If you're into this kind of thing, it works. If you're looking for a good crime flick, Scorsese it's not.
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When I think of all the great films Warner Bros. have in their library....
To be fair, fans of Steven Seagal consider 1991's "Out for Justice" one of his best films. Unfortunately, that's not saying a lot. I can only guess that WB had such a good response to their high-definition HD-DVD and Blu-ray releases of Seagal's "Under Siege" that it encouraged them to try again. In any case, "Out for Justice" is more of the same: Seagal punching, kicking, shooting, and cracking wise in his typical low-key manner while the bodies and profanities fly in all directions. If you're into this kind of thing, it works. If you're looking for a good crime flick, Scorsese it's not.
Time was, back in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, when people like Seagal, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jackie Chan, Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Big Arnold, and about 800 Bruce Lee clones ruled the action-movie scene. But either they got old or the stuff they were continually doing got old, because the fad seems to have died out. More recently, the Asian martial-arts films have morphed into high-wire spectacles, and most of the old superstars of the genre do their work in TV, in comedy, in direct-to-video releases, or in State office.
Anyway, whether or not you like violent, comic-book type cop stories, Seagal was on top of his game when he made "Out for Justice." Unlike some of his pictures where he was simply out to lunch.
In this one, he plays an Italian-American policeman, Gino Felino, who grew up tough in the streets of Brooklyn. Now that he's an undercover narcotics cop, that comes in handy because he knows everybody, high-lifes and lowlifes alike. And everybody knows him, for good or for bad. Moreover, Gino speaks fluent Italian and Spanish, so he can communicate with every hood in the hood. If only he were better at delivering lines in English.
People know he's got a temper, too, which for a Seagal character is unusual. Gino can't stand injustice; he can't turn his head when he sees something bad happening. For instance, the movie isn't three minutes old before Gino sees a miscreant pimp roughing up a prostitute, and Gino throws him through a car window. Twice. It's that kind of picture. Oh, and Gino loves children and puppies. How can you knock that?
So, according to formula you've got to have a really, really bad guy for Seagal's character to go after, right? And in this case it's a childhood friend (acquaintance, actually, or schoolmate), Richie Madano, a drug-addled psychopath played by William Forsythe. How bad is Richie? He murders Gino's best friend, a fellow cop, in front of the cop's wife and children. Then he spits on the corpse and shoots him again for good measure. I mean, that's bad. I half expected him to kill the kids next, but he doesn't. Instead, just to be sure we get the idea, not a moment later Richie shoots a woman in the head and blows her brains out for asking him to move his car. Talk about road rage.
So Gino goes after the guy with a vengeance, making "Out for Justice" not so much a picture about law and order as it is "Out for Revenge." What's more, Gino's superior officer, Captain Ronnie Donziger (Jerry Orbach), encourages him to chase down the cretin. Poor Orbach, by the way, gets the thankless job of simply looking grim all movie long and saying about two words.
From this point on, the film is a relentless chase all over town, with Gino thrashing one thug after another trying to squeeze information out of them. It's not a pretty sight, unless you're into pure violence, which is almost all the movie has to offer. I say "almost" because director John Flynn ("Lock Up," "Best Seller") does try to inject a little humor into the proceedings, as well as a little pre-Tarantino weirdness (I liked a group of hoodlums talking about a mouse and Gino himself talking about a body in the back of a car). But Scorsese had already done these things in "Mean Streets" and "Goodfellas," so it's not as if it's entirely original. There are also a few moments where the director lets Gino breathe and reveal a few character details, mostly via his conversations with his wife Vicky and young son (Jo Champa and Julius Nasso, Jr.).
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[release]21431[/release]