First off, let me state that I happen to LIKE Steven Segal. This movie, though... This movie may be the worst thing I've EVER seen. The plot isn't just predictable or preposterous, it's downright incoherent. Characters appear and disappear for no reason, scenes begin and end at random, and nothing that happens makes any sense at all.
For example: Segal's cellmate in Chinese prison is a black American man, who talks just like he's from the ghetto, and has been convicted of smuggling marijuanna across the border from Kazhakstan. Hmm. Any decent writer could probably cook up a brief but interesting story, explaining how a guy from the hood ended up running drugs in Central Asia. A decent writer could, but not the writers of "Out For a Kill." Instead we cut away for two minutes, and when we cut back, Segal and his cellmate have somehow become the very best of friends. As Segal is being set free, his dear friend shouts out "Don't forget me! Please, don't forget me!" Naturally, this guy is never seen, heard from, or mentioned ever again.
It's all downhill from there. The film cuts to a car chase in progress, for example, with no explanation before or afterward of what caused it to take place. In another scene, Segal walks into a barbershop and kicks the crap out some evil Chinese barbers, but we never find out who they were or what clobbering them was supposed to accomplish. People appear on at least three different continents, sometimes several continents per day according to the day/time text that appears between some scenes, yet we never get a single scene taking place at an airport or in a taxi.
Then, of course, there are all the traditional problems of a bottom-rung production like this. The fights stink, everything looks cheap, characters have no personality, and the acting is just awful. We're supposed to care that Segal's wife has been murdered, but how can we, when the movie only gave her one or two lines of dialogue before killing her? We certainly don't feel sorry for Segal's character. His acting is now so terrible that he can't even portray anger convincingly, much less grief. He simply sits there like a cigar-store Indian, and mutters some of the worst "threatening" dialogue in modern film history.
(Compare this to Jean-Claude Van Damme's surprisingly nuanced performance as a childlike clone in his direct-to-video movie Replicant, if you want to see an action guy who can at least make a convincing display of emotion.)
Anyway, this movie wasn't even bad in a fun way. It was horribly pretentious and nonsensical, unworthy of renting even for a laugh. As I said at the beginning, this is quite possibly the worst movie I have ever seen.
For example: Segal's cellmate in Chinese prison is a black American man, who talks just like he's from the ghetto, and has been convicted of smuggling marijuanna across the border from Kazhakstan. Hmm. Any decent writer could probably cook up a brief but interesting story, explaining how a guy from the hood ended up running drugs in Central Asia. A decent writer could, but not the writers of "Out For a Kill." Instead we cut away for two minutes, and when we cut back, Segal and his cellmate have somehow become the very best of friends. As Segal is being set free, his dear friend shouts out "Don't forget me! Please, don't forget me!" Naturally, this guy is never seen, heard from, or mentioned ever again.
It's all downhill from there. The film cuts to a car chase in progress, for example, with no explanation before or afterward of what caused it to take place. In another scene, Segal walks into a barbershop and kicks the crap out some evil Chinese barbers, but we never find out who they were or what clobbering them was supposed to accomplish. People appear on at least three different continents, sometimes several continents per day according to the day/time text that appears between some scenes, yet we never get a single scene taking place at an airport or in a taxi.
Then, of course, there are all the traditional problems of a bottom-rung production like this. The fights stink, everything looks cheap, characters have no personality, and the acting is just awful. We're supposed to care that Segal's wife has been murdered, but how can we, when the movie only gave her one or two lines of dialogue before killing her? We certainly don't feel sorry for Segal's character. His acting is now so terrible that he can't even portray anger convincingly, much less grief. He simply sits there like a cigar-store Indian, and mutters some of the worst "threatening" dialogue in modern film history.
(Compare this to Jean-Claude Van Damme's surprisingly nuanced performance as a childlike clone in his direct-to-video movie Replicant, if you want to see an action guy who can at least make a convincing display of emotion.)
Anyway, this movie wasn't even bad in a fun way. It was horribly pretentious and nonsensical, unworthy of renting even for a laugh. As I said at the beginning, this is quite possibly the worst movie I have ever seen.