York-Los Angeles, black-white, East-West, martial arts-guns, funny-unfunny, it's every character conflict ever faced by two partners. Keenen brings to the table his uncanny comic timing that made him the best thing on In Living Color after Damon Wayans, Jim Carrey, Tommy Davidson, David Alan Grier, T'Keyah 'Crystal' Keymáh, and SW1. Seagal brings his martial arts and the uncanny ability to communicate any emotion using a series of pained winces.
Seagal and Keenen are assigned to solving the "Family Man" serial killings, marked by the shooting and mutilations of entire households at a time. Since this would make for a pretty heavy movie, Seagal instead does everything but investigate the killings. First he intervenes in a hostage situation at a Catholic school involving future Fast and Furious star Johnny Strong as Johnny Deverell, troubled young man with gun. His mental issues are understandable since he has just lost his girlfriend Millie, played by the absurdly endowed WB star Nikki Cox. At 18. In a Catholic schoolgirl uniform. Seagal saves Johnny before the SWAT team arrives by tackling him through a plate glass window, leaving us all to think, "We had better see Millie again later in this movie."
Operating without orders on another department's turf and potentially causing the death of the suspect, himself, students, nun, and sweet, sweet Millie may be grounds for discipline against the average cop, but not Seagal. His most notable case in New York was another serial killer case with an ironic nickname, and when he was trying to apprehend the suspect without backup, he had to shoot him to death to bring him in. Seagal is, in a sense, Dirty Harry with fewer facial expressions.
Johnny's father Frank Deverell (played by Shawshank Redemption warden Bob Gunton) is the richest man in town, and as per buddy cop movie regulations, is therefore evil. He offers Seagal a bribe to get his son off the hook, which of course is turned down. This is the cue for the evil mastermind to overreact in a patently insane manner. Deverell comes through nicely by ordering five of his Russian mobster friends to set up an ambush for Seagal. Russian mobsters is widely feared and heavily armed, but have two fatal weaknesses. They have very large, obvious tattoos on their arms and tend to stand way too close to people they plan on shooting. This allows Seagal to disarm all five of them with one slash of his credit card, which would inspire Jackie Chan to choreograph fight scenes using ordinary objects, except Chan prefers ordinary objects that are somewhat plausible as weapons.
Despite the best efforts of Seagal to distract us from the plot, the director (John Gray, in the midst of the difficult made-for-TV movie to real movie to made-for-TV movie transition) reminds us of it. The Family Man strikes again, killing Seagal's ex-wife and new husband. Coincidentally, these Family Man killings started soon after the arrival of Seagal in L.A., and share some similarities to the rash of New York killings that Seagal was investigating. Forensics even finds a latent fingerprint on the corpse, left by Seagal. There can only be one logical conclusion: Seagal is the victim of an intricate conspiracy in which an assassin, possibly CIA or ex-CIA, is performing copycat crimes of local serial killers and has a synthetic fingerprint of Seagal's, probably identical in design to the one James Bond used in Diamonds are Forever, all in order to frame and discredit him.
And just as you suspect, there is a CIA conspiracy, headed by Brian Cox as Mr. Smith, a man so mysterious we never figure out his first name. Brian Cox has the distinction, from the 1986 movie Manhunter, of playing Dr. Hannibal Lecter before it was cool. Mr. Smith is involved in a small business partnership with Deverell smuggling chemical weapons out of Russia, but admirably, doesn't let that put a damper on his positive life outlook. Whether he's ordering the death of someone who knows too much or just finalizing the deal to cause unspeakable horror for a profit, in every scene he's enjoying a nice meal or lounging by a swimming pool. If not for the fact that he's clearly supposed to be evil, you'd never know it.
Seagal gets a lead on the Family Man killer. Well, not so much a lead as the actual suspect Christopher Maynard, played by Stephen Tobolowsky, the future Sammy Jankis in Memento. He arranges a meeting in a church to tell Seagal that some of the killings were not done by him, perhaps as part of an intricate conspiracy involving some CIA or ex-CIA agents. It is a very tense scene, with Christopher holding a gun on Seagal. Seagal, using a time-honored police negotiation tactic, slowly pulls his gun out of his back pocket, and shoots Christopher in the face.
A victim of the new LAPD no-tolerance policy for homicides, Seagal is suspended, on the verge of being arrested, and has the Russian mob out to get him. He has to find out the truth the only way he knows how: by savagely beating every CIA spook in LA. Luckily, they all hang out in one obscure Chinese restaurant. Seagal confronts Mr. Smith and we learn that he used to work for Mr. Smith, which is why he has no personal records of any kind before the NYPD. It would probably be less suspicious to create some false records rather than just destroying everything before age 25, but I am not learned in national security.
