The article mentions that the deal includes theatrical rights, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Maybe somebody else’s breath. We’re talking two DTV stars, a DTV director and a company that has only done very limited theatrical releases.

The director is Keoni Waxman, one of modern Seagal’s primary directors who’s done THE KEEPER, A DANGEROUS MAN and several episodes of True Justice. He also did HUNT TO KILL which is a decent Stone Cold vehicle (but not as good as DAMAGE).

I also want to reiterate that the movie is called MAXIMUM CONVICTION. How is that not already a DTV movie? Or a guy’s name.

thanks to buffywrestling for calling my attention to this story

Also gone will be Seagal’s New Orleans accent and ebonics. But we’ll have a whole new and culturally explosive form of racial discomfort if Seagal runs into any illegal immigrants, or especially if anybody falsely accuses somebody of being an illegal immigrant. They have that controversial law there, and it will be Seagal’s job to enforce it. Oh shit.

I wasn’t expecting another season and I kind of thought that was for the best. I was still enjoying the show, but it had pretty much done what it was gonna do, and seemed to have informed his movies a little bit in the case of BORN TO RAISE HELL. But since the new season will have this change in setting (like going from aircraft carrier to train) it actually might be worth doing. I just hope he doesn’t turn Chuck Norris on us and get into the anti-immigrant paranoia.

But I don’t think he will. Seagal always tries to be understanding and empathetic, he loves sharing between cultures, he especially loves unnecessarily busting out the correct Spanish pronunciations, and hasn’t had the kind of traumatic run-ins with immigrants that Norris has.

I would like to correct one error in the article. It says, “Last year, Seagal learned nobody is above the law when he was accused of sex trafficking by a personal assistant.” Obviously this is incorrect because Seagal already knew that nobody was above the law. EW is repeating a common misconception, that Seagal’s character of Nico Toscani was meant to be “above the law” himself. Those of us familiar with the movie of course remember that in fact he’s the one arguing all along that nobody is above the law.

To be fair that is a frequent mistake, like people calling the monster “Frankenstein” instead of the doctor. Still, let’s get some fact-checking here, journalists.

While BORN TO RAISE HELL lacks the toughness and entertainment value of URBAN JUSTICE and PISTOL WHIPPED, it’s a little more memorable than most of the recent Seagal pictures, because he seems to care a little more. Admittedly there are some awkward voiceovers (I’m torn on whether it’s dubbed by a double or if it’s his own voice sped up to sound ridiculous), some of the dreaded avid farts and a scene where they use 6 cuts just showing a dude walking 10 feet from his car to talk to a guy. On the other hand Seagal is the sole credited writer and the movie definitely incorporates his recent hobby of taking part in drug raids and some of his beloved themes of brotherhood and redemption and what not.

Alot of the best stuff is the little details in the police work. These IDTF drug raids seem a little crazier than the ones in Jefferson Parish (for example one guy has a motorcycle in his living room and tries to drive off) and incorporate the classic Seagalogical motif of a guy screaming about his pain (”MAAAN that hurts!”). But Seagal definitely seems to use what he’s learned on the force and seems very comfortable yelling “Hands hands hands hands hands!” to a guy so he doesn’t have to shoot him.

Seagal’s character is constantly lecturing a new officer for his amateurish procedure. He’s the old vet and the hardass. I love the disgust in his voice when the other guy hits a junkie in the headquarters. “Why you hit ‘im whi– You’re not supposed to hit somebody while I’m holding ‘im, man!”

But despite being some kind of superior officer in this agency he doesn’t get his own office, he just has a desk kind of in the corner. It figures it would be something like that.

My favorite scene is when Seagal and partners are in a surveillance van and the guys they’re spying on spot them and come over and knock on the van. Seagal decides to take his lumps, by which I mean when he gets out they try to attack him and he beats the shit out of them, even kicking one of them through a park bench. And those things are usually well built.

The bad guys do their own form of raids, but they’re home invasions. They’re led by a guy named Costello, who it’s said is a Gypsy. He offends a Russian drug trafficker because instead of being a professional he’s a sicko that goes around raping and mutilating for fun.

Seagal ends up questioning the aforementioned Russian gangster, whose name is (this will surprise you) Dmitri. This is a very high ranking guy who lives in a mansion and his son wants to play chess with him in the park, but he won’t let him because he plays chess in the park as a way of meeting with all the crooks that need to come talk to him. When Seagal gets him in the back of a police car he decides to bash his own head into the window to make it seem like they beat him.

Not a good guy, right? But the important exchange in this scene is when Dmitri says “You should be chasing terrorists in Afghanistan, not me.” And Seagal says self righteously, “I’ve already done that, now I’m over here having fun.” I honestly didn’t see this coming, but this is a bonding moment. Dmitri is ex-Russian Special Forces, he’s got grey hair and looks a little like Brando. They have more in common than they think. Probly both fought similar people in different conflicts in Afghanistan. And they both have problems with Costello, who has a bunch of super model looking gals (some of them fire breathing artists) who cook and smuggle drugs as well as perform assassinations for him. Apparently Costello’s the one who killed Seagal’s partner, now he kills Dmitri’s wife so the American and the Russian form an alliance to take the motherfucker out.

Seagal’s character has a young wife of his own. He’s having trouble at home because she thinks he spends too much time away from home being a supercop. My favorite part of this girl-trouble subplot is when he says sincerely, “I didn’t mean to make a scene last night, I apologize,” and he’s referring to beating up some guys who attacked him in a restaurant.

There are not really the amount of action scenes we used to get in the old days, but there are at least some good parts. A highlight is when Seagal blasts holes in a dotted line on either side of a door so he can kick out a whole section of wall like he’s punching out a perforated coupon. He describes Costello as “not a magician, not a commando, not a soldier, not Jesus, just a fuckin Gypsy,” which is good because he’s able to beat the shit out of him without getting much of a fight back or any walking on water or forgiving people’s sins or pulling scarves out of his sleeves. I’m not sure why the characters in this movie are prejudiced toward Gypsies, by the way. That’s a little odd.

In the end (SPOILER) Seagal goes to meet Dmitri at the chess spot in the park. He tells him he’s sorry for his loss and gives him plane tickets out of the country saying, “This was a small gesture of respect.”

