Fatal Error (1999)

Starring:
Janine Turner
Robert Wagner

Plot Summary: Computer virus goes on a killing spree.

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Science fiction is the art of asking "What if?" In the case of the small-screen gem Fatal Error, the question is "What if a computer virus evolved to the point that it could transmit itself to human beings and kill them?" One might respond to this question "Of course not. How stupid is that? That's downright retarded. No. No way." Not director Armand Mastroianni, though, who instead weaves that question into a taut thriller that forces us to reexamine the role of digital cable in our lives.

We open on a corporate teleconference in the city of Seattle, as played by Vancouver. As the long late night meeting is getting underway, everyone is killed in a freak case of spontaneous human calcification. Now everyone has been in a meeting or two during which you prayed for the sweet release of death, but human calcification is not the way to go. First, it seems quite painful by the way the executives were writhing and screaming. Second, it must be very confusing, since your final thoughts on this earth are, "Hey, where is all this calcium coming from?"

The janitor on duty sees the room full of writhing executives slowly and painfully turning to chalk, and is understandably driven bat-shit insane. He wanders, disoriented, out onto the street in the early Canadian dawn. Here he is met by our hero, Nick Baldwin (played by Melrose Place veteran Antonio Sabato Jr.), a brilliant paramedic who doesn't play by the rules. Formerly a brilliant doctor, he lost his license because he didn't play by the rules. Now he operates an ambulance and proves his dedication to saving lives by illegally practicing medicine without a license at the drop of a hat.

He meets and is quickly ushered off the scene by Dr. Samantha Carter, played by Janine Turner (Maggie O'Connell of Northern Exposure Fame, here with longer, redder hair and 30% more spunk). She leads a crack Army team that is expert in biological outbreaks but very bad at crowd control, as Nick is able to just follow them into their base of operations. After refusing to leave O'Connell's side for nearly an hour, she is worn down by his rebellious charms and drafts him on her team.

Despite being outfitted with all the state-of-the-art biohazard lab equipment, including a computer that can take any known virus and simulate a billion years of evolution to try and match it to the known samples (it appears to be a Pentium), the crack Army team has nothing. The virus strikes, turns the entire body to chalk, and then vanishes. The only upside is that Nick and O'Connell can walk around the lab without bunny suits.

It's not until the computer operator mysteriously dies of the deadly chalk disease within a sealed room and Nick has had a few drinks in the hotel bar that the pieces come together. All of the cases involved people watching a beta release of a cable/internet/telecom package. No one believes Nick's theory that computers can give people viral diseases by flashing complicated subliminal graphics, FOX News notwithstanding, until they notice the large and gratuitous HAL 9000 red eye atop each cable unit. The director even suggests through red-filtered fish-eye shots that the cable unit can actually see its victims through the lens, although we're not sure how accounting let them slip a camera and evil artificial intelligence into the budget for a digital cable box.

Further proof that the technology is behind the deaths comes in the form of Robert Wagner playing the Digicron CEO, Albert Teal. It is refreshing to see that the successes as Number Two in the Austin Powers franchise didn't make him too big for a small art house project like Fatal Error. Robert delivers the role with a cutthroat menace, like Bill Gates with a handsome sleaze. He is pushing for a timely release of the telecom package and isn't going to hold up the billion-dollar project just because it will unleash a plague that will destroy every human being who wants 500 channels, no matter what an unlicensed doctor has theorized in a hotel bar.

At this point the director reveals a series of cunning plot twists using the time-honored technique of having the villain explain how and why he did everything. Ace computer programmer and new VP Ned Henderson (played by David Lewis, who despite all indications is not the illegitimate son of Ed Begley, Jr.) has a conversation with a former executive and explains that he was charged with writing a virus that would destroy all of this former executive's code. Ned went one step further and designed the virus so it could mutate and kill the user by violating the laws of physics and/or biology. A series of flashbacks shows us that Ned was able to code the deadly virus in safety by wearing welding goggles. The protective lenses were able to filter out the virus using science.

