SnoopyStyle
DEA agent John Hatcher (Steven Seagal) returns from Colombia after the death of his partner. He goes home to his sister's family in Chicago. He and army buddy Max (Keith David) have a drink and he reluctantly gets in the middle of a shootout with the drug gang Jamaican Posse. The leader of the gang is Screwface (Basil Wallace). John arrests one of Screwface's man and his sister's house is shot up. His niece Tracey (Danielle Harris) is left in critical condition.It's one of Seagal's better efforts for what that's worth. He kicks some bad guys and shoots up a storm. The bad guys use Jamaican voodoo but that adds to the atmosphere. None of it should be taken seriously. It's straight forward and without any apologies.
KineticSeoul
This is the first Steven Seagal movie I seen. So I wasn't familiar with his films but from what I know, he usually plays a arrogant and cocky character that goes after the bad guys without hardly ever getting hurt or breaking a sweat. So in another words it sounded like some absurd and ridiculous action movie with bunch of kung-fu thrown in and to some degree that is exactly what this movie is. In this Steven Seagal's character is a retired DEA after on a the line of duty things don't go according to plan. And now he is going after Jamaican drug dealers with dreadlocks and is in some sort of cult with a couple of friends after they mess with his loved ones. Yeah the plot is very very narrow and the villains are comical and not in a good way either. After just few minutes in the movie just seemed to drag, constantly putting excuse to put some action sequences in which this has a lot of. Steven Seagal beats people up while saying catch phrases, some works some just don't. Just about everything about this movie is generic and predictable and almost nothing is all that engaging. The fight sequences with Seagal using judo or aikido was sort of cool though and watchable thus I give this movie a 4.5 even if the acting is atrocious thus I am being generous. I will just say this movie didn't make me a fan of his.4.5/10
elshikh4
We all know that it is B grade B movie. The "afternoon" or "rainy night" kind of time filler. So I won't get harsh, though with the presence of Steven Seagal it's impossible not to ! After Seagal's first movie (Above the Law – 1988), some critic said about the new rising star "He's a fine mix of John Wayne, Bruce Lee and Clint Eastwood". How deceived that miserable critic was ! In fact Seagal is nothing but another Charles Bronson yet with marital arts experience. Observe well Seagal's so-called acting to discover easily that he must have watched Bronson's Death Wish movies for countless times !The conflict this round is some tough cop fighting some voodoo drug dealers. The friction of the two's worlds was done absurdly. That cop's violence is too much; he walks like a deadly epidemic that leaves no wounded guys, only corpses. The attack at the gang's headquarters reminded me of (Commando), 5 years earlier. However the real reason of bothering was Seagal himself. It's not about the eternal truth that he doesn't smile, or doesn't know the way to. It's about another thing. They gave him a little dialog, which is a good idea, till you know that it was filled with many one-liners. OK, how they got the nerve ?! That guy is the worst of the worst at delivering any one-liner ! Watch him saying "They were both wrong" or "I hope they weren't triplets"; if Tom from Tom and Jerry said these lines, he would be less awful and more cool than Mr. Steven-The Whispering Zombie-Seagal !The action is average, but it works. In movies of that kind don't ask much, just watch the fights. In general I liked 2 things, one of them is Seagal's black car; it was a stunner for every guy back in the 1990s start. And the second is of course the surprise of the evil guy as alive; that trick of having a twin brother was excellent (that fake decapitated head was so real it's freaky too !). Other than that...Seagal's grins could have killed me !P.S : I read that Seagal didn't want to make this movie, hating it openly from day one till now, so how come he produced it ?!
jonathanruano
"Marked for Death" follows a predictable formula that is really based on U.S. relations with Germany and Japan just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. At first our hero John Hatcher (Steven Seagal) wants to retire from the narcotics division in law enforcement and ignore the drug dealing (a metaphor for foreign wars) that is going on around him. Then after trying to live peacefully in isolation, Hatcher is pulled back into his profession when Jamaican drug dealers, led by Screwface (Basil Wallace), fire machine guns at his sister's home and wound his niece. Hatcher realizes that he cannot isolate himself from the evil forces anymore and so he confronts them in a good vs. evil struggle in which he eventually emerges triumphant.With this predictable plot, only great dialogue, great villains and a great Seagal performance can save this movie. Steven Seagal has a great screen presence, but the screenplay only has him perform standard car chases and routine martial arts sequences in which he breaks arms, legs and other body parts. But what I find ridiculous about this film are the villains. Screwface and his cohorts come across as very silly performing all of their voodoo magic. I don't know if there are Jamaicans who are so stupid as to think there is anything to voodooism, but it is hard to believe based on this film. Moreover, the voodooism seems all the more ridiculous considering the dreary atmospheric soundtrack in the background. Somebody at the screenplay or production level was way off in introducing voodoo rituals in order to spice up the plot. It actually made the film boring because the voodooism was not relevant to the plot and the villains were reduced to stock characters that fit the image of the "primitive savage" as imagined by European colonialists. The Jamaican cop Charles (Tom Wright) in the film and the explanation half way into the movie that not all Jamaicans sell drugs came across as a pathetic attempt at hedging by the filmmakers who were worried about their film coming across as anti-Jamaican.
AD
