TheLittleSongbird
Steven Seagal has done some good, or at least watchable, films. Particularly 'Under Siege'. He has also done a lot of mediocre and less films, indicative of laziness and that Seagal was well past his sell by date, and a good deal of them are even very bad.'Contract to Kill' is one of the very bad ones. Awful even, and for me if ranking Seagal's filmography from best to worst it would be towards the bottom. Did not expect much, but watched it because Seagal has shown signs that he can be halfway decent and as said not all his films are bad. Also do appreciate the action genre and there are good films out there in the genre, classics even. 'Contract to Kill' is far from that, more closer to a waste of time that shows little signs of trying.Seagal himself gives another lazy and wooden performance that shows that he was not interested and wanted to be somewhere else. His reading-from-an-autocue-like and robotic line delivery in particular betrays that. The rest of the cast are just as poor though in all fairness have little to work with.The characters are ones we know very little about and don't care what happens to happen, so unengaging and one-dimensional they are. The dialogue is risible, with a lot of cheesiness, awkwardness and far too much talk delivered with little emotion or momentum and bordering on the near-incomprehensible.Its excessively talky nature affects severely the pacing, which never comes to life. There is no urgency, let alone tension, intrigue or suspense. The action doesn't feature enough in comparison and suffer from pedestrian choreography and bacon-slicer-like editing. The story is by-the-numbers, dull and not always easy to follow.Direction is flat and ill-at ease, while the sound/soundtrack are one-note and obvious as well as poorly recorded and the whole film looks cheap. And it's not just the editing, the slapdash special effects, drab photography and laughably bad green screen (that was too obvious and jarring) are just as bad.Hate to say it, but to me nothing works in 'Contract to Kill' and it is an awful mess in every way. 1/10 Bethany Cox
Michael Ledo
John Harmon (Steven Seagal) former CIA agent who worked for the DEA (not sure how that works or how many pay checks he gets) comes out of retirement to find the location of a meeting between the Sonora Cartel and Islamic terrorist from Yemen (?). The meeting is to smuggle in drugs and maybe a terrorist or two to activate those sleeper cells. Harmon forms a team to go after them which consists of FBI agent Zara Hayek (Jemma Dallender) and drone operator Matthew Sharp (Russell Wong). The meeting is in Istanbul. (Filmed in Romania which looks nothing like Istanbul...just go with it.) This is another goatee film with Seagal spending the bulk of the film sitting in front of a computer or driving a Bitchin' Camaro. He does have a couple of fight scenes which consists mostly of grabbing an arm and twisting it...no leg kicks. The heavy hand-to-hand stuff is done by his partners. Seagal has entered his "work smarter, not harder" phase of his espionage career as he engages in PSYOP and prattles Genghis Khan philosophy.Guide: F-word. Nudity (Jemma Dallender), Implied sex
Uriah43
Concerned about potential collaboration between a ruthless Mexican drug cartel and an Islamic terrorist organization a retired assassin by the name of "John Harmon" (Steven Seagal) is called upon to foment discord between the two groups who are meeting in Istanbul to cement their agreement. He is also given an alternate assignment to take out a specific target responsible for an airplane bombing months earlier. Since both organizations are large and well protected the first thing he does is to assemble a small team which includes a beautiful American agent named "Zara Hayek" (Jemma Dallender) and a former special forces operative with a penchant for electronic devices by the name of "Matthew Sharp" (Russell Wong). Needless to say, although both of them are good with weapons and hand-to-hand fighting, the majority of the killing is left for John who makes it look almost effortless. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this movie had an interesting plot but it suffered from poor editing and bad direction. For starters, there didn't seem to be a smooth transition from one scene to another which gave the film a low-quality and uneven effect. Likewise,there were some scenes which tended to focus on extended fight sequences--and John's martial abilities—even though the events at the time mandated that he finish off his opponent quickly in order to help one of his colleagues in a desperate situation. But then, why make an effort to save your partner right away when you can play cat-and-mouse with a bad guy and demonstrate your superior technique in the process? In short, I believe that with more competent direction this film had the potential to be a much better movie than it turned out to be. However, because the movie lacked that necessary component I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.
lacarcagne
Never have I seen a more disgusting scene than fat old Segal, fully clothed, orange shooting glasses, leather coat and all on top of the lovely Jemma Dallender, mauling her beautiful naked breasts with his chubby hands. I will never watch another one of his movies again. Oh, the rest of the movie was poorly written as well.
AD
