Out for a Kill | | Cast : | Michelle Goh, Corey Johnson, Steven Seagal | | Director : | Michael Oblowitz | | Studio : | Columbia Tristar Hom | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | January 01, 2003 | | DVD Released Date : | January 04, 2005 | | Language : | Spanish (Dubbed), Portuguese (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 30, 2005 | | Summary | Out for a Nap | Content
 | Seagal as Yale's most acclaimed academician. Yeah, okay. Can a person really earn a PhD while in prison? No. Would someone who earned a PhD in prison be hired to teach at Yale? No. This movie has its tacky touches, to be sure, as well as some extremely ridiculous scenes that should have been cut altogether, such as Seagal bonding with a brother, and then swearing life-long friendship to this person he doesn't even know. This whole ridiculous scene should have been dropped. Additionally, the subplot with the bumbling detectives could have been entirely removed without harming the film, as could all of the stupid shots of the Tongs sitting around a table cursing "the gwilo professor." There are also several scenes that should have been cut simply because of how ridiculously fake they look: Seagal's house in Conneticut, the moon behind it, the scene with Seagal flying the jet, the detectives watching in front of the fake sky, these are all unnecessary scenes with such atrocious special effects that one must wonder why they were left in the film. It almost angers one that such incompetent scenes were left in this film when some of the other scenes boast some truly dazzling cinematograpy. One must question many of the decisions that were made in this film however. Why, for example, did the filmmakers ruin what started out as an excellent fight scene by endowing the assassin in the barber shop with the strange ability to crawl on walls and fly? No one else in the film can levitate and float, so why all-of-a-sudden are the laws of physics broken in this one scene?
With that said, this is a terribly bad movie, but it is not entirely devoid of entertainment value. It has, for instance, more fights than many of Seagal's recent films. What's more, Seagal here shows that he is still an able and talented martial artist, and that he still has the acting range of a cigar shop wooden Indian. It seems Seagal has been toying with kung fu, which adds a nice touch to a couple of his fight scenes. One must still gripe though that he relies on a stunt double far too often. The standard procedure now is to show a closeup of Seagal's face, a closeup of some arms playing paddycake real fast, and then cut to the stunt double. Very irritating. Ever notice that in most of Seagal's fights now his face is just outside of the frame? or that it shows his back during almost the entire fight? In this film's best fight scene, for instance, Seagal does a decent job using two bamboo sticks to fight two assassins yielding tai chi swords. The ridiculous thing in this scene is that one of the assassins is apparently just standing there practicing his moves, or some such nonsense, while his partner is getting killed by Seagal. He then looks up, astonished, as though he hadn't even been watching the fight! Once Seagal picks up one of the swords to finish the other assassin off the rest of the fighting is done by a stunt double. On the positive side, this film boasts far more aikido moves than many of his other recent adventures, including a couple nice wrist locks and arm bars.
Fighting aside, as mentioned earlier, this film has some remarkably beautiful cinematography with rich, vivid colors that saturate the surroudings, creating a very effective film noir feel, such as in the scenes in the mah jong game room, the tattoo parlor, and the barber shop.
These things aside there is not much to say about this film that is positive. It is not good, unsurprisingly, and some of the dialogue is so inane that pressing the mute button would often cause an improvement in the quality of the film. Many of the lines in this movie sound like pseudo-cryptic Chinese philosophy, though in the context in which they are delivered are entirely nonsensical. The scene in which one of the bumbling detectives rips off the last line of the masterpiece "Chinatown" is laughably bad. Furthermore, the whole subplot with the portions of a "riddle" tattooed on villians' wrists makes absolutely no sense. The voice that reads what the villians' wrists say is not Seagal's, as though this voiceover was added after-the-fact in a futile attempt to add some coherency to the messy proceedings...and when Seagal finally pieces the "riddle" together, it is hardly a riddle at all but a quote.
In short, this film leaves much to be desired, acres in fact. The first 10-15 minutes of this movie are absolutely bizarre in that all of Seagal's dialogue is delivered as a voiceover. They never show his face when he is speaking, because he wasn't really speaking these lines! This is very irritating. In closing, if you don't mind watching a pretty bad film this may suffice for some wrist-snapping fun.
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| Rating | | | Date | June 18, 2005 | | Summary | Really, really BAD MOVIE!!! | Content
| I'd be very surprised if anyone found anything good to say about this disjointed film! There are so many quick flashes and jumps in the picture, a camera that never seems to sit still and little video tricks that just makes this film a complete mess!
Another thing the drove me crazy was one minute the Chinese mob is speaking in English to each other, then in Chinese. The subtitles don't stay in the widescreen picture frame, but are printed on the picture and off, which drove me crazy too. Obvious signs of straight to video!
If it could have been shot like a normal film, it would have improved this mess 75 percent! Even with Steven wearing the same overcoat through most of the film to cover his expanding girth!