This is one of the things I like about Seagal. Sometimes he wants to impale the bad guy, sometimes he wants to help him escape. He’s always been fascinated with gangsters and lately with the Russian ones. In this movie the cop recognizes a sense of honor in the gangster and respects him for it. It’s a John Woo type theme but it also fits with the Seagalogy, going back to the famous “I need time to change” scene in ON DEADLY GROUND and more recently to STEVEN SEAGAL: LAWMAN where he often feels sorry for the criminals he busts and says he wants to get them help.

I’m not clear why he’s Born To Raise Hell, though. That doesn’t seem like an accurate description of his destiny or behavior. I suppose he could be Liable To Cause a Ruckus, but I wouldn’t go much further than that.

BORN TO RAISE HELL is the directorial debut of Lauro Chartrand, a Seattle-born stuntman, fight coordinator and director of two episodes of Seagal’s upcoming show Southern Justice (or whatever it ends up being called). It has no release date in the U.S., but came out for Region 2 in October.

This episode opens in the SUV with Colonel Fortunato getting a phone call. “Is that the narc call we’ve been expecting?” Seagal asks/expositions. They go to back up narcotics in stopping a vehicle they suspect of transporting large quantities of the wicked substances. As they watch the stop go down Seagal observes, “That’s strange, man. They got two women in the vehicle.”

It gets stranger, Chief. As the dope dog sniffs around you notice they got a baby in the car too. “Just ain’t right” Seagal says. This theme goes back to the previous episode, Seagal’s indignation at people putting children at risk by having them around criminal activity.

It turns out it’s just weed, but it’s huge bricks with the weight already Sharpied on them. They use Fortunato’s phone to add it up and if the measurements are correct (which I bet they are, if you’re responsible enough to label each package I’m sure you’re gonna get it right) it’s just under 100 pounds.

There’s a young dude who takes responsibility for the whole thing. The girl is his sister and he claims she didn’t know the drugs were in the car. “I fucked up, man,” he says. But his admission doesn’t warm Seagal to him, he’s fuckin pissed that this guy got his sister and baby niece involved in a major crime. He actually tells him “I don’t give a fuck about you,” a rare abandonment of the I Need Time To Change principles.

At the end of the scene we found out that the sister was not charged, but their mother was, which I didn’t understand.

Back at Steven’s house we see him living an idealized New Orleans life, playing guitar on the porch, and the magic of editing (I think) implies that he’s looking out on a lake with an alligator in it. He tells Elle that he was invited to be grand marshal in the Krewe of Alla Mardis Gras parade. Don’t worry, it’s not one of those titties and Russian sex slaves kind of deals, this is the one in Jefferson Parish that’s for families and bead-haters. There’s a flashback to the first season children’s hospital episode as Seagal says he wants to bring some of the sick children to enjoy the parade with him. (They’re gonna be bummed when they find out which one it is, though.)

Friday night the Squad gets briefed for a “Narc Raid,” where once again we find a crying baby. There’s also a mom in the house who’s “very ill” and the daughter doesn’t want her to have a heart attack from all this commotion. The suspect is the man of the house, and the Squad lecture him about having all this weed around a baby. He says he locks it up, I guess believing that they’re worried his baby is gonna eat the weed or something. But they point out having that around could cause a break-in or something where the baby could get hurt. (I’d be more worried about Nic Cage’s BAD LIEUTENANT character busting in and shooting the baby.)

The dude says he has no choice, he has to sell weed because he lost his job and he has to support his family. Larry Dyess says, “You ain’t gettin no father of the year award for this, all right?”

Man, Larry gets all the best lines. That’s not as good as that one about the coconut, but it’s good. Seagal gets to lecture the guy though. He says “Well, if you got kids, what the fuck is wrong with you, man?” and “Get a new life, bro” and “To me it’s unconscionable.” Good word, could’ve been the episode title too. Or a movie where he plays the bad guy: STEVEN SEAGAL IS… UNCONSCIONABLE.

Besides addressing the children-in-danger theme this case is also notable for having a part where Seagal pulls out a big knife to flip over a bag of weed.

Their next call involves a “suspicious character slingin drugs in this area.” Seagal seems to kind of respect the operation around here, complimenting their “very, very good lookout system.” They find a bunch of young black men hanging around smoking in a parking lot and as they frisk and condescendingly question them one of the dudes says, “Steven Seagal, huh? When all this is over y’all don’t mind if I get his autograph, right?”

The sad thing about this scene is that it does turn out that these guys are totally innocent, and they’re completely blase about it. I mean, lately I been reading alot of people whine about having to get a pat down and (for god’s sake) having to briefly turn off their silly electronical doodads just for the mere right of being protected from terrorism and plane crashes when they fly on an airplane. Like, “This is America, I am white, and have never attended a rap concert before, how dare you give me a light pat down just because it is your job and responsibility to protect me and my fellow travellers!” Meanwhile here are some black youths not asking to be involved in air transport who have to get a much more invasive search and interrogation because they were in a parking lot. And they don’t seem offended at all.

But this leads to a historic LAWMAN moment, the first time when the starstruck individual demonstrates legitimate Seagalogical knowledge. Usually it’s “my auntie loves your movies!” or “my wife loves you!” or a sense that they sort of remember seeing his movies years ago. This guy not only starts listing which ones he owns, but he goes straight to the DTV Era. “I got BELLY OF THE BEAST, I got TICKER, uh, INTO THE SUN…”

Larry (only familiar with the Golden through Silver eras, I’ve noticed) says, “What about the classics? What about UNDER SIEGE?”

The guy says, “UNDER SIEGE, I got ABOVE THE LAW…”

“OUT FOR JUSTICE?”

“HARD TO KILL… I got alla that, man.”

Did you see that, though? He started with obscurities. One of the best and craziest of the DTV Era, then one of the shoddiest ones. And he ends with all the best of the filmography. He’s well-rounded.

There also turns out to be a mom with a young girl there, a toddler. She holds the girl up to see Seagal and says it’s the man from that movie EXIT WOUNDS. On one hand I’m kinda concerned if this little girl really is familiar with EXIT WOUNDS, on the other hand it’s only a movie. We know letting her watch Seagal have a blade fight with MJW is better than having her in the car during drug runs.

