A Dangerous Man
2010
The New Year is here a bit early for us, with our first 2010 film. (Or maybe
it's already 2010 for you if you are reading this in Australia.)
As it happens, this is yet another Steven Seagal film with exactly the same
plot as every other Steven Seagal film made in the past ten years. Just choose
any of the following choices in parentheses below and you will be writing your
own Seagal movie.
Seagal is a former (super cop, special federal op, special forces warrior)
who has to leave the position because (he is unjustly accused of something, he
refuses to obey a dishonorable order, he won't "play ball"). Disgraced and
having lost everything dear to him, he works outside the law as a free-lance
tough guy, ostensibly a mercenary, but willing to take only those jobs which
conform to his own highly developed sense of honor. Inevitably, he ends up
siding with some hopeless (Russian, Mexican, poor black American, Asian)
underdogs against some corrupt (Russian, Mexican, rich white American, Asian)
forces who seem invulnerable until the Pudgy Paladin stands against them, at
which point they may as well head off to Vegas and lay down a big bet against
themselves because the big fella is about to rain down fists and bullets on them
at a rate they cannot begin to imagine.
No matter that the baddies possess more weapons than the U.S. armed services
and an army as large as the entire population of India. No matter that big Steve
has only his giant pudgy hands and a rag-tag group of untrained and poorly armed
misfits beside him. Any sensible drug lord, corrupt cop or white slaver facing
the Chubby Combatant should immediately stop ducking the calls from his life
insurance agent and sit down for the dreaded complimentary coverage review,
because he is about to enter a world of pain.
This particular version of the by-the-numbers story represents the second
collaboration between the Stout Soldier and director Keoni Waxman, following
2009's The Keeper. The Keeper is rated 8th of the 34 Seagal films with an IMDb
score, and A Dangerous Man has not yet been rated as I write this. Having seen
just about every one of Seagal's movies, I'd rank the two Waxman films a bit
lower than #8 on the Seagal totem pole, probably right around the mid-point, but
that's just splitting hairs, since all Segal's films seem to have the same
script. Who knows? Maybe these new ones are above average, and I'm underrating
them because I'm tired of seeing the same thing again and again.
Nudity:
Seagal's films almost always include a small amount of nudity, and this is no
exception. Aidan Dee, as Seagal's former wife, appears topless in flashbacks or
dream sequences or something. Whatever these scenes are, they are not in the film's reality, but
somewhere in Seagal's mind, either remembered or imagined.
For those of you who missed it:
