They took his daughter,
So now he’s taking them down.

After watching Half Past Dead I was thinking I would have to give Seagal movies a rest, because honestly not much happened, apart from Ja Rule getting thrown out a car at full speed driven by Seagal….that was pretty funny, and stupid, but the rest of that movie was just a regular bad movie….Not a Seagal bad movie, where you’re left wondering wtf is going on?  … is he speaking English?  Is the accent he’s using the same as the start of the movie?   Oh that’s pretty good CGI for 1990— oh wait, this movie was made 3 years ago.. never mind.
And what the fuck is happening in this movie??.. there has to be at least 30 major errors here.

So that’s the general Seagal kind of bad movie…it collectively all adds up to being super awesome.

A bit like Mr Burns when he finds he thinks he’s invincible because all the germs can’t get through the doorway of his body at the same time.

For Seagal movies you’re shouting at the screen… you’re asking friends what is happening, and then seeing they’re confused faces…realising they have no idea either… it’s hilarious!

Driven to Kill was another classic Seagal movie.  He brought it back for this one.

Made in 2009, this feels like a movie that is much much older.  I’ve seen so many Seagal movies recently, and there are so many scenes that could be in literally any of them because they make zero sense, so the 2009 production date doesn’t mean much as it kind of just blends into anything that is ‘the past’.  The explosions are real explosions, the gun fire is relatively normal, and there’s lots of hand to hand combat, and a knife fight that goes on waaaayyy too long.
So you can’t really say it’s old or not or that it even looks dated.

It says on Wikipedia that Seagal’s character is a former Russian diplomat… although I’m pretty sure at no point is that mentioned.  The movie leads you to believe he is actually a former Russian gangster.

Near the end of the movie is comes about that he has actually written a best selling crime book,  for which there is little to know reference to before … or point to at all.

So plot?
Seagal (Ruslan Drachev) is in town for his daughter’s wedding…. For which… I just assumed he was an absentee father because of his gangster situation;  anyway, turns out his daughter is marrying the son of Seagal’s rival gangs brutal leader.  And he’s not happy about it. Also he doesn’t like his ex-wife’s new husband and shows this, my speaking in Russian to her whilst in front of him that he wants to go up stairs right now and have sex.
Classy.

After his ex wife is stabbed and killed, and daughter stabbed and left in a critical condition, it is up to Seagal and his tag along son-in-law to follow the non- existent trail to the bad guys.
For which obviously Seagal shows, “to catch a bad guy… you have to be a bad guy”… because.. fuck it, why not?

There’s a scene where after a massive knife fight and killing a few people at a club, they’re all arrested, taken to the police station, none of them give up any names, and then they’re released only to start killing each other 30 seconds later… showing that they are ‘above the law’   … wait, that’s not the name of this movie…   well you can see now how these movies are made… scenes can be put into any movie because not a lot makes sense.

Seagal speaks Russian part of the time, for which only part of it is given subtitles, and you’re left wondering if you’ve got a bum copy of the movie or something….but no… that apparently adds the the mystery of the whole thing.

There’s some brutal fights for not a lot of reason…. But the best is the hospital ending fight scene… its just amazing, so much gunfire, …no one cares… and wait… I can’t spoil the movie for you… you have to see it for yourself.

But, well…. Seagal manages to use a handgun as a knife on the big boss… so let that wet your appetite.

These kind of movies really make me wonder  ‘I wonder how difficult it is to make a movie’   ‘could I do this?’

I honestly think Seagal is inspiring a bunch of young people to make great films.  People look at this and think… yeah… I don’t think its that hard.  You need a workable plot, and then things just work…,

Cinematic quality?
Just amazing, so many choppy scenes, give the sensation that its quick paced.  It honestly looked like they slowed down the frame rate to make it look like things were happening quicker than they were.  I think a normal movie is shown at 24 frames per second, this felt like sometimes 20, or even 18.   You could watch it, it’s just that it felt a little strange and a little faster than normal.

Oh and music?
There was this strange Scottish or I guess they wanted us to believe it was Russian traditional music playing each time an ‘intense fight scene’ was happening.

All of this being said, it was a great movie.  All of these shit little things combined to make a truly classic Seagal movie.

Would definitely recommend it.