Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book (36 page)

The odds were wrong. From a final screenplay penned by himself, Steven Pressfield
, and Ronald Shusett
, the director once again spun gold. Set in his beloved Chicago, Davis weaved an entire life around Seagal, whose career-long concerns were already evident. More than just a well-trained, no-bull cop, his character was also a caring and religious husband/father. Long before Quentin Tarantino
worshiped actress Pam Grier
in
Jackie Brown
(1997),
Davis cast her as Seagal’s partner in this tale of an obsessed cop trying to take down an FBI-protected drug lord. And long before she hit gold in such films as
Total Recall
(1990) and
Basic Instinct
(1992), Davis cast Sharon Stone as Seagal’s understanding wife. The rest was up to Seagal, and he delivered.

Whether blasting away with an automatic, or clothes-lining some thugs, the aikido
ace made all the other Hollywood action stars look like pretenders. Outside of a rushed, perfunctory climax, and an odd finale where Seagal lectured the press on corruption,
Above the Law
was a complete success. Critics and fans alike sat up and took notice, while Seagal moved quickly to show that he needed neither Ovitz nor Davis. Warner Brothers, however, seemed less than enthusiastic about their new star.

For the aptly named
Hard to Kill
(1990),
the basically unknown Bruce Malmuth
was in the director’s chair, while the star took the additional credits of screenwriter and martial arts choreographer. Both the script and action were in good hands. Its martial arts highlight was an engaging scene set in a liquor store where Seagal taunts a punk into attacking him, because aikido
, like taichi
, works best when channeling an attacker’s energy back at them. Playing another pragmatic, prepared cop, Seagal is blasted into a coma by a corrupt politician who he had been investigating. When he awakens seven years later, his muscles haven’t atrophied, but his family has been slaughtered. The remainder of the film’s ninety-five minutes was a very satisfying hunt for revenge.

With just his first two films, Seagal had set the stage for his entire career. On the one hand, he seemed to enjoy making straight-forward action films where his heroes were never in doubt or bettered. On the other hand, as evidenced by
The Making of Hard to
Kill
, Seagal was continually frustrated by his studios’ apparent lack of cooperation with the budding auteur’s vision. It was not surprising, then, that he parted ways with Warner Brothers for his third movie,
Marked for Death
(1990), where he took on Jamaican voodoo drug runners with his kinetic aikido
. Seagal returned to the screenwriter role for his next movie, which was originally titled
The Price of Our Blood.
The studio, however, didn’t want to lose the catchy three-word titles of his filmography, so when the movie reached cinemas in 1991 it was titled
Out for Justice
.

This one stripped down Seagal’s desires to their basics. Basically a very busy twenty-four hours in the life of a very violent Brooklyn cop, the film’s plot was just a string on which to hang Seagal’s multiple scenes of aikido
ass-kicking, climaxed by an extended sequence in which Seagal corners the villain (William Forsythe
) in a tenement kitchen, then methodically takes him apart in a series of master shots (camera angles that take in the entire room) so you can see Forsythe systematically beaten through the power of aikido — creating one of the most pounding, brutal, and memorable scenes in Seagal’s career.

Seagal seemed content with that direct, suspenseless approach, but the studio wanted more. So did Andrew Davis
. Following
Above the Law
,
he had had another few frustrating years. He managed to get
The Package
(1989) made, but it was a forgettable suspense thriller starring Gene Hackman
as a military man trying to prevent the assassination of Russia’s president. After that, nothing. So, taking a script by J. F. Lawton
, Davis hired Tommy Lee Jones
and Gary Busey
to play villains, got the use of the USS Alabama museum ship, and fashioned
Under Siege
(1992). It was
Die Hard
on a boat, but a really good
Die Hard
on a boat.

It became Seagal’s most critically and financially successful film, but also one of his most telling, thanks to an infamous magazine article by the scripter, who revealed that it was Jones’ idea to disguise himself as a rock singer, Busey’s idea to kill the captain of the ship while dressed in drag, and that Seagal’s major contribution was the demand that a bare-breasted
Playboy
bunny be brought onboard in a hollow cake (instead of sticking to Lawton’s subplot concerning a female Coast Guard officer’s heroics). There is less aikido
than ever before, but the stars and director try to make up for it with big booms and many, many bullets.

Taking credit where credit was due, Seagal sought to control his movie destiny. His next film didn’t appear until two years later, but it was produced, directed, and starring Steven Seagal
.
On
Deadly Ground
(1994) was promoted as a serious ecological statement — being the story of an oil rig specialist who tangles with an apparently insane corporate polluter. But from the moment Seagal appears onscreen, background characters literally can’t stop talking about how great he is. What at first appears to be an odd directing and editing choice becomes an annoying distraction by the middle of the movie. Finally, when an evil mercenary team’s leader interrupts the climax to deliver a monologue on how incredibly talented Seagal’s character is, it becomes a laughable sign of insecurity.

