shakercoola Seagal takes his skills down to Kentucky. The villains are not so menacing this time round but Kris Kristofferson & Co provide some light relief as they try their best to thwart the immovable force. It's good entertainment value, the stunts are good and there's a bouncy musical score rife with regional sounds which helps it pass the time. It has the eco-friendly trappings that Seagal was fond of by this time in his career and he favours a softer side to his persona here, but all the trademark ruthlessness is there for the fans of the aikido expert. There's good support too from Harry Dean Stanton. The film comes up short on originality and there are the usual multiple attempts of a troop of men trying to do him harm but the fun is always in seeing them lose their footing.

AliasPseudonym This film can be looked at in one of two ways: 1. Sober, or in the unfortunate position of having paid money to watch it.This is indisputably one of the worst films the 90s ever produced (and it had plenty of competition). The acting is beyond wooden, the plot is laughable, and it's no wonder it was nominated for 4 Razzies.2. Very drunk, with equally drunk friends.This is quite possibly the best film in the world. Seagal can do anything - play guitar, fly a plane, save the world, build a porch - but all you will be able to do is stare in fixated disbelief at his hair. Is it real? How does he make it blacker than the 2001 monolith? Is that a ponytail, or a real tail? Do they form some kind of symbiotic crime-fighting partnership that gifts Steven his amazing powers? Overall, 2 stars for making "you can fix my porch" one of my favourite movie euphemisms of all time.

namashi_1 Bad-Ass Steven Seagal Scores, Yet Again, in 'Fire Down Below'. An Ordinary Fare, that works mostly because of Seagal's charisma & honesty.'Fire Down Below' Synopsis: An EPA agent investigates a Kentucky mine and helps locals stand up for their rights.'Fire Down Below' is an ordinary fare. It barely offers anything new! Its a been-there-seen-that, done-with-it stuff, that doesn't even intend to leave its view spell-bound.Jeb Stuart & Phillip Morton's Screenplay is fairly engaging. Félix Enríquez Alcalá's Direction is passable. Cinematography, Editing & Art Design, are decent.Seagal's an Eternal Bad-Ass & 'Fire Down Below' nods that fact right! His charisma & sheer honesty, is the sole reason to view this film. He's the scene-stealer here! On the whole, 'Fire Down Below' will work for Seagal Fans.

The Bronson Fan An EPA agent Jack Taggart (Seagal) is sent to go "undercover" in eastern Kentucky to find out who's responsible for dumping toxins in the ground. Of course in a film like this, there's a friend of Taggart's who's dead, so he has to avenge him. The locals, mostly poor are too afraid to make much noise about who's doing it for fear of reprisals. So Taggart strolls into town and starts doing odd jobs for a church fixing up some local's porches, playing the fiddle and then meets the female lead Sarah Kellogg (Helgenberger). It's just as bad as it sounds. I like to the scene where he grabs the rattle snake lighting quick, I guess I'm not the only one who saw "Hard Target". Pretty soon he gets into fights with the local trash and as always dominates and finds out that Orin Hanner Sr. (Kristofferson) is the guy behind the whole operation. Taggart goes after his spineless son Orin Jr. (Hunt) who runs the business locally and eventually takes it to the top and sends Sr. to the big house in an anti climatic ending.This is one of Seagal's worst movies in my opinion. Even in films where the script was bad, Seagal usually would come through with some good fight sequences but even these are fairly lame in this. More often you are waiting for some action to actually happen, but rather you get to see Seagal glad hand the locals, sing, play guitars, square dance, give an environmental speech and do routine maintenance for the poor. Can you say stupid? The movie is boring and Seagal supposedly undercover stands out like sore thumb with those silly jackets. With the few action scenes you get, all are vastly inferior to those of his past greats and what kicks he had are very poor indeed. By this time in his career he was not in great shape and this may have affected the scenes in general. The best action scene in the film actually involves a big rig chasing him in truck like Red Fox's. To add to this, there is very little killing in this, not only does he push the environmental message, but he kills very few people. I mean come on, the staple of a film like this is the showdown at the end and the bad guy bites it. But no Seagal wounds the guy and arrests him. And don't even get me started with the gas station and the flare, didn't want to hurt any bystanders I suppose. WEAK! There are plenty of fine actors in this film, not really sure why, who also come out looking thoroughly awful. Nobody usually expects fine acting from a film like this, but good actors can only do so much with a terrible script and this proves good actors can be totally wasted on poor writing. Harry Dean Stanton is great and he has such a weak hillbilly role in this, along with Helgenberger. And of course Seagal speaks as always painfully low toned and silly, like he's on depressants. If your fan of The Punisher look for Mark Collie playing a hick who can't fight. Also once Seagal started putting into his films too much of an environmental message the movies began to go down hill. Believe me, I'm for the environment, but it has very little place in these films and Seagal looks like a fool doing speeches on the subject, remember On Deadly Ground? This is worse.There very few bright spots, one being the location shots. OK nice, but I came to see action not Kentucky. For country music fans I would imagine this is a gold mine, with lots of music and stars making appearances in the films. Again, didn't come to see that. With a few one liners that are OK, there is nothing much more to say that is good. Surprisingly this was released in theaters and I can see why it was one of his last. Overall a very poor action film, with no nudity to speak of equals 1 out of 10 stars.