(And by the way if you’re thinking Seagal should do a TSA reality show in order to make the pat downs go over better with the public I’m sure they’ve considered it, but figured the autographs would cause too much flight delay)

Anyway, Seagal hugs the little EXIT WOUNDS fan, ’cause he loves the children. At the parade (which is not too heavily attended, looks like a typical small town parade) Seagal wears a big cowboy hat, and people in the crowd drink from plastic cups with his picture on them. Some guy in the crowd yells “I was arrested by Steve!” And the kids talk about Seagal and Elle being a cute couple.

Don’t you get it, man? The children are the innocents. Keep them away from the drugs, and in the parades and movie theaters.

* * *

Episode 2.8: “Under the Influence”

The final aired episode of Season 2 begins with Fortunato sneezing from a “nasty bug” that’s going around. But a case of the sniffles can’t keep him away from yet another narcotics briefing and raid. Finally we move away from the weed dealers and get to the hard drugs, a gal suspected of dealing coke out of her home.

At the briefing Seagal asks “How we gonna make entry?”

“We have the ram,” one officer says.

So you get to see a door get busted, but I guess they’re not fast enough. She apparently flushes her crack down the toilet. They figure that out because there’s a bunch of money floating in the toilet. She claims she dropped it. You know how that is.

Somebody has to pull all the money out as evidence, so you get to see how much it was. I don’t know if it’s the economy or what but it’s not as much as you might expect a crack dealer to have. There’s just one $100 bill, four twenties, one ten and two fives. (Not enough people use tens, by the way. I like tens, it’s a good denomination in my opinion.)

Despite her apparently lax business the lady is kinda lucky because all they find is some weed and one tiny crack rock. Coulda been much worse. Way to flush, lady.

I noticed the suspect was wearing a sweatshirt for a school called John McDonogh. I looked up the name and it turns out John McDonogh was an interesting figure in New Orleans history. He failed at a senate bid and at wooing some well known public figure lady, but he succeeded in business. Unfortunately he was a slave owner, and even though he did eventually free them he made them pay for it, so even then they had to keep working for years. On the other hand he did contribute to an organization that helped former slaves go to Liberia. I mean, maybe he did it for the wrong reasons, I don’t know. Most significantly for our purposes here he was very reclusive and miserly but when he died he willed his money to public schools for freed slaves and poor whites. And his family were pissed off like the family in GRAN TORINO. So there were 20 high schools in New Orleans named after him. Eventually they changed the names of most of them as part of a movement to stop having shit named after slave owners. But there are a couple left and I guess one of them must be real proud to have one of their alumni on the A&E Network claiming she accidentally dropped $200 in a toilet.

The next case involves a vacant lot that has caused numerous complaints of drug dealing and/or shady shit. I guess the guys were tired of being shown running around at their age so they brought a new team member named Marcus. He’s young and in shape so he hops a fence and a guy that sees him runs for it. When they all corner the suspect and pin him down he uses the ol’ “I ran because I didn’t know you were police” line. They’re annoyed by that so they end up being kind of degrading to him, they make him sit on a bucket.

To his credit though Seagal feels bad for the guy when they find out he’s had 12 felonies and 52 misdemeanors, making him a “big time code 6,” or habitual offender. “How you feelin? All right?” Seagal asks, and says he hopes they can get him help. (It looks bad at this point, though.)

To lighten the mood Seagal teases Lawrence about how he should’ve hopped the fence to come help.

Now poor Marcus is regretting going with the Squad because he picked up Fortunato’s nasty bug. Not only does he have to be sick but he has to have Seagal rub oils on his back to stimulate his lungs. I forget if it was Lawrence or Larry but somebody says “Put the witch doctor on him” and somebody else, “Here come the voodoo doctor, y’all.” Anyway Marcus claims it’s making him feel better after three and a half minutes of oiliness.

The next case is another sad one, some old dude in a straw hat driving drunk with no tire at all on the right rear wheel. He’s all confused about “Why my truck runnin so rough?” and can’t follow a pen for the field sobriety test because he’s got a glass eye. Seagal calls him “buddy” three times and one of his charges is for “improper equipment.”

The episode ends at the Accupuncture and Herbal Center, where Seagal helps choose some herbs to make into tea for the team to drink for soothing the effects of the nasty bug. There’s a dramatic musical buildup to Lawrence drinking his tea from a Hello Kitty cup. He doesn’t gag or anything, he’s fine, but afterwards they joke about having a bad reaction and having to go to an actual hospital.

This is an enjoyable episode, but sort of a poor choice for a series finale if that turns out to be what it is. (The A&E websight lists the swordsmanship episode “Blade Master” as the final episode numerically, which makes more sense although they aired it at the beginning of the season.)

* * *

SEASON 2 CONCLUSIONS

Season 2 of LAWMAN was enjoyable. It introduced a little more of Seagal’s home life and brought in his love of and skill with swords, which I always approve of. It put him in the action a little more, including numerous drug raids, and had more laughing and teasing between him and the other officers.

I can’t find any information about whether or not another season of LAWMAN is planned. He’s already filmed a new non-reality series and is still making movies, so it might be hard for him to get back to. On the other hand, he seems to enjoy it.

People often ask me if I’ll ever do an updated edition of my book Seagalogy. I don’t think it’s the time yet, but I do hope to do it some day down the line when Titan Books asks me to, or if that never happens then when the rights revert to me years from now. Whenever that is I don’t look forward to the challenge of figuring out how to cover his TV shows. I did a whole chapter on TICKER (where he’s not even the main character) so how much do I need for 8 hours of reality television?

More importantly, what am I gonna do with the Eras? He’s gonna keep doing direct-to-video movies for the foreseeable future, so should I just consider the DTV Era to go on forever?

Well, I have a new theory about that. Only time will tell if this pans out, but I think we’re in a new era that might be called the Experimental Era or the Dabbling Era or something like that. After an entire books-worth of movies built around a fairly consistent persona, in recent years Seagal has broken that pattern, he’s been messing around and trying new things. When the book ended he had just done URBAN JUSTICE and PISTOL WHIPPED, and I was convinced he was starting a comeback, at least quality-wise. Unfortunately since then I don’t think his movies have lived up to the promise of those two, and one of them (AGAINST THE DARK) is my current pick for his worst movie to date. So it doesn’t seem like his heart is in at as much as it was for a minute there.