Ned's dream of turning a digital cable system into a tool of wholesale slaughter makes sense thanks to some just-in-the-nick-of-time character development where we discover that a combination of paternal disapproval and a Stanford education has led to a desire to destroy all of mankind through the medium of combined cable television/internet services. Having thus clarified the horror of the picture to the former executive, Ned kills him by strapping him down in front of his computer.

Once the team determines that Ned is the evil genius and Robert Wagner merely a fetching red herring, O'Connell decides to charge solo into Ned's basement, much like in Silence of the Lambs except Jodie Foster had a gun. O'Connell is promptly caught from behind. Ned duct tapes her into a chair in front of the computer, thus ensuring her death the moment she opens her eyes. Secure in the knowledge that she has to open her eyes sooner or later, Ned wanders off. Luckily, Nick rescues her just in time before the computer notices that her eyes are closed and starts beating her to death with the mouse.

At the grand unveiling of the technology that would eat Seattle/Vancouver, Nick chases down Ned deep into the cable internet headquarters. Meanwhile, O'Connell is able to convince Robert that his technology is flawed after the teleprompter tries to kill him. Nick finds the control center, which apparently was built on the site of a 1950s physics lab. Using nothing more than an oscilloscope and a handy puddle of water, Nick is able to knock out the digital cable system and kill Ned, thus closing the circle of life and saving the world from consolidated telecommunications packages.

I would have to say that Fatal Error is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

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.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Starring:
Keanu Reeves
Ice-T
"Beat" Takeshi
Dolph Lundgren

Plot Summary: Can Ice-T keep Keanu's brain from melting in this dystopian sci-fi thriller?

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It is the second decade of the 21st Century. Any movie that starts out like that, well, you know it's not going to be a musical. Most of the scenery will be futuristic, and by futuristic I mean dark grey. There will be very little sunlight and very little good news. Sure enough, we open on a world where bio-mechanical implants augment human strength, speed, and intelligence, but also cause a disease known as Nerve Attenuation Syndrome (NAS) to run rampant throughout the globe, not to mention completely ruining the Olympics. Corporations like the drug-maker PharmaCom have aligned with the yakuza crime syndicates as part of a massive paradigm shift towards more killing of people, and are locked in constant battle with a vigilante movement known as the LoTeks, essentially modern-day Luddites in hipper outfits.

And in this futuristic dystopia, Keanu Reeves is Johnny, a mnemonic courier that smuggles data in his brain implant. Just a simple boy from the big city, Keanu travels the globe, staying in luxurious suites at five-star hotels with expensive champagne and even more expensive hookers as he tries to scrape together enough money to afford an operation to remove the implant, recover his memories, and get out of the harsh, unforgiving business. His reptilian agent Ralphie (pardon me, Ralfi, and I'm sure there's an accent or an umlaut or something) offers him one last job that could get him out of those penthouses for good and back to the farm, or something.

Despite the fact that Rälfí speaks with a thick German accent and in such a hoarse whisper that he can't possibly not be evil, Keanu trusts him. He leaves his Beijing hotel and wades through a throng of Chinese protesters, all wearing white dust masks. Apparently, even in a futuristic dystopia, Asians are still hypochondriacs.

To max out his storage capacity at 160 GB, Keanu transfers his childhood memories and three-quarters of his personality to some kind of futuristic Zip drive. Personally, I would have erased all memory of puberty instead, but perhaps Keanu didn't have awkward years. Damn good-looking bastard.

We meet Keanu's clients, a bunch of geeky former PharmaCom researchers who immediately start warning him that they have 320 GB of data and if he doesn't have sufficient capacity he will suffer synaptic seepage as the data overloads his neurons, resulting in death within 48 hours. Keanu, clearly overwhelmed by all the talk of neural physiology and numbers that are bigger than other numbers, brushes the nerds off and prepares the data transfer.