Another annoying thing was adding the voices of the actors over shots where they were obviously not speaking. I've seen this in the "big" films too, but not to this extent.
Steven, who has limited acting abilities as it is, rumor had it that he was learning a new facial expression for Exit Wounds, comes off even worse when the filmmaking process is so bizarre as this one.
Don't even waste your money to rent it. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 30, 2005 | | Summary | disgusting, pointless, and stupid! | Content
| I rented this movie at blockbuster when I thought it would be good but it sucked. I mean i bought the foreigner and that sucked as well. This movie was barely advertised he just comes up with more and more crap to sell. His older movies rocked meanwhile, this movie sucked out loud! |
| Rating | | | Date | May 21, 2005 | | Summary | Mother Theresa in a gangbang! What is this??? | Content
| Either Steven Seagal has absolutely NO self-respect or the Mob were just too damn scary for him when it came to signing the contract for this total pile of crap.
They couldn't even be bothered to come up with an good title. Instead they took Hard to Kill and Out for Justice and combined them (Hard to Justice?). But don't even think for one minute that this film is up to the standards of Seagal's golden years. You'll NEVER see anything worse than this. Well, Son of the Mask maybe.
Seagal plays an archaeologist (well, it's a change from Cop or ex-CIA) who's precious Chinese artifacts and pots are siezed by the Tong (the non-threatening Chinese Syndicate baddies) and stuffed with brown sugar (or cocaine, I don't know). Big Steve stumbles upon this dastardly deed and takes off for the Uzbekistan border. A hundred baddies come out of nowhere and start firing at him.
Big Steve is promptly framed and sent to jail, where he meets a character introduced as his new sidekick but is quickly forgotten about and never seen or heard from again. What the hell was the point in this? It turns out that Steve used to be in the CIA (oh for the love of crumb cake) and was their best ghost thief (huh?) and the DEA release him for some reason and he goes home to his quiet American suburb, where the Tong blow up his wife and house.
Steve goes on a killing spree. But what helps is that every Chinaman who's neck he breaks has a one-word tattoo on his arm that when added up makes an ancient Chinese proverb that provides the right order of tiles to push in case of fire in the Tong bosses office. What? Don't look at me! I didn't write this!
The bad guys don't do anything apart from sit at a long table in a poorly-lit and cold-looking room and smoke cigars while looking evil. The boss isn't even Chinese but an Ian Hislop-lookalike with bushy eyebrows. Every 10 minutes the film will jump to them (subtitles list their hobbies and interests for some strange reason!) and the boss goes 'We have to stop him, he knows too much'.
The fight scenes are horrible. What is the deal with the kung-fu monkey barber? Seriously! What is the deal with that? The computer-generated effects are the worst ever (second to Son of the Mask, nothing will beat that in terms of terribleness). I've seen more convincing stuff on a ZX Spectrum.
Seagal puts NO effort into this film. He looks incredibly bored through-out and looks like he'd rather be praying to Budda. However, you can almost see Frankie Fingers from The Mob loitering off-camera, pointing a gun at his head. I know I wouldn't show enthusiasm if that were the case.
Out for a Kill is directed by Mike Oblonglowiscz, the same amatuer responsible for the equally as horrible The Foreigner. The man has NO idea how to make films and should never be allowed near a camera again. He desperately tries to mime Michael Bay (a dubious choice of inspiration) with his pointless stutter-cuts and incoherent editing which only makes the film look worse, turning it into an avalanche on top of another avalanche. It's quite possible one of the ugliest-looking film you'll ever see. Considering some of the high-profile and veteran production members it's phenomenal they made a film so indescribably bad.
Eternal, everlasting shame on all those involved with making this trash. Utter crap of the lowest order.
The DVD is in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, showing off the ugly photography and poorly planned camera angles in all their rubbishy glory. The Dolby 5.1 soundtrack also turns the films unbelievebly bad sound design into pure torture for the ears. The cover also features 2 exploding helicopters. There are no helicopters in the entire film, never mind exploding ones. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 19, 2005 | | Summary | I'm so glad | Content
| That i didnt buy this DVD. I am a huge Steven Seagal fan, HUGE. But even with that being the case, i am stretching just to give this movie anything above 2 stars. I enjoyed the fighting (of course) its Segal and everything. But everything just seemed more than a bit off in the movie. Not sure how to explain it other than saying that this movie is one of my least fav Segal movie next to the Foreigner.
Action was great, overall quality was sucky, story doesnt need one. It explains enough for you to get whats up. Something bad happens to him and he goes and takes out all that get in his way, nuff said.
I watched this over my best friends place the other day and i'm happy that i didnt pay for this movie. Because i would be asking for a refund of my money/due to mental stress and anguish. Rent this one at your own risk...even diehard fans of Segal would pressed to enjoy this one.
I sure didnt. |
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