But that’s just the DTV movies. On the other hand we have his really funny appearance in MACHETE, which was his first time on the big screen since HALF PAST DEAD in ‘02 and his first time ever playing a villain. We have his sudden reinvention as a supposed-real-life cop, turned into two seasons of reality television, something that’s completely new for him. Next we’ll have at least one season of TRUE JUSTICE, his first non-reality show, also something new for him, especially if he’s more of a team leader character than the central character, which is the impression I get from the trailer that’s online somewhere. These new projects where he mixes it up seem to be where he puts his energy and enthusiasm, so that’s why I think testing new flavors may end up being the defining quality of this stage in his career. But we’ll see.

In the near future I also hope to review BORN TO RAISE HELL, the new Seagal movie that’s available in Region 2. But before I do either of those things I think it’s important to fulfill previous obligations, so I will be reviewing the last four episodes of season 2 (and the series?) of STEVEN SEAGAL: LAWMAN. At the end of those I will introduce a new still-evolving theory about the current state of Seagalogy.Episode 2.5: “Gimme Shelter”

Despite the title the Rolling Stones do not appear on this episode, so don’t get your hopes up.

This episode’s first incident seems to be there just to show-off the high tech capabilities of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department. It takes place in a “problematic area,” so problematic in fact that a police helicopter is on patrol there, to provide an eye in the sky and a first line of defense against air pirates or hot air balloon attacks. The Squad are called in to stop a white Mustang with stolen plates and a sticker that says “Whodat?”. A photo of the vehicle is sent to their Blackberries. On second thought, it might be product placement.

After stopping the vehicle and arguing with the driver and passenger it turns out to be a damn clerical error – the vehicle had been carjacked six months ago, but it was recovered on the same night, and never cleared out of the police database. It is not clear if it was the owner or carjacker who put the sticker on, which has something to do with the New Orleans Saints. Anyway, the driver and passenger are innocent of license plate theft, but still have to be taken in on “outstanding attachments,” which is not as much of a compliment as it sounds like.

Next they go after a driver who actually is guilty of three hit and runs in a row. Nothing too exciting happens except that Lawrence refers to the truck as a “she” and Seagal wears a leather trenchcoat with a backwards baseball cap.

The third traffic stop is more Seagalogically notable. Seagal and friends get really upset when they see a guy driving a pickup truck with a big rottweiler chained up in the back. They’re worried the dog could fall or jump out and get strangled. The driver seems pretty shocked to be surrounded by a bunch of really emotional cops, the most emotional of course being Seagal, saying “I don’t like the way you got that dog tied like that” and “I don’t like the way you got this, that’s not right. I’m a dog man, I got alot of dogs” and “Put your dog inside the thing, man.”

The driver seems really shocked and confused, I think maybe they’re treating his dog like more of a baby than necessary.  But once he realizes they’re serious he complies and apologizes. Seagal explains to the cameras, “We’re out here to try to protect everybody, even dogs.”

I felt a little sorry for the guy, because he obviously didn’t mean to harm the dog and seemed kind of hurt to be treated like an animal abuser, something he clearly doesn’t see himself as. But if he’s seen OUT FOR JUSTICE he knows he’s lucky. In that movie Seagal witnessed a fictional vehicle-related instance of dog abuse and at the end of the movie he saw the guy again, recognized him and kicked him in the balls. From the back, too, one of the rarest forms of ball kicking.

Anyway, the incident “really got” Seagal, inspiring him to take his wife to the “Humane Way” animal shelter, where 2 out of 3 dogs have to be put down. His wife cries and is embarrassed about it but Seagal tells her, “That’s what happens when you have a heart.”

Back on the beat, the Squad report to a break-in where a unit is already on the scene. A guy in a tank top is handcuffed outside his mother’s house, because “his mama put him out.” But she never did any paperwork to officially evict him (why would she?) and now he’s trying to get back in by throwing a coconut through the window. So there’s nothing really to do here except enjoy the absurdity of the situation. As Larry explains it, “He wasn’t formally evicted, so it’s still his residence. But he did throw a coconut through the back winda, turns out it’s his winda, and his coconut.”

Honestly I would like to see at least one Seagal cop movie that works this type of random oddness into the script, to really capture the surreal quality of police work that you don’t get in a standard action movie. And if his colleagues here aren’t in the movie they should at least be consultants.

At the end of the episode Seagal makes good on his promise to help the animal shelter by making an appearance at an “Adoption Event” and encouraging the people who show up to adopt some of these dogs so they don’t get put down. It’s funny, I went to that Thunderbox show, I know how dedicated some of his fans are, and I can honestly imagine a whole bunch of those people from that show adopting dogs just because Seagal encouraged them to. But I’m not sure how I feel about some of them owning pitbulls. It’s nice of him though.

Some of the people seem to be joking around with Seagal, saying things like “With your blessing we’d gladly adopt.” I don’t think they’re big Seagal fans or anything but I’m sure they understand that it’s pretty cool to have Seagal’s blessing for their dog ownership. That’s better than papers.

In the tradition of Seagal’s DTV era this scene has some obviously redubbed lines. But at least it’s his real voice.

At the end he concludes, “It was my honor to help the animals in this Parish.” (Yeah, tell that to the nutria.)

* * *

Episode 2.6: “On Dangerous Ground”

Wait a minute, that title is just a synonym for a Seagal movie title. That’s kind of lazy. They didn’t do “Difficult to Kill” or “Labelled For Death” or “This Day You Die.” And this one doesn’t take place in Alaska or deal with corrupt oil companies or anything cool like that. Oh well.

