Shadow Man
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Movie Reviews of Shadow Man
Movie Review: Poor Stuff
Summary: 2 Stars
Steven Seagal was never a great actor, even in his prime. He was a good action star though. I've always had some respect for him as he's a 7th Dan in Akido and a respected martial arts practioner. However this is a sadly unconvincing film that does him no credit at all.
Now rapidly approaching the age of 56, Seagal has put on a lot of weight and his acting and delivery is even more wooden than it was. Sure the fight scenes are good, close-up its obvious he knows his stuff and you wouldn't want to mess with him, but as an action star his time has passed. The plot such that there is really isn't worth describing, and the only redeeming element was Imelda Staunton's performance as the American Ambassador, which is a class above the rest of the cast.
My recommendation rent don't buy this.
Movie Review: Can't Step Out Of His Own Shadow
Summary: 1 Stars
As much as I like Steven Seagal and his movies, I must admit that I found very little to like about "Shadow Man" - Seagal's 25th action feature, directed by Michael Keusch, who would go on to direct the equally poor Seagal flicks Attack Force and Flight of Fury. Everything from the storyline, production, acting, and action falls completely flat, to the point that I began wondering where the more approving reviews on Amazon came from. It feels like The Foreigner in rewind, with dreary visuals and poor action scenes highlighting an over-complicated storyline that's impossible to care about.
The story: When travelling to Romania for the 5th anniversary of the death of his wife, businessman Jack Foster (Seagal) sees his daughter Amanda (Skye Bennett, who'd return in Against the Dark) kidnapped during an airport attack while Jack himself is targeted by Romanian officials and mobsters who believe him to be in possession of a devastating biological weapon. Gunned for from all sides, he must team with a beautiful ex-agent (Eva Pope, "Coronation Street") if he hopes to eliminate the threat and save his daughter.
That sounds straight-forward enough, but again, this is one of the most convoluted Seagal films that I have ever seen. As an action hero, Seagal has never really needed brainiac storylines to get over, but the script of "Shadow Man" calls for the plot to take at least two disorienting twists, feature a supporting cast the size of China (this includes Oscar nominee Imelda Staunton, but only about a third of all the speaking roles have actual relevance to the movie), and require the viewer to juggle the intentions of several characters amidst the general chaos. That last aspect may have been fine if there was a single interesting character in the whole movie. Seagal himself comes off as a big, callous jerk and an awful parent (e.g. he puts off joining his daughter, who is disappointed that he's not coming, to have sex with some nameless woman). Eva Pope is easily the best performer in the movie, but that's not saying much, seeing as the rest of the cast is entirely faceless and forgettable.
The production is sub-standard: the film utilizes the "shaky camera" technique to maddening effect and the locales are consistently colorless and boring to look at. Action scenes fail to exhilarate: Seagal busts out an aikido move every half an hour, but all of the hand-to-hand fights, shootouts, and car chases are cut so swiftly and irregularly that you'll hardly have time to register what's going on in half of the shots. For a couple nice touches, though, Jack builds a nifty MacGuyver-style bomb with a phonograph and somehow manages to shoot down a combat helicopter with a pistol (tidbit: three years after this, Seagal's daughter Ayako released her biographical film called "How to Blow Up a Helicopter", which I'm positive was inspired by this particular scene).
In conclusion, I would only recommend this film if you particularly enjoy Seagal's direct-to-video efforts, because it'll take some commitment to get to like this one.
Movie Review: a messy, funny, brain-dead screenplay that made laugh all the time.
Summary: 1 Stars
so the american embassy in romania is like this, heh? a cia computer hacker, my god, could you believe it's real? the romanian politi are just a bunch of thugs, heh? one of the romanian detectives was shot in the chest could still stand up like nothing happened, walked around and used cell phone, and the next moment when he talked to the rissian mafia, his shirt and suit were all magically dry-cleaned, heh? my god, this is one of the worst screenplays i've ever seen. seagal was trying to make this movie look a bit more authentic but he obviously knew this screenplay was so ridiculous, there were moments he just teased the dialogue a lot. but at least he played this lousy movie from the very beginning to the end, he did try quite hard to do some one-way fightings, guns were no compete to his hands speed and his 'chi'. if this movie could have a better screenplay and a better director, it should be a quite successful movie, but with this lousy elementary-school-level script and a dumb director, seagal again was wasted for nothing. what a shame.Movie Review: A real Seagal stinker
Summary: 1 Stars
From the amateurish opening scene car chase, with Seagal's chubby mug filling the entire screen (and the green screen backgrounds from the car) to the really hokey ending - ugh!
The budget was very low, as the special effects of Seagal shooting down a helicopter gunship with his .45 really sucked And the insipid Kung-fooey school of students. Just can't say enough for this bad movie.
I think he has a double standing in some scenes showing him in the shadows or of his back (as in Belly Of The Beast) because he's really put on some oink-oink pounds. And he has terrible pancake make-up applied to his aging mug. Plus, his over-dyed black hair with out-of-style ponytail makes him look like a clown.