Contract to Kill
Yap yap yap yap yap.
Could Seagal shut up for one moment to do some butt kicking?
So in Contract to Kill Stephen Seagal travels to Turkey to take on some terrorist drug dealers, which I thought was interesting as I can’t remember when the last time Istanbul was in the movie as the center for crime and trafficking (No Wait it was Taken 2), but as it turns out, the Mexicans are still the drug traffickers and the Arabs are still the terrorist. Oh well, so much for something different. At least it’s a different setting (Though Seagal was first introduced in a bar that’s in Mexico).
Seagal plays…I don’t know the character’s name and let’s be honest, it doesn’t really matter, cause I can’t remember the last time he did not play a retired CIA agent living in, Insert any foreign country, who was brought back into the game because his fat tired ass is somehow that good at stopping the crappy enemy he’s going after.
I should have known where the movie was going, as Seagal’s introduction included Steven spending 20mins being interviewed by a CIA agent who’s trying to convince Steven (and the rest of us) that only the big man with the keg stomach can save the world or something. Then as an extra added bonus Steven sees two gringos who can’t keep their hands off some waitress and goes over and some how beats them both while sitting on his ass, then he turns around and puts his hands all over the waitress who could be his granddaughter.
Seagal puts together a team that features dude from Vanishing Son, Russel Wong, who looks like he could have been more impressive in this film if he did not have to tone it down to make Seagal look better,
The third man on the team is some eye candy whose role as a covert black bag agent makes no sense instead for being eye candy. Seagal treats her like she’s been in the game as long as him but she doesn’t even look like she’s past 30. Her one purpose is to make old fat Seagal look like he’s still got it. There’s one part where Seagal has a small love scene with this chick. Normally I’m a fan of needless nudity from hot chicks, but it just puts more focus on the fact that Seagal is just an old man who wants the world to believe that he can still get the girl. Not only that but this “experience capable agent” gets kidnapped, so that Seagal can rescue her.
Some Seagal style action, but not much with Seagal repeating the same moves over and over and using multi angles and fast cuts to try to make it more exciting. It’s starting to get lame now that it’s 30 or so years in the action movie biz. Seagal has never come up to an opponent as skilled as him in Aikido to at least be able to make him stumble. Not bleed or fall down just push him Back a little, that’s all.
Yes, Seagal is a very big menacing dude, he still is, but come on.
This may not have been such a problem, but for the most part, fat Seagal spends a lot of time sitting down in the movie. I mean literally sitting in a car, sitting at a desk he even sits while doing some of the fight scenes (Like I said earlier). It tells me something about how lazy the filmmakers are putting this together. Man, there was so much talking, and it was all though guy talk, too. By the good guys, by the bad guys. I think Seagal, I think action and in an action film tough guy talk should be minimal to one liners, not these over glorified speeches about how awesome they are. I’ll give credit that one speech that Seagal himself had with one of the bad guys that was pretty good, but it was only one in a sea of really really bad ones, so it did nothing to make the film better.
Half way through you realize it’s an espionage movie. Not really Seagal’s cup of tea and not what I came to the movies to watch him do, and unfortunately for Seagal, he did nothing to change my mind.
Overall Contract to kills feels like it’s screaming Steven should retire. If you love Seagal so much, you are cool wasting 90 mins watching him sit and talk with the enemy than go for it. Although, I really think they’re better Fat Seagal action movies than this one.