The episode begins with the Seagal Squad meeting with the narcotics team, who have a warrant for a crack dealer. During this scene there’s a shot of an officer playing with his wedding ring, which of course in an actual action movie would mean that he’s doing this to avenge the death of his wife (see HALF PAST DEAD), or it would be foreshadowing to show he’s gonna die in the raid and it’s tragic because he has a wife at home (TOP GUN). But on this show it has no specific narrative meaning, it’s just a moment. Don’t worry. Nobody dies. (SPOILER)

They decide that “Chief Seagal’s gonna be third,” and sure enough there’s Steven Seagal (that’s right, Steven Seagal, deputy sheriff) helping raid a guy’s house. They think the guy is trying to swallow his stash so they pepper spray him, and later they sit around with a pitcher of water helping wash it out of his eyes, like they’re his buddies.

I liked this skeptical exchange:

“I’ve been changing my life around, officer.”
“Yeah.”

Well, Seagal Sense says otherwise, when it detects drugs hidden in an oven mitt. It’s also not lost on Seagal that there are Batman dolls and shit laying around the house. He’s really offended that kids live in the same place where drugs are stored.

Seagal cares because he’s got kids of his own. Not necessarily with Batman dolls, but still. We visit “Steven’s House,” his wife Elle and son Kunzang, who Seagal calls “the light of my life.” Also he has a dog that it sounds like he’s calling “Midian.” Wonder if he’s a NIGHTBREED fan? Kunzang is only a baby but already wears shirts with dragons embroidered on the back. Seagal met his wife in Mongolia about 8 years ago when he was trying to find funding for that movie where he was gonna play Genghis Khan. They met because she was an interpreter for “a famous costume designer” and thought he was “very powerful and strong.”

Elle worries about her husband when he leaves. It reminds me of that documentary Eric Bana made, LOVE THE BEAST, where he wonders if it’s selfish for him to take part in dangerous car races when he has a family at home. This is kind of the same thing, because Seagal obviously has plenty of money from his movies and everything, and no matter what you think about his level of actual police work it’s gotta be more dangerous out there than is necessary in his life.

But anyway there’s a nice scene of him getting ready for work and she’s preparing fruit and protein bars for him and hugging him, like a kid going to school. “I just want him to catch bad guys and come home safe,” she says.

I try not to write about Seagal’s personal life, but I think at this point it’s time to address the issue of the (later dropped) lawsuit that interrupted this season. In April a former assistant of Seagal’s filed a million-plus-dollar lawsuit accusing Seagal of wrongful termination and sexual harassment. Oh, and, uh, keeping two Russian sex slaves in his house. Although no criminal charges were ever filed the Sheriff’s Department didn’t want to look like they were unethically protecting him from his accusers, so they asked A&E to stop filming the show. That’s why the first season had 14 episodes and this one only had 8.

I bring this up now because I couldn’t help but notice that Elle Seagal was never shown or mentioned in Season 1, but is central to multiple episodes of Season 2, portraying him more as a family man. I don’t think they shot any additional episodes after the filming was suspended, but I don’t know that for sure. So it’s legitimate to ask if this is a PR move to help rehabilitate Seagal’s image in the face of what I think were clearly ridiculous claims but that grabbed alot of headlines.

Well, in my opinion it’s most likely a coincidence. Even if more footage was shot after the lawsuit some of these Elle episodes had to have been filmed before. For example this one ends up revolving around Valentine’s Day and another around the Mardi Gras parade. So unless someone has evidence that these episodes were staged out of season I think it just so happens that Seagal was shooting more family-centric episodes at the time he was accused of sex trafficking.

Also, you can go back and look through the tapes but as far as I noticed there were no signs of Russian sex slaves in the house, or any nationality of sex slaves for that matter. The house appears 100% sex slave free.

Back on the beat there’s an incident involving suspicious persons with a gun in a car. They run into what might be a “heroin den” and there’s one of those POINT BREAK footchases through yards. Amazingly the camera catches the dude jumping out a window (ground level), but the guy manages to get away, and Larry falls and rolls. Not a somersault or anything, but pretty good. Unfortunately “We didn’t get the bad guys this time” and that’s just “the crazy nature of this job.” You know, sometimes the guy gets away, sometimes the guy legitimately owns the coconut, you never know what’s gonna happen.

Seagal wants to “get lucky” on Valentine’s Day, so he goes to a flower shop and buys a ridiculous amount of flowers for Elle. The older gals who work there are really excited about the whole thing. They all take a group photo with Chief Seagal and one of them says, “You made our day.” I don’t think they mean by supporting a local independent flower shop, although that helps, and I don’t think they’re confusing him with Clint Eastwood, I think they really had a good day in the presence of Seagal. If you ever buy flowers in Jefferson Parish look for that photo on the wall.

On patrol the Squad pulls over a speeding Monte Carlo. They see the driver reaching for something, he claims he was “reachin for my food.” That would be a stupid move. Anyway Seagal Sense locates a bag of weed hidden in a shoe. “It’s a shame, man, a damn shame,” Seagal says, although he’s seen worse.

But hey, he did what he was supposed to do, he came home from the dangerous ground, returned to the safe ground alive and watched his wife be happy about all the flowers that got delivered to her. “We raised our hand and took an oath,” he says, “and hope and pray every day that we all get to come home at night.” (Or day, in this case, but maybe he got off early for the holiday.)

This is probly the funniest commercial Seagal has done (beating out the Orange telephone thing with the golf cart chase and the Mountain Dew one where he accidentally beats up a convenience store robber Mr. Magoo style). It fits into a modern commercial cliche of the Exaggeratedly Awesome Guy Who Likes This Product (other examples: Bruce Campbell for Old Spice, the more recent Michael Jai White-ish Old Spice uberman, the rich Russian guy with the baby giraffe who drinks some product or other, the “most interesting man in the world” who says “I don’t normally drink beer, but when I do I drink” whatever it is). But it also has a little Seagalogy in there because of his reputation for having an entourage of hot women and his love of Asian things (the bridge in the background, the dress on the girl to the left tending his zen garden). I actually wouldn’t be surprised if that was filmed in his actual backyard.

thanks to Chris A., Geoff C. and Mitchell H. for sending this, and stay tuned for upcoming overdue Seagalogical reports involving the last four episodes of LAWMAN and his new one BORN TO RAISE HELL (out in the U.K. but not U.S.).

