porkloin Should really be titled, "Santa Claus and his magic aikido force-field hands."It's amazing to me how many people appear to have at least liked this movie to a point - witness the substantial amount of reviews saying, in effect, "Not bad for a Seagal movie," or, "Back to the Seagal we know...."Wow - I can see nothing but an embarrasment. A horribly cringe-worthy "love scene." Lame plot beyond the bounds of silliness, and a huge. bloated Seagal faking his way through what doesn't really qualify even for "B-movie" status.

Leofwine_draca Forget the likes of THE FOREIGNER or even OUT FOR A KILL, as this, Seagal's latest offering, is a cut above the rest. Director Siu-Tung Ching takes the reins and delivers a surprisingly stylish, OTT, action-packed DTV venture that is sure to please any fan of Seagal's, looking for one more decent movie to watch. The Chinese influence is clear in that there is plenty of wirework in the martial arts sequences, but thankfully the action is generally slick, fast and exciting. My only complaint is that they played a pop song over one of the most potentially exciting showdowns – what the hell were they thinking?! The plot is slimfast and slightly reminiscent of COMMANDO: Seagal's daughter is kidnapped by a mock Al-Qaeda sect and he has 76 hours to rescue her. The setting is Thailand, with pretty good use of location photography, and there are lots of peripheral characters milling around. Seagal even has a young lover and a romantic interlude in a bed, you have to wonder if he wrote her into the script himself as a reward for his chastity in his last three or four movies. Anyway, back to the action, and we have lots of bone-breaking, high-kicking fun, including attacks by she-males, sword-wielding nutters, common thugs and an arrow-shooting general in the Thai army who seems incredibly fit. There are huge shoot-outs with hundreds of bullets flying and Seagal's pistol has about 200 bullets in it, amazing stuff.Seagal is looking older every day, and wider. Yet he's more active here than in previous outings and kicks ass in quite a few scenes. There are other hilarious times when he jumps up, changes body shape and does a flying spin-kick on somebody, hmm, can you say body double? Also hilarious are the 'stunts' "performed" by Seagal, such as diving through a wall shooting, or rolling on a rail cart and shooting. Astonishingly, his voice is dubbed too in some moments. Is there anything else this man can surprise us with? Seagal's ranged support includes Rue from STREET FIGHTER (Byron Mann) as a partner who shoots an innocent woman and becomes a monk, and Ash from CASUALTY(Patrick Robinson), pretending to be an American CIA agent. Tom Wu is underused but imposing as a villain. Not a lot else to say, except I haven't seen a film this much fun in a film since it was directed by Mark Lester. Oh, and keep an eye out for the voodoo subplot, great stuff, harks back to the fun of MARKED FOR DEATH.

DigitalRevenantX7 Jake Hopper is a former CIA agent now working as a high-tech thief. His daughter Jessica & her friends are kidnapped by the Abu Karaf, an Islamic extremist group while on holiday in Thailand. Jake returns to the country & asks his old friend Sunti for help. Sunti, now a monk in order to atone for his past where he accidentally killed a woman in a shootout, joins Hopper in pursuing the Abu Karaf. But they soon realise that the group are innocent & are being framed for this by a Thai general who is also a devil worshipper & who plans to get the CIA to eliminate the Abu Karaf in order to stamp out his opposition. Jake & Sunti have less than 72 hours to free the kidnapped & stop the CIA from making a costly mistake.After the utterly pathetic Out for a Kill, Steven Seagal tried a slight change of tack & signed on to make Belly of the Beast shortly after completing work on the previous film. This time, the director is Ching Siu Tung & has actor Tom Wu, who starred in Out for a Kill as a Chinese mobster, playing another villain.Belly of the Beast has been somewhat savaged by the same crowd of critics who saw Out for a Kill, dismissing Belly as more of the same. I, however, tend to disagree. Belly is not a particularly great film, but it is light years ahead of Out for a Kill due to having a better written script & some good action scenes. The acting is also better & there is plenty of dark humour thrown in for good measure. This time, Seagal faces off against a corrupt Thai general & his dark master, as well as a former friend & a ladyboy assassin (in case you don't know what ladyboys are, they are a unique breed of gay men who pose as women until they get their gender reassignment surgery). Seagal also has plenty of dark one-liners to throw in, making the film a laugh riot in terms of enjoyment. The action scenes tend to go to the absurd but are still enjoyable, while the climax, placing Seagal up against Tom Wu's corrupt general in a fight that is assisted by chanting monks fighting the evil priest.The acting is better than usual. Seagal has some issues with his dialogue, with some lines coming out in a slightly different accent, but acquits himself well. Byron Mann makes a good backup & Tom Wu is superbly sinister as the evil general.

Maniac This is just one of those films where you cry out 'Please let it end!'. I mean, everything about the movie was absolutely abysmal. But let me start from the top.Plot. There was none. The kidnapping of Jake Hopper's daughter is just another lame excuse for Steven Seagal to go on another of his ass-kicking adventures. Apart from that the 'plot' is completely predictable with Jake wreaking havoc in Thailand whilst leaving hundreds, if not thousands, of enemy corpses sprawled in a bloody trail throughout the film.The most awful aspect of this film, however, is Steven Seagal himself. His lack of acting talent and facial expressions, of which he has just one, never ceases to amaze me. In this film he has made an extra effort to be exceptionally bad, especially in his action scenes, during which he unleashes his super-powers which involve a sophisticated cat fight technique (which I assume is meant to be kung-fu), a power punch (specifically designed to send helpless enemies flying 20 feet across the room) and deadly lightning speed accuracy which his favourite pistol which seems to have an immaculately large clip size considering the number of negligent enemies he managed to shoot without having to reload it at any time during the film. The only thing that Steven Seagal lacks, in fact, is a change of clothes, as the only clothing we see him wear is his trusty brown leather shoes, jeans and sensei top combo, which remains spotless despite the blood spewing out from dying enemies.Another factor is the special effects of the film, which is limited to spilled ketchup leaking out in a tap-like fashion to represent blood and Steven Seagal jumping through paper thin walls, one of which was the iron side panelling of a train. The rest of the action in the film is left up to a group of actors just as awful as Steven himself, but with added stupidity. I could bet that a five year old playing Cowboys and Indians in his back yard could make a better impression of dying compared to that in the film. The hordes of enemies have no organisation whatsoever and more or less run at machine gun fire head on, and are surprised to be cut down. And then, just as the final nail in the coffin, we witness the blatantly predictable and cheesy death of Jake's best friend Sunti, of which no-one can realise that he was even hurt until before he was dead.The movie is also not without its astonishing selection of completely random scenes that leave you wondering 'why?'. Most notable of these is the scene where a girl walks in front of Jake's car causing him to stop. She starts walking away and Jake instinctively follows her into a random house (I mean, why wouldn't you?). Here the girl removes her top and pours water over her bare chest to reveal her magical water tattoo consisting of five or so incomprehensible characters which Jake seems to understand. This is clearly just a poor excuse at a topless scene for the film, which has absolutely no relevance whatsoever. Another similar event is the introduction of magic and voodoo at the end of the film, which has no impact on the action scene, but succeeds solely in making the film just that extra bit more unbearable to watch.Seriously, for the love of God, don't watch this film unless you are strapped down to a chair with your eyes forced open. For a proper gun and kung fu action film just pop down to your local DVD rental and get a classic Jackie Chan movie, and save yourself an hour and a half of your life, which you will most probably sorely regret once it is this film is over.