The Keeper (Keoni Waxman, 2009)

Starts with a little stand-alone plot which just serves as an introduction of Seagal's character Roland. He's a SWAT member and not only that - "he's the inspiration of every guy who joined this elite team". A bit disappointing bad-ass induction statement (usually they get much more colorful) but we don't need to question his capabilities because there's a camera shot that scans his formidable collection of  awards and certifications. Usual stuff from martial arts to explosive handling...

It soon evolves into pretty formulaic "guy-wisiting-an-old-friend-in-troubles" type of shit. But it's done pretty well, this time story is totally straightforward and easy to follow. Which is welcomed because this was not always the case in his DTV career. Also location set in the Texas offers brighter tone to the movie comparing it to recent Eastern European bleak settings.

Action is more than decent although I would estimate it favors shootings over martial arts in a ratio of about 70% to 30%. Still there are some broken arms and Seagal is much more violent than usually. I did miss a final encounter between him and one of the main villains who's supposed to be a big time boxer. He's really an asshole (doing drugs, cheating and even selling-out his girlfriend) and I was looking forward to Steven kicking his boxing-ass with his martial arts techniques but for some reason it just doesn't happen. So I guess I need to correct myself a bit about this movie being too formulaic.

6/10

Driven to Kill (Jeff King, 2009)

I have at least 20 DVDs of Seagal movies and they all have subtitles. Rest of his opus I downloaded and those too usually come with optional subtitles. This one doesn't have subs and for the first time I realized how important they are in the Seagal movie.

The thing (or should I say the problem) is that he is so tough and mean motherfucker that he doesn't need to raise his voice. So for the most times he just inaudibly whispers and since he imitates Russian accent it's really hard to follow the story.

Which is complicated and sometimes disjointed as in the best times of his direct-to-video career. In this one he plays ex-Russian mobster now successful crime novels writer who lives in exile in California (at least I think so). But when his daughter gets married he returns to his old 'hood in New Jersey (at least I think so) for her wedding. Which is not appreciated by his old rivals who kill his ex-wife and kidnap the bride. He gets his sidekick in her fiancee and from then on everything is pretty much standard stuff.

Look and feel of the movie reassembles a bit too much to those bleak east European ones, but action is decent. It's not shot or edited spectacular, but there's a lot of it and it comes in all kinds of forms, from martial arts to knife fights to shootouts. Which is good to see after that disappointment of Against the Dark.

The best scene is when our two buddies come to the ghetto to get the bad guys. But when they arrive, Seagal starts, apparently without any good reason, shooting in the air with his big ass shotgun. When you start wondering WFT he quickly offers explanations that "this way rats will come out themselves". Or some shit like that. He is just too cool and too busy to do any routinely investigation stuff. Classis Seagal, almost!

5/10

Against the Dark (Richard Crudo, 2009)

Believe it or not, this is Seagal’s first horror movie! Which ought to be enough to make it interesting by itself, especially because he’s also credited as producer and one would expect he had some sort of influence on the making of the flick. Unfortunately is just boring and there’s not much of Seagal there. He has few of his usual hilarious one-liners, but that’s about it. Definitely disappointing…

3/10