Episode 2.3: “Crossfire”

As the episode opens Seagal explains that one of their duties is to protect the public from “bad guys” who drink and get rowdy. Once again the Seagal Squad report to the scene of a truck shot full of holes, this time owned by white people for once. Around the corner there’s another vehicle shot up, this one with two people inside, but they say they didn’t see anything. Seagal gently narrates that they have a “street code” that prevents them from telling the cops anything. There’s also a long shot of a stop sign, possibly a reference to the street code and smoke shop t-shirt phenomenon known as “stop snitching.”

But I got a better theory. I think the shooter wasn’t aiming for people at all, I think the vehicles were the targets. What I’m telling you is I think there’s a vehicle serial killer loose in Jefferson Parish. I’ve seen CARS, I’ve seen CHRISTINE, I’ve watched KNIGHT RIDER, I’ve read about Google Cars. I know how this shit works. You never expect it’s a car that’s doing it. That’s why it’s the perfect crime. And of course those dudes aren’t gonna say what they saw. Not only would they sound crazy, but the car might come back and run them over.

The next scene is yet another “somebody sees the cops and starts running” incident. After a short chase they catch the kid, who is 17 years old. When he says his age Seagal just starts laughing, he can’t believe this shit, but at least he restrains himself from preaching about how he was in Asia studying the martial arts at that age. After searching for “a needle in a haystack” Seagal finds a gun hidden inside a barbecue. Without touching it he states that it’s real and loaded.

I don’t know if the barbecue got him thinking about what he was gonna have for dinner or something but next is one of those Mister Rogers type scenes where he goes to talk to a friend, a master chef at a Japanese restaurant. Seagal says that New Orleans is “alot more cosmopolitan than people think” and has good restaurants like this. This is a good scene because he gets to speak Japanese more than he does in any of his movies. He tells the chef that he was “raised in Japan” but that his friends are local cops and he wants to mess with them by serving them good food that will “give them the heebie jeebies and the willie jillies.” You know how cops are always playing pranks. You’ve seen all the POLICE ADADEMYs.

In the first season reviews I had some complaints about how numbing it starts to get when you watch scene after scene of cops questioning young black men. In this episode they get lucky and get to switch it up. First they talk to some black kids who are just going to the gym to play basketball. “Good boys,” Seagal calls them. Then they get called to the scene of a historic shooting. Not historic in the way that, say, John Wilkes Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln was, but in the sense that this is the first ever episode of LAWMAN where a white guy shot another white guy.

This is some crazy shit, a fat old white dude shot in the chest by a guy with a long white beard and a 2-shot derringer. Turns out the victim’s grown daughter met the victim at the store and brought him home, but he was drunk and started smacking her around and calling her a bitch. When her dad tried to stop the guy he wasn’t getting anywhere, he got scared and had to shoot him. There’s a shot of a crucifix on the wall to represent the shooter’s morals and compassion. Instead of getting macho about justifiably defending his own daughter from an attack on his own property he just seems really sad and says “I hope I didn’t hurt him too bad.”

They let him go, no charges. But I think he should probly have a talk with his daughter about bringing home fat old drunks when she goes to the store. Just come home with the groceries next time, all right honey? The gun only fires two shots.

The episode ends with Seagal’s get together at the Horinoya Sushi Bar. Seagal gets a kick out of pressuring his cop buddies into following Japanese customs. They have to sit down on the floor to eat and they’re not flexible enough to do it easily. Everybody sort of goes with the program except Lawrence, who wants a fork instead of chopsticks and won’t eat most of the stuff. Of the live lobster he says, “I didn’t care for it much ’cause it was still moving.” Seagal pretends to be surprised and offended but does get most of them to eat what he claims is “sea urchin gonads.”

“I ate gonads!” Alex says.

Episode 2.4: “The Perfect Target”

On a Tuesday afternoon in traffic Seagal notices a guy waving a gun around inside a car. It turns out to be another all white incident: two nerdy white twentysomethings. The passenger was the one with the gun but the driver is the one who starts flipping out like he’s on something. His friend tries to calm him down by telling him that’s Steven Seagal. “I don’t care if it’s Steven Seagal or the fuckin mayor!” the driver yells. He keeps yelling that his career is ruined and they ruined his life and he should just jump off the bridge. Lawrence says “You’re actin a jackass up here.” Larry handcuffs the guy supposedly to prevent him from jumping off the bridge, but I think more likely because the guy’s being a dick.

Larry is really funny in this scene, explaining that if he was concerned about getting pulled over he shouldn’t have been driving a bright yellow car 95 miles an hour past a cop car while his friend waves a gun around. Because he crossed the bridge into NOPD territory they’re gonna hand them over to the other department, “And I only hope that they’re as patient and tolerant as we are,” an exasperated Larry deadpans.

Luckily the dude with the gun wasn’t trying to shoot anybody, he was just actin a jackass up there. But even reserve deputy sheriffs need to be ready to shoot, and Seagal says “shooting is a perishable skill,” so he brings the boys to the range with him while he practices for an upcoming test. From what they show the officers seem to do pretty well, while Seagal does great. One exercise involves shooting at a photo of a Bad Guy holding a hostage. Alex (or was it Larry? it’s not in my notes, sorry) hits the Bad Guy a couple times but also hits the hostage. “My investigation revealed she was in on it,” he says.

Friday at midnight the patrol is very uneventful and lonely until Seagal spots a vehicle behind some abandoned houses. Turns out to be a guy taking plywood from businesses that were shut down after Katrina, and he has a warrant on him for doing this before. Seagal says he feels sorry for him and wishes him luck finding a job, but feels he has to enforce this. He and John later talk about stopping looters on a case by case basis. If the guy was starving and stealing food they probly would’ve let him go. But come on dude, don’t steal plywood.

By the way, they arrested an Asian guy! Season 2 is all about diversity.

The final call of the day is for a guy that got shot in the leg, but the bullet’s not in him. “Fo sho in’n out” Seagal notes. The victim apparently doesn’t subscribe to the street code, because he’s perfectly willing to describe the guys that did it. But the Squad seem less interested in the shooter than in looking at all the bullet holes. Holy shit, they shot that many times and only hit the guy once? Shooting really is a perishable skill. I mean, it’s a good thing nobody was hurt too bad, but whatever happened to pride in a job well done? Does Seagal need to start taking some of these Bad Guys to the range for practice? “I guess they weren’t aiming,” he says.

