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On Deadly Ground (1994)

Dir: Steven Seagal

Stevie Seagal plays Forrest Taft, an ex-CIA oil fireman (of course!), who takes on a polluting and murderous oil company run by the evil Michael Jennings (Michael Caine), to save the Alaskan wilderness and the cute Eskimos (with Joan Chen being the cutest) by killing a lot of bad people and blowing a lot of shit up….

Oooo boy! Seagal's infamous ego fuelled career (almost) killer has to be seen (and heard) to be believed. That is not to say it does not entertain, or deliver the violent action...it does...but Seagal's ego makes parts of this hard going and many aspects utterly laughable.

And it is Seagal's ego that truly is the problem here (that and his astonishingly unsubtle way of doing things) not so much his message.
The now infamous environmental lecture finale (about 4 minutes long even after studio cutting) actually says many good and valid things and tells many truths, but the shots of Eskimo's nodding in newly enlightened approval and holding little children is ridiculously ham-fisted and simply makes you roll your eyes and resent the cheap manipulation of your emotions he is trying...obviously because he thinks you're a dumb fuck.
And it's also, on a more basic cinematic level, no way to end a movie!
And no, I don't know why Seagal's character was not actually in prison at the end either. When you see how he’s thought of by the authorities and what he’s done, you’ll know what I mean!

For more dumbed-down mysticism check out the hysterical hallucinatory journey his character takes when a wrinkled Eskimo dude taps him on the head with a feather (I kid you not!).
It's hippie film student 101 mystical crap that provides us with nothing more than unintentional laughs. Oh, and some very fine nudity as Stevie the Eskimo Boy sees a totally naked bit of native totty do a table dance for him...because titties are mystical things.

The dialogue (not by Seagal, but obviously approved by him and structured for him) is also inane and the real scene of hysterical infamy has to be when, after smacking a guy to a bloody pulp for gratuitous Eskimo abuse, Seagal calmly looks at the guy's crunched up nose and asks the oaf "What does it take to change the essence of a man"?
To which the knuckle-dragging brute, sniffing back tears of shame, replies..."time"?. Thus becoming a better person thanks to Stevie pulping his face.
This would be awful enough as it was (though damn enjoyable for all the wrong reasons) but that Seagal's line actually comes from an aftershave advert of the time just places that putrid-ass cherry on the top!
The script is also full of people stating just how fantastic, super special and all round amazing Seagal's character is!

The other clunker is Sir Michael of Caine in one of his infamous (hell's teeth son, there sure is a lot of infamy here) 'just pay me a few million and I’ll do any crap you want' roles.
Sporting an American accent (that is awful when used and Cockney when not) and black dyed hair (which changes shade every other scene) he is a pantomime baddie of epic proportions and provides lots of entertainment value.
But it's almost all unintentional (a very funny 'I care about nature' promo ad aside where, when the cameras are off , he declares how much the fucking cute animals stink!) and you do have to wonder why someone who can be so damn good in numerous classic movies, and who is already a multi-millionaire, does this to his reputation.
Irony alert!! At one point Stevie the Seagul is all of a flap and asks Caine "How much money is enough"?
Caine's character does not answer, but the answer is....Caine's fee for taking the role methinks!

BUT, lets us not be all negative here! Stevie still knows how to kick delightfully gratuitous ass! Unlike the tedium of "The Patriot", "On Deadly Ground" delivers quite a lot of action and all of it is stupendously violent and nasty.
People have bloody holes blown in them, old men are tortured by finger smashing and knees in a vice techniques, faces are punched, smashed and kicked in, a few (sadly only a few) bones are snapped and knives get rammed into eye sockets before being smashed on through the back of the head. It’s loud, sadistic, well done and lots of sinful fun!
And a still relatively slim Seagal handles the action (if not the acting) with aplomb. Hell, I guess I just like the big fella!

Then of course we still have to add R. Lee Ermey to the mix as a late in the day mercenary leader with the dumbest bunch of men you could imagine (led by a "gee shucks" Billy Bob Thornton who, while everyone's dying and everything's blowing up around him, makes a speech about how cool and manly having the stock down on his machine makes him feel!), John C. McGinley ("Scrubs") as the most whiny psycho henchman you can think of and good old Mike Starr ("Dumb and Dumber") as that redneck bully who realises all he needs to become a better human being is that precious...."time".

"On Deadly Ground" is a mixture of the bloody awful, the bloody stupid, the bloody insulting and the bloody entertaining.
Definitely check it out...but remember you were warned!