Bullet Points: The Foreigner (2003)
For about 5 years Steven Seagal was making some of the best action movies in the world. His first half-dozen movies or so could go toe to toe with nearly any other actor when it comes to quality action pictures. My favorite thing about Seagal is that he’s never stopped making action movies. He hasn’t done any family movies like Chuck Norris did late in his career, and he’s never attempted to go the comedy route like Arnold and Sly. He hasn’t even tried to make a dramatic movie! That last one might have more to do with his less than stellar acting ability. But one thing that Seagal does have is an immense filmography that can sneak up on you from time to time with a good flick. I bought this one at Big Lots for like $2….let’s see if it was worth it.
Synopsis: A freelance agent must transport a package for a mysterious employer, leading him into a web of betrayal and deceit.
- Tradition: Continuing a long running tradition of Steven Seagal never having onscreen romantic relations, we meet Seagal’s Jonathon Cold as his hooker friend is getting dressed and leaving his room. He doesn’t so much as steal a final look at her naked body as she leaves. Van Damme would have demanded to be standing there naked as she left.
- Seagal is The Transporter: Steven plays a guy by the name of Jonathon Cold. Every action movie should have a name like this. You just need to take a short, simple word and put it behind John; John Steel, John Hawks, John Frost. You could literally find anything that fits. In The Foreigner, Cold is some agent who does big-money jobs. Here he’s paid to pick up and deliver a package. He doesn’t mess around and look inside it because that would be against his protocol. What does happen, though, is he’s chased down by several random dudes trying to get their hands on this mysterious package.
- Silver-haired Devil: A man named Dunoir (Max Ryan) follows Seagal around for part of the movie. I wasn’t really sure what his motives were. He killed some random people, got blown through a window, then returned to attempt to steal the package from Seagal once again.
- Dy-no-mite: The filmmakers obviously had access to some shit buildings and some explosives. That is a very good thing for a production like this because it adds to what I would consider a very mediocre bit of action scenes.
- The Foreigner: Seagal’s Cold was some sort of deep undercover spy stuck in a Soviet prison. At some point, he had to make a deal to get himself out. Or that’s what I think is going on. I did kind of zone out at some point. There are long stretches of this movie where nothing happens except for plot twists and character turns. There is far too much talk of the package and we never get a payoff as to what is so damned important about it.
- Punch, Pow, Boom: The movie has something of a finale when the remaining characters meet up at a cool looking mansion where a rich, seemingly evil dude is hanging out. They take out the guards who are all wearing black, and parade into the mansion to hear the 5 minute exposition from the bad guy who should have been shot on sight. The silver-haired Max Ryan shows back up and eats up more screen time but no matter how charismatic and interesting his character seemed, he still got his ass handed to him by Seagal.
The Verdict: Even at his age, Seagal is still really good at killing guys on screen. The way he snatches a gun out of someone’s hands or uses his zoomed in Aikido to chop the hell out of their faces is still impressive. The movie has tons of problems. None of the characters are that interesting. Max Ryan might have been the best but he was so utterly man-handled by Seagal that it was like a teenager beating up his 8 year old brother. The action wasn’t terrible. Some explosions, Seagal moved pretty decent, and a couple of shootouts in super slow motion. I spent $2 on the movie which I don’t regret. It had a couple of decent moments and while I wouldn’t give it a favorable rating, at least it was Seagal at 50% and not his current 20%. If you’re a big Seagal mark then you might like this one…even though it feels like episode 7 of a 9 episode AMC series.