Later Seagal does his test and unless the show is completely full of shit he did incredibly, with a rare 120 out of 120 score. I think it was Larry, maybe Alex that said “I’ve been a police officer for 17 years and never before have I seen anybody make a group like that.”

“My score wasn’t bad,” Seagal says with obviously fake humbleness, and autographs the target “to my buddy.” Hopefully that will be framed and on display so the Jefferson Parish street thugs and/or living cars can have something to aspire to.

Episode 2.1 “They Drive By Night”

The second season of LAWMAN opens with a kick to the balls – not literally, unfortunately, but still a surprisingly eventful opening. Seagal and his partners have responded to a call for an erratic driver going around with his lights off, hitting mailboxes. They catch up with the car and see it going the wrong way in traffic. You can hear officers yelling “No!” sounding seriously distressed. Many of these episodes have Seagal just showing up to the scene where other officers already have things under control, but here the camera captures a head-on collision over Seagal’s shoulder.

The people in the other car are okay, but obviously in shock, and must think they are hallucinating the sight of Steven Seagal helping them out of the car and telling them where to go sit down. This reminds me of a time when I was crossing a street that I cross all the time, and for some reason this one time when the light turned green I hesitated and looked over my shoulder, and just then a car ran the red light. If I hadn’t paused I woulda got plowed over. I was thinking about that as a car pulled out in front of me blasting “Baby I Got Your Money” by Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and that cheered me up. But then I thought, Wait a minute. Am I dead? Did I actually get hit, and now I’m in a heaven where every car that drives by is playing ODB?

I only bring this up because if you were in a nasty head on collision and 30 seconds later the star of UNDER SIEGE was leading you out of your car and telling you where to go, don’t you think you’d start having paranoid SIXTH SENSE notions? And wondering why the Angel of Death takes the form of Steven Seagal for you? I mean if it was me that would be one thing but most people would be like, “I don’t really consider myself that into Steven Seagal. I’m surprised my guide to the afterlife takes his form.”

But it’s okay, he’s not Death, he’s Steven Seagal. That’s right, Steven Seagal. Deputy Sherriff.

Really all they can do is wait for the medics and the fire department who are gonna have to extract the probly-drunk-or-high wrong-way-driver. Seagal does find one way to help out when they’re having trouble using a club to break a window they need to get through, and he kicks it out. I bet you thought he couldn’t kick anymore. Wrong. Okay, not a real impressive kick, but effective, which is what matters.

The next scene is another reckless driver, a white pickup they see swerving and who at first doesn’t stop when they tell him to. The guy has a sticker that says “SHUT UP” on the back of the truck, and when he finally pulls over and flops out of his truck he tries to ask “What’s the problem here, officer?” The guy has no license, does have an open beer in the truck and clearly did not study for the field sobriety test. We learn the sad fact that he already did 5 years for a previous DWI, has been sleeping on people’s floors for a while and just recently finally got a room.

“I ask you, man to man,” Seagal says, “You gotta get some help, man, before you kill somebody.” This is where Seagal uses his sympathetic adaptation skills, where he tries to adapt to the culture of the person he’s talking to in order to relate. He switches his grammar to ebonics: “Why you didn’t stop that car a little sooner when you saw the po-lice?” “How many years you was in prison?” “What you did to get 5 years?”

“We’ve gotta get this guy some help somehow,” he says. I like that Seagal shows his “I need time to change” side in this show. He’s always looking for “bad guys” but when he catches them he finds out most of them are just people.

At roll call one afternoon Seagal learns about an 18 year old that was murdered. They drive around looking for the suspect’s black Murano. At night they report to the scene where a woman’s car was shot up while she was pulling out to drive to work. She says “Ah – look at my car!” but seems surprisingly calm about the whole thing. I hope this doesn’t mean she gets her car shot up all the time.

Then they get a call from another incident nearby. It’s chaos but after they piece it together it seems the murder suspects in their suspect vehicle, who also probly shot up the poor lady’s car over there, did another drive-by, weren’t watching where they were going and got blindsided by a van. Fucked up from the accident but not wanting to go down they were seen running to a “wooded lot” nearby and then back to the scene.

The officers search the lot until Seagal says “That’s it!” and they’ve spotted the weapon. I’m pretty sure one of the other guys actually found it, but the way they edit it they clearly want you to think he used Seagal Sense to locate it.

But Seagal doesn’t try to take credit for any magic powers. “Once in a while you get lucky,” he says, “and you’re able to keep the community just a little bit safer.

Episode 2.2: “Blade Master”

This episode opens on a Saturday night, another traffic violation (ran a red light). The officers quickly surround the vehicle and have their guns out, so the guy takes off and ends up face down on his father’s lawn with helicopters flying over shining lights on him.

This always happens on this show, somebody takes off (usually on foot after they saw the cop SUV) and when they get caught they always say they ran because the cops scared them. Not that they were guilty of something, they just panicked, you know? Well, alot of times I’m sure they’re full of shit but this guy I totally buy it. They looked like they were ready to kill him, and I’m sure he’s had bad experiences before. “All y’all do is beat my ass!” he says. I don’t blame him for running.

Well, they seem to straighten out the misunderstanding, and Seagal talks to the guy’s dad. “We got some killers out there, you understand what I’m saying?”

Later, Fortunato gets a call from “the narcotics boys” about a “buy and bust” they’re planning. The team stakes out a gas station to watch an undercover officer buy prescription pills. Without a prescription! That’s why it’s a crime. Seagal at first thinks “it ain’t going too good” but then using Seagal Sense he figures out when the deal is done and the dealer is about to drive away.

The plan is to let him go and follow him straight to his crack dealer where he’ll spend his new cash, which sure enough goes down exactly as planned. As they’re busting him an officer asks the gas station dealer, “You still smoke crack?” and he says, “On rare occasions, yeah.” I guess this was gonna be a rare occasion. Sorry, bud. Not today.

There’s a full moon, so Seagal puts on a robe and practices with swords. “When you’re a police officer,” he explains, “any time there’s an encounter or an endangerment, the strategy that I apply always really comes from the ancient philosophy of swordsmanship. You have to gain the best position.” That seems like an understatement for his sword style though, since he keeps simulating various dismemberments on his sparring partner. “Once that thumb is off you’re done,” he says.