It is often said that Seagal shines so bright it is hard for another star to share the screen with him. And for the first half of the film, you have to fear that Keenen's talents will be wasted. But just when you think he's going to pull a Danny Glover, Keenen starts doing stuff. Granted, it's more a matter of people doing stuff to him, but it's still action. Deverell, not doing so well at the elimination of Seagal, sends a man to kill Keenen in his apartment. As is usually the case when a hit man is sent to someone's apartment, it turns into a fistfight, ending with Keenen driving off the assailant. While he's still lying on the ground, Keenen sees that the gas line to his stove has been cut, and a spark is tracing its way back to the source. Displaying reflexes that didn't even show in his seminal work I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, he is able to scramble to his feet and beat the fireball in the 40-yard dash out of his home.
Not to be outdone, Seagal takes the next assassination attempt scene. In it, Internal Affairs comes to arrest him, but in reality they are Russian mobsters. We discover this when one mobster's sleeve slides up his arm a quarter of an inch, revealing the enormous Russian mobster tattoo. Sadly, Russian mafia bylaws state that everyone must have the enormous Russian mobster tattoo, even those doing undercover work. Seagal fights with the driver long enough to cause the car to hit a ramp bought at the Dukes of Hazzard fire sale and flip over onto the roof. Luckily, Seagal is very tough, so he is able to recover from rolling in a car without a seat belt quick enough to kick out the back window and slide out before the car hits a gas tanker truck.
On a side note, if I am ever fortunate enough to star in a buddy cop movie, the first thing I'm going to do is clear all the tanker trucks out of the city. They're nothing but trouble.
There is finally a break in the case that doesn't directly implicate Seagal, so they follow it up to find Johnny as the movie turns full circle. Which is a good thing, because full circle also brings us back to Millie for a precious few moments. What comes next are a few scenes with neither incredible action scenes nor beautiful WB stars, but do serve to connect the Russian mob, the Family Man killings, and global warming back to Deverell and Mr. Smith. First Keenen and Seagal kidnap Mr. Smith and interrogate him by shooting him in the foot, after which Mr. Smith says to Seagal, "God, I miss you." See, you just can't help but admire that positivity. The interrogation fills in all the gaps in the plot, which frees up Seagal and Keenen to make arrangements for the final showdown with Deverell's gang at a local apartment building.
The final sequence is a little confusing, so here are the highlights. Seagal and Keenen go after Deverell's top henchman Donald (John Jackson, proving in this role that no matter what kind of violent badass you are, the name Donald just isn't threatening). Seagal charges blindly into a room full of heavily armed men with nothing but the knowledge that he is impervious to bullets. Donald survives the shootout and runs off. Keenen promptly gets shot by Donald and falls out of the fourth story window. Seagal looks down from the roof and sees Keenen dangling from a ledge. Thankfully, someone in the apartment building stores their rock climbing gear up there so Seagal is able to harness himself and repel down a cable to save him. Seagal crashes through a window on the third floor, tosses Keenen in, and proceeds to final showdown on the ground floor. Donald pulls a gun on Seagal, as though this somehow gives him an advantage. Seagal easily slaps the gun pointed at his face out of Donald's hand, setting up a final fistfight that is a loving tribute to the training scenes in Karate Kid. Following standard Seagal operating procedures, he throws the suspect out the window to save the city the troublesome expenses of arrest, trial, and incarceration.
After this triumph of what could arguably be called justice, Keenen is lifted into an ambulance, happy that at least he didn't die in the first ten minutes. The credits roll, and we learn Seagal produced this film. Actually, Seagal has produced about three quarters of the films he's starred in, kind of like the Ross Perot or Steve Forbes of the film industry. Truly a Renaissance man.
I would have to say that this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.
2 comments:
Any film with Stephen Tobolowsky is worth watching.
Did you know that he went to High School with Stevie Ray Vaughn, and that he was the lead singer in the first band that Vaughn ever formed?
Of course you did.
Ladies and gentlemen, B.E. Earl, Trivia King.
All I can think about in re: SRV is the Denis Leary bit about the wrong people in music dying of drugs and accidents. We can't get Bon Jovi in a plane crash?
Of course then he wouldn't have gone on to become owner of the Arena Football Philadelphia Soul.
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