Review: Out for Justice

Steven Seagal plays a streetwise cop named Gino Felino who gets all wrist snap-happy when the old Brooklyn neighbourhood goes to seed, and especially when his partner is gunned down. A maverick cop who doesn’t much care for rules (he cares about puppies, though!), he spends all of his time and energy on bringing down the short-fused Richie (William Forsythe), another kid from the neighbourhood grown up and gone bad. Like, ‘shoot a woman in broad daylight’ crack-smoking psycho. That kind of ‘gone bad’. Hell, even the Mafia think the guy’s too much. Jerry Orbach plays Gino’s superior officer, Gina Gershon is Richie’s club owner sister who is afraid of him.

 

Not one of Steven Seagal’s crowning achievements, but this 1991 John Flynn (“The Outfit”, “Rolling Thunder”, “Lock Up”) action flick plays better in hindsight. Seagal would go on to make much worse than this film (“On Deadly Ground”, “The Foreigner”, “Out For a Kill”), which at least has its moments. Scripted by David Lee Henry (“Road House”, “8 Million Ways to Die”), it is, however, pretty forgettable in the grand scheme of things. It’s like a lesser version of Seagal’s starring debut “Above the Law”, which I always thought of as a Chuck Norris vehicle without Chuck Norris. If you like your cops with mob ties flicks, you might get more out of it than I did, but for me it was a bit boring. “Hard to Kill” and “Under Siege” it most certainly is not. It also has more uses and permutations of the word ‘fuck’ (114 according to IMDb) than some Billy Connolly concerts I’ve seen.

 

The biggest issues with the film involve the Forsythe character. Forsythe is a good actor given no choice here but to act out the most reckless and over-the-top bad guy in damn near cinematic history. As written, the role is awfully hammy and Forsythe just has to roll with it. The film wants to give the impression that the Forsythe and Seagal characters have been connected since childhood. However, outside of Seagal’s character being close to Forsythe’s parents, no sense of that connection or relationship is seen in the film, and it hurts the film greatly as a result. I mean, were they friends or just two guys from the same hood who ended up on different paths? I was never really sure.

 

The supporting cast is full of well-known faces (you’ll get to see what Julianna Margulies looked like in 1991 if you’re one of the two people who give a flying crap about her), but Orbach and Gershon are the standouts. Neither is in the film nearly enough (and apparently John Leguizamo is in here too but I strangely never spotted him), and Orbach is really just playing Orbach, but they’re watchable whenever on screen. Gershon gets more time than Orbach and is a most underrated talent. Hell, she’s the only actor to come out of “Showgirls” with only a minor covering of excrement on her.

 

Overall, this is a dull and clichéd film with really only one thing going for it: Seagal in Action. This is probably Seagal’s most violent film, along with “Marked For Death”. Donning a goofy Curtis Sliwa beret, Seagal’s a lot thinner in the face here than he’d become (but he was never skinny- look back at his early films, people!), and is more motivated than in just about any other film since. Perhaps that’s not saying much, but an early fight in a butcher’s shop shows just what this film could’ve been- Seagal snapping limbs, using baseball bats and even what looks like a salami as a weapon. It’s an awesome, painful-sounding display of Seagal action. Meanwhile, no one does the barroom bully-beating routine better than Aikido master Seagal, using billiard balls and cues with violent aplomb. I kinda wish Seagal actually used more Aikido here, to make the thugs look even dumber by using their own weight against them. Aside from the wrist-snapping, the only real patented Seagal Aikido moves are employed in the finale. Still, it’s a wonderfully brutal film at times. I mean, a corkscrew to the head and some bullets in the chest for good measure? Was that really necessary, Steven? Mind you, we’re talking about a film that begins with a quote from Arthur Miller of all people, so let’s not go asking too many questions.

In the end, the film is watchable when in action mode, but seriously dull at most other times. It’s not awful, but it’s fairly average.

Rating: C+