Paul Andrews Driven to Kill starts in California as ex-Russian mobster Ruslan (Steven Seagal) now works as a crime novelist, he gets a phone call from his ex-wife Catherine (Inna Korobkina) who informs him that their daughter Lanie (Laura Mennell) is engaged to be married & invites him to the wedding in New York. Ruslan is straight out there on the next plane, Ruslan meets his perspective son-in-law Stephen Abramov (Dmitry Chepovetsky) who happens to be the son of powerful Russian mobster Mikhail (Igor Jijikine). On the day of the wedding both Catherine & Lanie are attacked, Catherine is murdered & Lanie is left in a coma although the police & Ruslan feel it is better if it is reported she was also killed while they hunt for those responsible. The police have to go through official channels while Ruslan doesn't, Ruslan buy's himself a gun & sets about finding those responsible & dishing out some revenge...Also known under the title Ruslan (the version I saw had this title but the title Ruslan doesn't sound very exciting or action orientated unlike Driven to Kill) this American & Canadian co-production was directed by Jeff King & is yet another straight to video action thriller starring the prolific (if nothing else) Steven Seagal who seems to churn these things out by the dozen these days, while not as bad as some of his recent output Diven to Kill is hardly any sort of classic & just isn't that good. The script is your average uninspired stuff, you know the sort of thing where some hard as nails guy is wronged in some personal way & sets out to bash some heads in & break some arms in pursuit of revenge. The script is both lazy & poorly written, there are many questions that I felt were left unanswered & character motivation was left vague to say the least. Why did Stephen's father have Catherine & Lanie killed? Why did the killers take the wedding ring & then pawn it? Why were they described as bait? Why did those Doctor's barricade themselves in that room despite the fire alarm going off? Would a fire alarm going off not indicate that maybe the building was on fire & that hiding in a room in a building that might be on fire might not be a good idea? When Mikhail & his people at the end storm the hospital & start killing people would he not be seen on CCTV? Would he not then expose himself as killer? I don't understand how Mikhail thinks he will get away with going into a public place like a hospital & start killing Doctor's & patients & get away with it. The ending where Seagal talks to his comatose daughter Lanie for the first time during the entire film who then suddenly wakes up is bordering on the hilarious & is impossible to take seriously. There are other baffling aspects to the plot but I'm running out of space. At almost 100 minutes Driven to Kill has a decent enough pace but is maybe a little too long, the final twenty minutes or so is a shoot-out set inside a hospital that feels like a low budget homage to Hard Boiled (1992) although comes nowhere close in terms of excitement. The character's are pretty poor, the dialogue is inane & it's only the frequent fights & shoot-outs that save Driven to Kill from scoring a lowly one star out of ten.Surprisingly director King shuns the recent straight to video action film trend of shaky hand held camera-work & machine gun editing (blink & you'll miss it!) as the action scenes in Driven to Kill remain fairly coherent & you can generally tell what's going on & who's shooting who which helps, a little. The usual Seagal is on show here as he sadistically beats & kills his way through armies of bad guy's without getting hit or shot himself, arms are broken, necks are stabbed, guns are shoved into people's eyes & there's a fair amount of violence & blood on show. There's a also a scene set inside a strip club as Seagal gets a private lap dance so there's a bit of female nudity here as well. Although competently made nothing stands out that much, the colours are dull & the action a bit static at times.With a supposed budget of about $10,000,000 this was filmed in British Columbia in Canada. One major problem about Driven to Kill is Seagal's Russian accent which is terrible & seems to come & go at regular intervals, Seagal is also still far too fat & looks out of shape. In fact a lot of the thick Russian accents are awful & it's sometimes hard to understand what's being said.Driven to Kill is strictly average Seagal, it's poorly written, unimaginative action thriller fare with his usual sadistic violence thrown in. Not Seagal's worst but far from his best.

