Howdy boys,
It’s been a while since I wrote anything for The Ain’t It Cool News. But the time has arrived. Once or twice, maybe three or four times a year, however often it is that Steven Seagal comes out with a new straight to video picture, it is my sworn duty to give you boys a holler. As you know I am one of North America’s leading Seagalogists, and I have found that your place is a good forum for sharing my initial findings as the new works are rolled out for study.
The new one coming February 15th is INTO THE SUN, a Yakuza thriller set in Japan, which is often a good place for Yakuza thrillers in my opinion. This is by no means a comeback for Seagal (he’s been here for years, etc.) but it does have a couple things that make it rise above the recent batch of OUT OF REACH, OUT FOR A KILL, and THE FOREIGNER (also BELLY OF THE BEAST but I won’t lump that in since it’s probaly the craziest and most entertaining of them):
- Production value. It feels more like a real movie. The opening scene alone has five elephants and a helicopter. Just 3 elephants probaly cost more than that whole pen pal movie OUT OF REACH. It’s filmed on location in Japan and Thailand and some of it even looks good. There’s one real good shot of Seagal walking through a pachinko parlor and also a real artful overhead shot of a sword fight.
- Decent cast. Most of them speak horrible English, but they’re better than the euro-trash cheeseballs he’s been fighting in some of the recent ones. Ken Lo is one of the bad guys. William Atherton is in there, for whatever that’s worth. And there’s kind of a Seagal’s Angels thing going on here with a trio of hotties – a young sword fighter that for some reason volunteers to be his “shield,” a CIA/FBI/orsomething covert operative named Jewel, and Seagal’s strip club owner fiancee (more on that later, that’s good). Chiaki “Gogo Yubari” Kuriyama is also in it as the governor’s daughter. Her part is, she is standing on a balcony next to the governor for about 15 seconds. (At least they didn’t put her on the cover.)
- Speaking of which, this is his best cover in years. Okay, so it has nothing to do with the movie at all. There is no scene in the movie where Seagal struts cockily away from a gigantic fiery car explosion with a novelty oversized machine gun strapped to his back. But it’s a nice badass gesture, better than those generic collages with the CIA logos in the background. Good to see some yellow in there, anyway.
- Seagal seems to have his heart in it more. He wrote the story and co-wrote the script (his first story credit since his very first movie, ABOVE THE LAW) and he puts some of his favorite things in there. In the opening scene he blows a big CIA drug smuggler bust to stop a woman from being assaulted, just like in OUT FOR JUSTICE when he blew a bust to stop a pimp from beating a hooker. His character sells Japanese swords (something Vanity Fair says he is actually an expert in), he gets to speak more Japanese than ever before, and he gets in a good swipe at CIA disinformation (another ABOVE THE LAW similarity). There’s even a reference to his daughter, Ayako Fujitani, when he slaughters a roomful of gangsters while they’re watching one of her Gamera movies. And it took me a minute to figure it out but on the end credits, sure enough, that’s Seagal singing! I mean I gotta be honest, there is alot of focus on the Japanese characters, and long stretches that are completely Seagal-less. So he is probaly still only working part time. But at least he seems like he’s trying when he’s on screen, and I didn’t notice any parts dubbed over by other actors.
- More energetic, less gloomy. The director is mink, who if anybody had ever heard of him would be known for his lower case letters and for directing the Busta Rhymes movie FULL CLIP (Check my review here!!!). IMDb says Christian Duguay directed it but what do they know, anyway. Point is, the look and feel are much more involving and professional than, well, mainly the last one.
