Urban Justice starts as Los Angeles cop Max Ballister (Cory Hart) is shot & killed in an apparent drive-by gang related shooting. Max's father & all round hard as nails ex-cop Simon (producer Steven Seagal) is obviously upset about his son's premature & violent demise & decides someone is going to pay. Simon rents out a dump of an apartment in a gang controlled neighbourhood & sets about beating the crap out of every lowlife, drug pusher & gang member around until he gets the information he wants. Eventually he finds out who killed his boy, he gets himself tooled up with lots of guns & sets out to kill the shooter & anyone who gets in his way...
Known as Renegade Justice here in the UK this was photographed & directed by Don E. FauntLeRoy who again teams up with washed-up action star Seagal for the third time after the pair had previously made the equally terrible Today You Die (2005) & Mercenary for Justice (2006), well it seems that it's third time lucky for FauntLeRoy & Seagal as I have to say I thought Urban Justice wasn't too bad an effort at all & certainly a lot better than most of the straight-to-video/DVD abominations Seagal has starred in over the past few years. The script is a fairly routine action revenge thriller, it's nowhere near as gritty as say a vigilante thriller like Death Wish (1974) or as exciting as some of Seagal's earlier bigger budget films like the two Under Siege flicks but for what it was & what I had expected I was pleasantly surprised. The plot is your basic 'one man army' seeks justice & revenge after someone he is close to is murdered as Seagal is pitted against the drug dealers & gangs of Los Angeles who are rather stereotypically all black & carry guns. The scenes of Seagal & these gang members facing off trying to look & sound cool as they try to out swear each other are quite funny. There's plenty of fights, shoot-outs & bad language to keep one entertained & pass the time but the story is predictable & if I am honest pretty weak.
In these politically correct & overly sensitive times it's interesting to note that the black character's make several racist slurs against Seagal (calling him a 'white boy', etc.) & the other Caucasian character's yet not one single racist or derogatory term towards a black character is uttered by a white one. The action is mostly confined to some rather good fights, this is Seagal of old breaking arms, kicking, punching & generally hurting the bad guy's. There's several shoot-outs too with a particularly gory one at the end. There's an attempt at a car chase but on a limited budget it doesn't look that great. I wasn't keen on some of the choices made by the makers, in particularly the use of slow motion at points that seem totally random. Apparenty Urban Justice almost got a theatrical release.
With a supposed budget of about $12,000,000 this has pretty good production values & is well made. The acting is average really, Seagal mumbles his way through his part as usual & I think it's looks like he's lost some of that weight & he's more believable in this as a result.
Urban Justice is not any sort of masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination & isn't even in the top five Seagal films but it did pass ninety odd minutes harmlessly enough & entertained me in the process. Much better than I had expected & the best film Seagal has made in years.
Known as Renegade Justice here in the UK this was photographed & directed by Don E. FauntLeRoy who again teams up with washed-up action star Seagal for the third time after the pair had previously made the equally terrible Today You Die (2005) & Mercenary for Justice (2006), well it seems that it's third time lucky for FauntLeRoy & Seagal as I have to say I thought Urban Justice wasn't too bad an effort at all & certainly a lot better than most of the straight-to-video/DVD abominations Seagal has starred in over the past few years. The script is a fairly routine action revenge thriller, it's nowhere near as gritty as say a vigilante thriller like Death Wish (1974) or as exciting as some of Seagal's earlier bigger budget films like the two Under Siege flicks but for what it was & what I had expected I was pleasantly surprised. The plot is your basic 'one man army' seeks justice & revenge after someone he is close to is murdered as Seagal is pitted against the drug dealers & gangs of Los Angeles who are rather stereotypically all black & carry guns. The scenes of Seagal & these gang members facing off trying to look & sound cool as they try to out swear each other are quite funny. There's plenty of fights, shoot-outs & bad language to keep one entertained & pass the time but the story is predictable & if I am honest pretty weak.
In these politically correct & overly sensitive times it's interesting to note that the black character's make several racist slurs against Seagal (calling him a 'white boy', etc.) & the other Caucasian character's yet not one single racist or derogatory term towards a black character is uttered by a white one. The action is mostly confined to some rather good fights, this is Seagal of old breaking arms, kicking, punching & generally hurting the bad guy's. There's several shoot-outs too with a particularly gory one at the end. There's an attempt at a car chase but on a limited budget it doesn't look that great. I wasn't keen on some of the choices made by the makers, in particularly the use of slow motion at points that seem totally random. Apparenty Urban Justice almost got a theatrical release.
With a supposed budget of about $12,000,000 this has pretty good production values & is well made. The acting is average really, Seagal mumbles his way through his part as usual & I think it's looks like he's lost some of that weight & he's more believable in this as a result.
Urban Justice is not any sort of masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination & isn't even in the top five Seagal films but it did pass ninety odd minutes harmlessly enough & entertained me in the process. Much better than I had expected & the best film Seagal has made in years.