Wizard-8 Recently, I was reading a review of another Steven Seagal movie, and in it the reviewer commented to the effect that it was just the same as his other movies. Watching "Driven To Kill", I got the same feeling. Oh sure, there are a few minor changes, like making Seagal a Russian (which leads to some unintentional hilarity, hearing Seagal's wheezy and pause-filled whisper doing a bogus accent.) But with the rest of the movie, you will see nothing new. Seagal is still fat, and he continues to wear heavy coats to mask his weight, and is mostly filmed from the chest up. (There is a very funny moment when we see him run for several seconds - he can barely do it.) It should probably come as no surprise that there aren't that many martial arts moments here compared to his early films, and they are rapidly edited and filled with shots of what appear to be doubles doing his work. The gun battle scenes are also equally hard to make out as well. The general production values (cinematography, set decoration, etc.) are passable, and that's about all that's positive I can say about this.

jonathanruano Some revenge movies work, such as Bergman's "The Virgin Spring," but "Driven to Kill" does not because the screenplay was simply not ready. The beginning of the film was OK. Our hero Ruslan Drachev (Steven Seagal) is introduced to us as Russian mobster who, even in his advanced age, can attract women with his bad boy image. Seagal does not quite get the Russian accent right and his personality is not as fresh and vibrant as the Russian mobsters in Eastern Promises. But no matter. I also did not mind the fact that it was easy to predict what was going to happen at the wedding. When the title of the movie is "Driven to Kill," we can assume that Ruslan is in for a shock. But when the revenge sequence starts, the film falls apart. To begin with, Steven Seagal's character seemed too cool and composed to be "driven to kill." He did not even appear shocked and overwhelmed with grief after seeing his dead family. Dmitri Chepovetsky as the fiancé, Stepan, did a better job. This was a big problem, because "Driven to Kill" lacked that electricity one feels when you truly believe that the hero desires revenge. But the main problem was the plot itself. There was nothing new, there was no cleverness or wit. The villain was revealed too early on and his motivations for acting in the way he did were utterly absurd. Ruslan also did not want Stepan to follow in his mobster footsteps, which begs the question of why he brought him along for the killing spree in the first place. Finally, far too much film was devoted to Seagal's martial arts skills rather than to plot and character development (perhaps because there was nothing to develop!); and while the fight sequences were interesting on the first two or three occasions, they grew tiresome as the film dragged on. The gun fights were not interesting either and I rather suspect that the shocking scene where the mob boss shoots off his underling's ear was put in there to jolt the audience in order to hold onto their attention. There were some laughs from this movie, such as when Detective Lavastic (Zak Santiago) tried to explain why Ruslan's decision to go on a killing spree was wholly justified, because after all who in law enforcement would ever praise a civilian for going on a killing spree that wipes out 20+ people? But I do not think that scene was meant to be funny, because if the film-makers were that smart, they would have rewritten the entire script. This film also stars Igor Jijikine who is pretty convincing as the villain Mikhail, but unfortunately he is not given any good material to work with. The thugs also OK, except they are just thugs with small brains who, judging from their fighting skills, are setting themselves to go down hard. So they are not too interesting to watch either.

gangstahippie Driven to Kill(aka Ruslan) is the latest Steven Seagal film.Like all his other films for the past 7 years, this is once again a straight to DVD feature.Now by hearing this, you would not expect much after seeing that the majority of the newer Seagal films suck.However there are a few exceptions such as "Urban Justice", "Pistol Whipped" and this film, which in my opinion is not only his best straight to DVD film, but it ranks up there with his classics from the 90's.The acting is not all that great, and I did not find Seagal to be that bad of an actor back in his "Under Siege" days.Here, he sports a semi-Russian accent which is not very convincing.The acting from the others, especially the Russian mobster is fairly good though.The film is about a retired Russian mobster, who is now a novelist.After his wife is killed and his daughter is injured in an assassination of sorts, Seagal reverts back to his old ways and tries to find out who did this.The plot may not be the best but the most important thing about Seagal films is the action! In this category, it does not disappoint.I'm actually surprised it was Rated 14A in Canada because this is easily one of Seagal's bloodiest films.We also see Seagal use aikido again, as in we see him breaking people bones! Any fan of Seagal should check this movie out!