Keanu uploads the sensitive data from the 3-inch optical disc into his brain. This form of transport is necessary because apparently due to a Great Disaster in the Past, the technology of pockets and briefcases were lost forever. It also seems to be impossible for Keanu to duct-tape the CD to his ass, but the creative element behind the film refrains from overtelling the story.

As is often the case, before the geeks can fax the encryption code to the delivery point, the PharmaCom yakuza attack. Along with the usual large, martial-arts-proficient, gun-toting men, the crew is headed by the one known as Shinji. Shinji is armed with the traditional "glowing red wire of death," a whip made out of plasma or evil or something that he pulls out of an artificial thumb and can cut just through just about any material known to man. He is a grandmaster of this weapon, meaning he can use it without slicing his own arm off. The yakuza dispatch the nerds with deceptive efficiency, since they allow Keanu, the real target, to fight them off armed with nothing but a towel rod from the bathroom.

Meanwhile the yakuza president of PharmaCom, Takahashi, tries to determine what to do about this breach of security, or more precisely, who should sever, freeze, and return Keanu's head for data recovery. Played by Beat Takeshi, (known for his stylized-violence Japanese epics including Violent Cop and Violent Topiary Gardener) he can even look menacing when sitting cross-legged on a desk talking into a videophone. He does this while hiring the assassin known as the Street Preacher, played by Dolph Lundgren, the thinking man's Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has the spirituality of Pat Robertson, the brawn of Dolph Lundgren, and the violent psychosis of Pat Robertson.

Keanu is able to evade his yakuza killers and make it to the drop-off point in the urban wasteland that is Newark, New Jersey. This goes to show that even in a futuristic dystopia, Jersey jokes are still gold. However, Keanu is in a bad position. Not only is he on the run with a potentially fatal overdose of raw data in his head without the encryption code needed to extract it, he is consumed by a need to try to negotiate with the corporate gangsters that are trying to kill him. About the only thing that could help would be to find a hot female bodyguard, preferably one wearing nothing but black tights and a chain mail shirt.

Enter Jane, played by Dina Meyer, better known as the actress in Starship Troopers that agreed to the nude scenes. She finds Keanu right after he is recaptured by Shinji, and in exchange for ten grand, agrees to save his life and develop sexual tension. Once safe, Jane promptly suffers a seizure - the dreaded Black Shakes, which is "street" for NAS. So Keanu hauls her twitching, yet somehow still a little alluring, body to her "doctor," a man named Spider.

Dr. Spider, played by punk rocker, music producer, and ranting machine Henry Rollins, occupies a warehouse that looks a lot like Dr. Frankenstein's lab except dirtier. He starts to treat Jane but decides to first explode into a freestyle rant in Keanu's general direction about how the Black Shakes are not actually caused by the myriad bio-electronic implants in people, but by information overload from too much technology, possibly orchestrated by The Man. And if anyone is going to know the secret cause of NAS, it's some guy named Spider. Keanu is understandably confused, since he never expected the global epidemic of the century to be the result of CNN and FoxNews and their damned tickers.

After taking a look at Keanu's condition, Dr. Spider decides to drive him to a hospital in his Mad Max issue garbage truck. At Newark's Our Lady of Festering Decay, Dr. Spider is a respected surgeon, inasmuch as he gets to wear a white labcoat and carry around a clipboard. He then reveals the contents of Johnny's data: a cure for NAS. All the medical underground has been able to come up with is how to merely treat the symptoms. Well, that or not implanting shit inside their brains in the first place, but a cure would be a lot more convenient. And if Keanu would just submit to a routine power-tool lobotomy, then the world would have that cure.

This movie presents one of the classic scruples questions: would you save humanity if it meant having Henry Rollins perform brain surgery on you with a hacksaw and a melon baller? In one of Keanu's less heroic moments, he declines, not wanting to risk his emotional range or ability to enunciate. Before they can discuss alternatives, Dolph plows onto the screen. Dr. Spider tells Jane and Keanu to run to J-Bone and talk to Jones, while he holds off Dolph, and by hold off I mean get brutally beaten and tortured by.

