An EPA agent Jack Taggart (Seagal) is sent to go "undercover" in eastern Kentucky to find out who's responsible for dumping toxins in the ground. Of course in a film like this, there's a friend of Taggart's who's dead, so he has to avenge him. The locals, mostly poor are too afraid to make much noise about who's doing it for fear of reprisals. So Taggart strolls into town and starts doing odd jobs for a church fixing up some local's porches, playing the fiddle and then meets the female lead Sarah Kellogg (Helgenberger). It's just as bad as it sounds. I like to the scene where he grabs the rattle snake lighting quick, I guess I'm not the only one who saw "Hard Target". Pretty soon he gets into fights with the local trash and as always dominates and finds out that Orin Hanner Sr. (Kristofferson) is the guy behind the whole operation. Taggart goes after his spineless son Orin Jr. (Hunt) who runs the business locally and eventually takes it to the top and sends Sr. to the big house in an anti climatic ending.
This is one of Seagal's worst movies in my opinion. Even in films where the script was bad, Seagal usually would come through with some good fight sequences but even these are fairly lame in this. More often you are waiting for some action to actually happen, but rather you get to see Seagal glad hand the locals, sing, play guitars, square dance, give an environmental speech and do routine maintenance for the poor. Can you say stupid? The movie is boring and Seagal supposedly undercover stands out like sore thumb with those silly jackets. With the few action scenes you get, all are vastly inferior to those of his past greats and what kicks he had are very poor indeed. By this time in his career he was not in great shape and this may have affected the scenes in general. The best action scene in the film actually involves a big rig chasing him in truck like Red Fox's. To add to this, there is very little killing in this, not only does he push the environmental message, but he kills very few people. I mean come on, the staple of a film like this is the showdown at the end and the bad guy bites it. But no Seagal wounds the guy and arrests him. And don't even get me started with the gas station and the flare, didn't want to hurt any bystanders I suppose. WEAK!
There are plenty of fine actors in this film, not really sure why, who also come out looking thoroughly awful. Nobody usually expects fine acting from a film like this, but good actors can only do so much with a terrible script and this proves good actors can be totally wasted on poor writing. Harry Dean Stanton is great and he has such a weak hillbilly role in this, along with Helgenberger. And of course Seagal speaks as always painfully low toned and silly, like he's on depressants. If your fan of The Punisher look for Mark Collie playing a hick who can't fight. Also once Seagal started putting into his films too much of an environmental message the movies began to go down hill. Believe me, I'm for the environment, but it has very little place in these films and Seagal looks like a fool doing speeches on the subject, remember On Deadly Ground? This is worse.
There very few bright spots, one being the location shots. OK nice, but I came to see action not Kentucky. For country music fans I would imagine this is a gold mine, with lots of music and stars making appearances in the films. Again, didn't come to see that. With a few one liners that are OK, there is nothing much more to say that is good. Surprisingly this was released in theaters and I can see why it was one of his last. Overall a very poor action film, with no nudity to speak of equals 1 out of 10 stars.
This is one of Seagal's worst movies in my opinion. Even in films where the script was bad, Seagal usually would come through with some good fight sequences but even these are fairly lame in this. More often you are waiting for some action to actually happen, but rather you get to see Seagal glad hand the locals, sing, play guitars, square dance, give an environmental speech and do routine maintenance for the poor. Can you say stupid? The movie is boring and Seagal supposedly undercover stands out like sore thumb with those silly jackets. With the few action scenes you get, all are vastly inferior to those of his past greats and what kicks he had are very poor indeed. By this time in his career he was not in great shape and this may have affected the scenes in general. The best action scene in the film actually involves a big rig chasing him in truck like Red Fox's. To add to this, there is very little killing in this, not only does he push the environmental message, but he kills very few people. I mean come on, the staple of a film like this is the showdown at the end and the bad guy bites it. But no Seagal wounds the guy and arrests him. And don't even get me started with the gas station and the flare, didn't want to hurt any bystanders I suppose. WEAK!
There are plenty of fine actors in this film, not really sure why, who also come out looking thoroughly awful. Nobody usually expects fine acting from a film like this, but good actors can only do so much with a terrible script and this proves good actors can be totally wasted on poor writing. Harry Dean Stanton is great and he has such a weak hillbilly role in this, along with Helgenberger. And of course Seagal speaks as always painfully low toned and silly, like he's on depressants. If your fan of The Punisher look for Mark Collie playing a hick who can't fight. Also once Seagal started putting into his films too much of an environmental message the movies began to go down hill. Believe me, I'm for the environment, but it has very little place in these films and Seagal looks like a fool doing speeches on the subject, remember On Deadly Ground? This is worse.
There very few bright spots, one being the location shots. OK nice, but I came to see action not Kentucky. For country music fans I would imagine this is a gold mine, with lots of music and stars making appearances in the films. Again, didn't come to see that. With a few one liners that are OK, there is nothing much more to say that is good. Surprisingly this was released in theaters and I can see why it was one of his last. Overall a very poor action film, with no nudity to speak of equals 1 out of 10 stars.
