Review: Born to Raise Hell

Steven Seagal is an Interpol agent stationed in Romania to bust up drug syndicates. He takes on brutal gangster, club owner, and all-round Gypsy creep Darren Shahlavi, who has a strained partnership with Russian mobster Dan Badarau. The latter is a devout family man who has moral objections to the way Shahlavi conducts himself, especially when he puts Badarau’s family in harm’s way. D. Neil Mark plays Seagal’s American partner, whose wife has a baby on the way.

 

Not one of Steven Seagal’s best efforts of late (take that as you wish), this Lauro Chartrand (his directorial debut, after a career as a stuntman) action flick has little excitement and wastes the talents of Darren Shahlavi as one of the bad guys. Good news first: Seagal loops his own dialogue (some have a differing view on that, but it sounded fine to me). He actually wrote the damn screenplay, so if he didn’t like the dialogue he’d have no excuse then, so I’m glad he turned up for work that day. Actually, for the most part, this is his most lively performance in ages. He’s decent for a change, and looks to have eased off on the fake tan too. Unfortunately, Seagal also narrates the film. Flatly. He’s also playing an Interpol agent stationed in Romania, which whilst a new one for Seagal, isn’t exactly a good fit. Van Damme might’ve pulled such a character off, but Seagal? Uh-uh. He’d stand out like a sore thumb.

 

Worse still is the camera trickfuckery and editing nonsense favoured by director Chartrand, who comes off like Michael Oblowitz (director of Seagal’s worst films “The Foreigner” and “Out for a Kill”), but with a better handle on narrative cohesion. There’s some shaky cam in the fights, perhaps compensating for Seagal’s advancing age, but irritating nonetheless. In the first action scene it appears he can’t even do his aikido moves as fluidly anymore, so fancy editing and camera-shaking have to be used. The second fight scene in a restaurant is pretty good, and a more impactful display of aikido, but really brief. The final fight is wrist-snapping fun on the one hand, but disastrously one-sided on the other. Shahlavi gets absolutely no offence in. None. It’s a crap role that he plays with a crap accent and he doesn’t get to kick any arse in the film. Why was he even cast? Shahlavi made such a strong, forceful impression in “Ip Man 2” that his participation here is a complete and utter disappointment.

 

One plus over the usual Seagal film is that the film is set in Romania, instead of just being filmed there on the cheap for no other reason. So that’s a nice touch I’ll admit, and the lighting is pretty nice throughout, so that’s a plus too. Sadly the plot is a complete snore, and combined with a slow pace, a big baddie who doesn’t get to land a punch, and a hack editing job, there’s just not much of interest going on here. I also have to question the exploitation content in the film. Apparently strippers don’t bare their breasts in Romania, but they do when having sex with flabby American-accented Interpol agents. We do get some nudity later on in a nightclub, but it’s artsy, over-edited stuff that isn’t remotely enjoyable. The sex scene is actually creepy, slow-motion stuff that is shot in such a way that it looks like he’s raping the girl. Watch it and tell me I’m wrong.

 

It’s not one of Seagal’s stinkers, and his acting is surprisingly OK (Badarau is pretty awful in an otherwise interesting role), but the film is pretty average. It definitely isn’t up to the standard of the best of his direct-to-DVD films like “Into the Sun”, “Ruslan”, “Pistol Whipped”, “The Keeper”, and “Renegade Justice”/“Urban Justice”. Woeful title, too, as it has absolutely no bearing on anything in the film at all.

 

Rating: C