jenswellejus Years ago I liked some of Segals work for the simple action. But, this movie is simply an insult to the intelligence of the viewers. Somebody should have offered some sort of advice to the crew responsible for this. Just about any aspect of this movies is poor. I strongly suggest you skip this one.

MrOllie Watching a Steven Seagal film is a bit like going to eat something you know is not really good for you and has passed it's sell by date, but somehow,you still can't resist taking a bite. I am no expert on the film career of Mr.Seagal, but in everyone of his films that I have seen, he appears to play the same person. In this film Steve is transported to Eastern Europe to take on a Russian Drug Dealer called Dimitri and another gang led by a very unpleasant fellow called Costel. Dimitri is supplying drugs to Costel but it soon develops that these two fall out, with very unpleasant consequences to follow. The job for our hero becomes personal when Steve's partner is killed and the usual gun fights and fist fights ensue. In between all the action there was a tender moment between Steve and his girlfriend, however, as Mr.Seagal is not in the first flush of youth he might well be advised in the future to avoid love scenes with topless young women,as it looks a little unattractive. Born to Raise Hell is basically the usual Steven Seagal movie under another name, but nevertheless, I enjoyed it.

Scarecrow-88 Steven Seagal (who also wrote and helped produce the film) stars as the head of The International Drug Task Force, in Bucharest, Romania, who wants revenge against the thieves who murdered his partner and the man's wife in cold blood. The leader of this group is named Costel, in league with a former member of the Russian Special Forces, Dimitri, using women to mule dope to London, also a sick rapist pig who enjoys invading the homes of the Romanian rich to steal their money and sexually molest the wives of those they steal from. When Costel has a falling out with Dimitri (resulting in the murder of Dimitri's wife), the two will enter a war with Seagal's agent Samuel Axel allowed a chance to exploit this "rift"; Axel will gain an ally in Dimitri who has the kind of connections which enable him to find out the whereabouts of Costel.BORN TO RAISE HELL is yet another low-budget Romanian Seagal flick, with the star going through the motions, a little grumpier than he usually is in these kinds of action junk, at one point cursing out a cop under his command, Steve (D Neil Mark) when an arrest doesn't adhere to the proper procedures. Dan Badarau's Dimitri is a quiet, reserved Russian kingpin who only uses violence when he must, such as silencing a regular customer who blabs to Samuel about his drug trafficking and dealing on the Bucharest streets. Darren Shahlavi, on the other hand, as the hostile Costel, is a depraved, repulsive creep who enjoys raping, dealing, stealing, and killing. Seagal's screenplay is designed to make Costel as disturbed and twisted as possible so when his hero dismantles the heavy at the end, you hate the scumbag so greatly his demise is justified with the proper applause. Zoltan Butuc is Dada, Costel's cruel enforcer who is the triggerman that blew away Dimitri's lady. The movie has all the tired clichés, with drugs the typical excuse for Seagal's above-the-law narcotics officer to bash Costel's men into mush. The sound effects, when Seagal lands his arsenal of blows and martial arts techniques to subdue his opponents, make him sound superhuman. As usual, Seagal hurls men into furniture and glass, with bodies breaking and shattering whatever objects they are thrown into so that he looks like a million dollars. The same editing wizardry is applied so that Seagal appears to be unstoppable, such as when he takes apart a group of Dimitri's men outside a van during a stakeout, or the final hand-to-hand combat with Costel (more like hand-to-face as Costel is essentially a punching bag). Sadly, you can tell that some of Seagal's dubbing is through someone who attempts to impersonate the way he talks—the man can't even bother doing his own dubbing. These movies are just a means for extra income and jokers like me continue to rent this crap.

flakpanther People who are going out of their way to say how bad this movie is, or making sarcastic posts about Seagal being extremely overweight, are missing the point. Yes, Seagal is making a straight to video movie in 2010, it's going to be objectively bad. However, 1: The movie must be judged in the context of his recent output, not compared to a super high-budget picture like Under Siege while Seagal was probably the #2 action star in the world, and 2: the only people who are likely to see this are committed Seagal fans anyway.Contrary to lazy stereotypes, Seagal's recent output (excluding Machete, post-2002's Half Past Dead, which I believe was his last in theater release) has been mixed, leaning towards bad and really bad. Still, there were some standouts in that context (I'm thinking of 2007's Pistol Whipped, but I haven't watched most of his movies since 2002), and to be blunt, a lot of his movies before that weren't really much good either (Glimmer Man in particular was godawful and objectively worse than Born to Raise Hell). Also worth noting is that according to IMDb, this film cost about $10 million while Half Past Dead had a budget of only $13 million, which considering it was filmed in California, as opposed to Romania, is surely not that much more. I'm all for gratuitous ridicule of Seagal, but if you're even considering watching this movie you bear some responsibility for his output.BTRH was actually better than I expected. The "avid fart" camera-work mentioned by an earlier reviewer is in full effect and somewhat annoying but you get used to it pretty quickly. The film quality itself is surprisingly high for a recent Seagal film, it's not overly dark and the visuals are crisp. Seagal is given credit for writing the script and his girlfriend is young enough to be his granddaughter (don't worry, Seagal doesn't take off his shirt), and there are a few cringe-inducing lines praising himself that are showing off Steven Seagal's personal insecurities. Even so, the dialogue is generally not bad (except with his girlfriend, where it's off the charts unbelievably bad). There's even one character who's intentionally funny. The acting in general is also of a quality one would expect from a decent movie, although as an earlier reviewer pointed out, Seagal is hardly acting at all. Indeed, he's the single weakest link in the whole movie; not because he's a terrible actor but because his character was basically unnecessary in the first place. He could have been replaced with anyone or no one. Without spoiling anything, the ending, and Seagal's role in it, is also jaw-droppingly terrible, although since the plot is very uneven throughout this doesn't affect the film as much as it should.All this leads up to an interesting conclusion: Seagal is not making the same movie over and over again, not really. What he (accidentally?) wrote was a movie that could potentially have raised a lot of interesting questions about a visceral response to torture, stereotypes of a Gypsy criminal in Romania (the worst criminal is a Gypsy), and the US's international drug war. Instead he's tried to fit this film, complete by itself, into the straitjacket of a Seagal beatdown film and it's disappointing (to the film's credit, Seagal is not constantly on screen and this allows other characters to develop, though I suspect this was more the result of poor pacing on the writer's part than good writing). What this movie needed most was an editor for the script.As far as Seagal's actual beatdowns, they're fairly good, if a little overly one-sided even for Seagal. Stunt doubles are employed for a lot of neck-down shots of Seagal fight scenes, but that's all the more disappointing because despite Seagal's weight and age, he is also shown to be personally capable of credible aikido moves. Seagal is definitely overweight but not the walking corpse he was in some recent films, so there's that.Finally, there's the matter of language. The film is virtually entirely in English. I have never been to Romania but I'm pretty sure Romanians don't speak English to each other in their own homes. Considering every actor portraying a Romanian was Romanian with one exception, it would have made sense, and added to the believability, if they just spoke Romanian to each other and used subtitles. Seagal (who's spending so much time in that country anyway he might as well learn the language himself) could just have the good fortune of only encountering people who also speak English.BTRH is not a good film, but neither is it a complete crapfest. If you're a fan of Seagal, don't miss it.