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.

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.