Review: Code of Honour

Shadowy sniper Steven Seagal is targeting bad guy James Russo and his associates. Detective Louis Mandylor and mysterious federal agent Craig Sheffer are looking for Seagal, but there’s a lot more to one of them than meets the eye. R.D. Call plays a politician.

Don’t be fooled by the somewhat recognisable cast, this 2016 film from writer-director Michael Winnick (“Guns, Girls, and Gambling” with Gary Oldman, Powers Boothe, and Christian Slater) isn’t even one of the better post-cinematic career films for Steven Seagal. Yes, it’s also not one of the worst either, but this is utterly forgettable stuff.

Craig Sheffer was never a great actor, but what in the hell happened to him that resulted in him appearing in “Dracula II: Ascension”, the incoherent “Hellraiser: Inferno”, and now a direct-to-DVD Steven Seagal film? For the most part he’s the film’s acting highlight, getting better as the film goes along. Still, it’s really sad to see someone with a bit of talent and a bit of charisma in such an affair here. James Russo does his bad guy thing as solidly as he always does, but along with a wasted R.D. Call, there’s just not much of a chance for him to do much here. He gets rubbed out far too early to matter. Still, Russo’s performance is very close to the equal of Sheffer’s here. As for Mr. Seagal, I’m not saying he’s an egotist but he gets his EP credit here (along with the other EPs) and his starring credit separately and before any other cast members, or the writer-director. Even if this was Seagal in his heyday, that’d still come off as completely pretentious douchebaggery. He’s also wearing the same frigging camo he does in most of his films these days, because why bother with a wardrobe change when the films, character, and performance are already interchangeable enough, right? Have I mentioned that Seagal spends the majority of the first half of the film sitting silently in a chair behind a sniper rifle? I suppose it’s better than having him mouth dialogue, but still…Mr. Bare Minimum sure does live up to his name here, though I think for once he actually does his own looping/ADR work. So that’s nice, I guess. I should say that once Seagal does start talking he never shuts the fuck up. The funny thing is the camo outfit only serves to make the Michellin Aikido Man look even fatter. For a guy described as a ‘shadow’ and a ‘ghost’, well…yeah, no. You can’t really be a master of disguise when you look like a latter day Marlon Brando with a bad dye job to begin with.

Some of the story elements here are halfway interesting, but they’re not terribly interestingly performed by Seagal in particular and Sheffer is no miracle worker.  The one thing aside from Sheffer (and it’s more his film than Seagal’s) that the film does have going for it is that there’s quite a bit of decent CGI blood splatter, especially in the fun but stupid opener. In fact, that opening scene is probably the film’s highlight. The 11^th hour twist certainly isn’t the highlight, it’s too clever by half, one of the most pointless things I’ve ever seen tacked onto the end of a film. It wants to be ‘Film That Shall Not Be Named But You Can Probably Guess Anyway. Yes, That One’, but it so isn’t. In fact, it ends up making one of the main actor’s participation in the film completely useless. That said, we’re talking about a film that is so concerned with veteran character actor R.D. Call, that one scene starts to fade out on him mid-sentence. His first scene and second sentence.

The best thing I can say about this below-par direct-to-DVD Steven Seagal film is that someone better gets the starring role and the cinematography isn’t incompetent. Other than that, this is just bog-standard with a slightly better-sounding cast than usual and some CGI splatter to go with Seagal’s ludicrous faux Creole accent.

Rating: C