Keanu and Jane seek out J-Bone, but not before Keanu tries once again to negotiate with PharmaCom. Keanu is not one to hold multiple assassination attempts against someone, and perhaps I'm just a jaded old film critic, but I find that refreshing. It's also all too easy to understand, as Keanu realizes this is about the only way he and Takeshi will be able to do a scene together. So Keanu tells the yakuza drug-makers to meet him at the LoTek Secret Headquarters, giving them directions and some tips on how best to assault the compound.

There is a slight delay at the LoTek Secret Headquarters when due to a cultural misunderstanding, the LoTeks drop a flaming Volkswagen bug on Dr. Spider's garbage truck, a typical example of futuristic Jersey humor. Keanu then is greeted by J-Bone, played by the beyond-hip Ice-T. He sports a frizzy 80s layered look not seen since Lea Thompson in the 1986 epic Howard the Duck, and yet still looks like a badass. Remarkable.

Despite calling Keanu a "suit" in the same tone of voice that he would use for "honkey," Ice-T seems to take quite a shine to Keanu, in that he doesn't kill him. He even takes Keanu over to meet Jones, the Six Million Dollar Dolphin. Surgically enhanced, from the looks of it with a chainsaw, and trained to hack enemy computers through submarine hulls, Jones offers to hack Keanu's brain to retrieve the cure for NAS with a much lower chance of the lobotomy side-effect. Spotting an obvious upgrade from Henry Rollins, Keanu goes with the dolphin.

It is at this inopportune moment that the yakuza decide to attack the LoTek Secret Headquarters with bazookas and automatic rifles. The LoTeks are armed with crossbows. Incidentally, this is also why the yakuza work in pristine high-rises and the LoTeks live underneath a bridge on the outskirts of Newark. The brain hack is interrupted because everyone in the movie shows up to kill Keanu. Even people who wanted to kill Keanu in other movies show up. First Shinji comes after Keanu with his glowing red wire of death, then Dolph rumbles in, presumably after torturing Dr. Spider into revealing where Keanu was going, and then torturing pedestrians in Newark for directions. Keanu is able to dispatch them in sufficiently ironic fashion, and then confronts Takeshi.

Now, some directors would be concerned about working with an actor like Takeshi, whose English is not so good. Luckily, Takeshi has Keanu to lean on. Their long-awaited scene begins with a standoff where Takeshi takes a few slashes at Keanu with his katana, but his heart clearly isn't in it. Takeshi hands over the encryption code, as he and Keanu communicate their mutual weariness and desire for a peaceful resolution using surprisingly little dialogue.

The encryption code is not quite complete, meaning Keanu must still hack his brain. This is incredibly difficult, as the data is chock full of viruses, and more importantly, because computer hacking sequences are notoriously difficult to film in an entertaining manner. Incidentally, this is why hacking was combined with oral sex in the 2001 opus Swordfish. Director Robert Longo flexes his directing muscles when he renders the hacking sequence in state-of-the-art computer graphics, where Keanu transforms himself into the Slim Jim guy in order to confuse the viruses, portrayed by laser cannons from a Nintendo game. Keanu is able to break the encryption (which was apparently based on the first level of Contra), releasing the cure for NAS and giving the world the best animated self-brain-hacking sequence in movie history. Ice-T immediately begins broadcasting the 320 GB of data on all channels satisfied that someone, somewhere out there is TiVo-ing it.

Thus having made the futuristic dystopia safe for love, freedom, and bio-mechanical manipulations that are an affront to god and man, Keanu falls into the arms of Jane as an approving Ice-T looks on. I would have to say that this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

The Glimmer Man (1996)

Starring:
Steven Seagal
Keenen Ivory Wayans

Plot summary: Steven and Keenan Ivory are together again for the first time.

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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.