Review: On Deadly Ground

Steven Seagal is Billy Jack...er...Forrest Taft, a trouble-shooter and fire-fighter (and former government operative, of course) for an oil company in Alaska owned by slick-haired, ruthless Jennings (Michael Caine- looking entirely miserable). Taft uncovers his once trusted boss’ environmentally dangerous, cost-cutting tactics. Though this is after Jennings has blamed an exploded oil refinery on Taft and an elderly co-worker, reports to the media that both men have been killed, having gotten secondary trouble-shooter McGruder (the welcome presence of John C. McGinley) to actually do the deed. Taft’s not the brightest bulb, you understand. Meanwhile, Taft has been on a trippy, boob-filled freak-out with some Inuit people, and joins up with activist Joan Chen (Didn’t she used to be a real actress?) in taking on his old boss. R. Lee Ermey turns up as a hard-ass hired goon, Shari Shattuck is the company’s soulless publicist, Mike Starr is a barroom bully, and a pre-“Sling Blade” Billy Bob Thornton plays a macho sniper in Jennings’ employ.

 

Although some of his post-career films outdo this 1994 film in sheer ineptitude, this catastrophic ego-trip directorial debut for star Steven Seagal is still an awful experience (albeit pretty amusing at times). It’s the film that killed his top action star aura. This is a tremendously silly, wrong-headed attempt to mix social conscience with bone-cracking action thuggery, with an out-of-control egotist director making sure to also feed the ego of his main star...himself. Caine, meanwhile, is saddled with a shocking make-up job, affects an awful accent (remember his awful Southern accent in “Hurry Sundown”?), and gives one of the worst performances of his entire career. The guy is famous for accepting jobs to build extensions on his house or have a holiday, but this is one of the few times when he has made it completely obvious that he just doesn’t give a flying monkey fuck. LSD-inspired Eskimo porn nonsense and a hilarious-if-it-weren’t-so-deadly-dull’ speech about environmental rape (originally 11 minutes long before test audiences objected. That’s all they objected to? Really?), on their own make this a staple of many bad movie lists and a massive come down in quality for Seagal. I was utterly crushed when I first saw it. It’s been mostly downhill for him ever since. Yet, some of the dialogue is hilarious (Calling Taft ‘The patron saint of the impossible’ being among the more subtle and least amusing of stupid lines here), Meanwhile, both McGinley and Ermey (favourites of mine) are well-cast and amusing in their small parts. Ermey in particular gets an hysterically funny, overly macho speech about Seagal’s background that plays like a parody of the genre, hopefully intentionally. However, those are very minor – and probably unintentional – pleasures.

 

This is a pretty inexcusable ego-trip. How did this unrestrained vanity project get released to theatres, even with that end speech being edited? Who thought audiences were gonna like it? Even the action’s not that much fun, outside of a barroom brawl with everyone’s favourite all-purpose bully, Mike Starr on the receiving end of a Seagal arse-kicking). It’s not Seagal’s worst film…which is frankly terrifying and depressing, don’t you think?

 

Rating: D-