Adding fuel to that theory is a perplexing dream sequence in which Seagal’s character is “reborn” in a river of life wearing neck-to-ankle leather while naked “Native American” girls undulate around him. Seagal single-handedly destroys an entire oil foundry, kills all the corporate executives affiliated with it, and what happens? Is he arrested and jailed like some sort of latter-day Billy Jack
? Oh, no; he is celebrated and caps the film with a speech about alternate energy sources. Suffice to say that the film did not reach the box-office heights of
Under Siege
.
Therefore, a sequel of that hit was hastily called for.

Thankfully, Andrew Davis
did not need to direct it. He had gone on to direct the wildly successful movie adaptation of the television show
The Fugitive
(1993), starring Harrison Ford
and Tommy Lee Jones
, so
Under Siege
2: Dark Territory
(1995) was directed by New Zealander Geoff Murphy
as “
Die Hard
on a train.” Although far better than
On Deadly Ground
,
it was considered a disappointment. Rather than see that as a setback, Seagal took the initiative to take an effective guest-starring stint in the suspenseful
Executive Decision
(1996), starring Kurt Russell
and directed by longtime editor Stuart Baird
. Playing a self-sacrificing government commando, Seagal appeared in only about fifteen minutes of the thriller, but to great effect.

That successful gambit completed, the next step was supposed to be a comic “buddy cop” picture along the lines of
48
Hours
(1982), but when
The Glimmer Man
appeared in 1996, it was light on the comedy, very light on the “buddy,” and extremely heavy on the kind of action which had become associated with Seagal in the films prior to
Under Siege
.
There was only one major difference: rather than film Seagal’s aikido
in one long shot, each of his fights were now torn by dozens of fast editing cuts, so the beauty and smoothness of the moves were all but obscured. It was hard to tell what was actually happening anymore, and even harder to care.

The good vibes Seagal had engendered in
Executive Decision
were all but dashed by his 1997 effort,
Fire Down Below
,
which was, for all intents and purposes, an even more ludicrous sequel to
On
Deadly Ground
.
Here Seagal was a full-fledged Environmental Protection Agency agent (seemingly with a license to kill) going up against another, even more psychotic, corporate polluter. Only this time, producer Seagal throws in as much country music as he does aikido
, seemingly trying to create a latter-day B Western in the tradition of Roy Rogers
pictures. He even dons a buckskin jacket, pulls out an ol’ guitar, and sings a couple of tunes he penned himself.

The film’s lack of success at the box office made an orphan of Seagal’s next movie,
The Patriot
(1999), so it had its American premiere on the Home Box Office cable channel. There, fans could enjoy Seagal as one of the world’s top immunologists (?!) who becomes a small-town doctor to get away from the machinations of big government disease-control types. But when a militant crackpot spreads a deadly disease, he needs all his killing and healing skills to save the day. As a major motion picture it was sadly lacking but developed a life, and income, of its own on home video.

Finally, Seagal saw a way to do the movies he wanted to do the way he wanted to do them. By this time, the middle-aged star was thickening, and his reliance on aikido
was thinning. But that didn’t matter to his many fans throughout the world. No matter how he looked or acted, his brand of relentless justice could still find favor in multiple countries. So, after a few more feeble stabs at big screen relevance (2001’s
Exit Wounds
and 2002’s
Half Past Dead
) Seagal became king of the “Direct to DVD” world — making more than twenty in less than a decade. 2003’s
Belly of the Beast
is notable in that it included kung fu and was directed by the exceptional choreographer Tony Ching Siu-tung
(who also directed 1982’s
Duel to the Death
, 1987’s
A Chinese Ghost Story
, and 2002’s
Naked Weapon
), but the rest were of a type.

There’s a great man (played by Seagal). Someone messes with the great man by threatening him or his family in some way. The great man goes out and takes care of the problem. Period. The end. It’s clearly McMoviemaking, but there’s a reason the fast food variant has billions and billions sold. One look at any of his “D2DVD’s” audio set-ups tells you all you need to know about why Seagal keeps grinding them out — his down and dirty, bare bones, revenge flicks come complete with at least five different language tracks and seven different subtitles, including Korean, Thai, Spanish, and even Portuguese.

So don’t cry for Steven Seagal
, America. He’s doing exactly what he’s always wanted to do, in the way he’s always wanted to do it — and making a tidy profit each and every time. He may not care what the mass audience wants, but he knows what he wants, and he delivers. Take this telling (slightly paraphrased) dialog from
Urban Justice
(2007) as he’s confronted by a beautiful, pacifist woman while preparing to wipe out the people who killed his son:

Woman: “This is just for revenge.”

Seagal: “Damn straight.”

Woman: “The cycle of violence will never end.”

Seagal: “I don’t care.”

Woman: “You’re as bad as they are.”

Seagal: “No … I’m a lot worse.”

Well said, Steven, well said.

But back in 1990, when Chuck was in
Delta Force
2: The Columbian Connection
, Jean-Claude was growling “wrong bet,” and Steven was
Marked for Death
,
kung fu managed to make its way into American cinemas in disguise. It started in 1989, when Jackie Chan
was rebuffed by U.S. theater owners. His producer was told that they would never show a film with an all-Asian cast. Golden Harvest
Studios considered its options and decided, “Well, what if they don’t know that the heroes are Asian? What if the fighters were … turtles?”