This show still reminds me of Mr. Rogers, the way he always has different places to go to meet people and different things he has planned and he tells you about it. “Later this week I’ll be testing some of the sharpest swords in the world.”

At night he gets a call for a drunk disturbance, and I’m afraid this guy is not necessarily one of the sharpest swords in the world. He’s drunk and needs a ride home so he’s been bothering an ambulance about it. “But we don’t give rides,” a paramedic deadpans.

In this encounter instead of trying to gain the best position Seagal just feels bad for the guy and gives him twenty bucks for a taxi. The guy says, “Today’s my birthday, bro!”

“Today?” Seagal asks. “So according to the Chinese astrology you fall under the animal of the dragon, which is a magical, mystical animal. So use your magic to get sober and do good and prosper, okay?”

I think that advice helped the guy figure out that this cop that just gave him twenty bucks is also a famous star of action movies. “You gotta be kidding me!” he says. “I love you Steven!,” and they hug. This is one of those great bonding scenes. Seagal goes out there to be a tough cop but he can’t help meet people that he feels compassion for. They need time to change. This guy claims he has a master’s degree in chemical engineering (or “mechanical engineering” as Seagal repeats it) but you can see things haven’t turned out as planned. Seagal says when you look into his eyes “you see a flash” of what he used to be.

So he didn’t have to use sworsmanship philosophy on this guy, but he explains why having compassion and patience is “part of being a warrior”:

“The great warriors in Asia, particularly Japan, were not just people who were warriors. They were poets, they were healers, they were mystics, they really understood the art of being a warrior is really practicing the arts of war for the purpose of stopping war.”

In other words, as awesome as it is to chop a guy’s thumb off it’s even better to make friends with him and give him cab money.

To celebrate, Seagal goes and slices up some bamboo with those sharp swords he was talking about. You can see why this would be a fun thing to do. At one point he demonstrates that a machete can’t even cut through the bamboo that the sword can slice through like bologna. Take that, Danny Trejo.

But it’s not just about sharpness. The mind behind the sword is the real weapon, because of the knowledge and wisdom, etc.

After some legal delays and what not the show resumed last Wednesday with 2 new episodes, and 2 more tomorrow, so I figured I better play catch up. I dug up the extensive notes I wrote for that last first season episode, watched it again on DVD, and now I will present to you my findings.

Season 1, Episode 13: “Ruthless Judgment”

Seagal explains to his partners and to the cameras that this is his last shift before having to go back to L.A. to film a movie. Luckily this is a reality TV show and not a movie, so this is not foreshadowing that he’s about to get shot, it’s just the sentimental consequences of working two jobs in different parts of the country. He seems kind of sad that he’s leaving soon, and so do his partners. “I’m gonna miss you, Big Dog.” It’s like summer camp is almost over.

But it’s kind of a shitty summer camp. The Seagal Squad reports to a scene where a young man has been killed in a drive-by shooting. They examine the evidence – Seagal points to bullet casings and blood drops with his flashlight and explains his theory of what happened. But this isn’t their job, they’re really just there to seal the scene so no evidence will get ruined, and waiting for the homicide detectives to show up. Meanwhile the victim’s loved ones are screaming in anguish. It’s gotta be tough to be a cop in that situation, but you really must feel like an asshole if you’re a movie star doing a TV show. I felt uncomfortable for him.

Then they get called away for another shooting nearby. Two homicides in twenty minutes. “It’s gonna be a busy night,” Fortunato says.

Later on Seagal and Fortunato do some public relations work by talking to the camera about their law enforcement philosophy while driving around. They explain that the homicide rate since Katrina is at its highest in 27 years, and although some people might consider their approach “too aggressive” they feel it’s what they need to do to keep the neighborhoods safe.

Then we get a pretty typical example of their “too aggressive” style: they’re driving along and see some dudes run away so they chase after them. They have to pull their guns and get them out of an abandoned building before they search them and find out they have no warrants. It’s the classic “Y’all scared the shit out of me” excuse, to which Larry says, “What we look like, we ugly?”

After they’ve decided to let the kids go we get another one of those star-struck exchanges:

“Ah man, you know who this dude is? Man, that’s Steven Seagal! Why don’t you break my neck or something?”

“I’m not gonna hurt you.”

As Seagal signs autographs for the kids he tells them about the two dead bodies they just saw and how important it is to not become a third one. “I just want y’all to be smart and lead a good life, and don’t get your ass shot. Stay away from all the guns and the drugs up in here, you hear me? Everybody gonna be good?” He makes them promise.

In the day light, at “Steven Seagal’s Residence,” Seagal meets with producers Phil Goldfine and Binh Danh about the movie they’re about to shoot, A DANGEROUS MAN. They say it’s the opening action scene, but from what I can tell it’s the third action scene, one that ended up being about 15 minutes in when he sees some gangsters kill a cop in a parking lot.

Seagal sketches out a map of the scene and blocks out the moves with Danh (one of his aikido students and stuntmen before he became a producer). It’s funny to see them practicing in the middle of his living room. They don’t even move the furniture out of the way. I can’t tell if this is just staged for the cameras or if this is how they really prepare. But throughout the episode Seagal keeps saying he has to go back to L.A., and I’m pretty sure A DANGEROUS MAN was shot in Canada. So that might be one hint that they’re sort of putting on a show here.

Even as he works on the movie he seems to wish he could just stay in New Orleans. He says he enjoys making movies to “bring people joy and laughter and happiness” (mission accomplished) but that he prefers his police work, because it’s “real.”

That night he’s on his “one last shift” again (I’m beginning to suspect some of this stuff is edited out of order for dramatic purposes, but I’m probly just being paranoid). Like in his movies Chief Seagal likes to vary his wardrobe, so this time he has a big fur hat with a badge on it.

As they drive past some kids Seagal asks to look at them, and scopes them out with Seagal Sense, at which point his super powers of observation slo-mo zero in on a baggie dropping out of one of their pockets. So they stop the kids, and I think more out of suspicion than trying to be helpful and tell them they dropped something.

Well ain’t that a bitch? Not only did these kids try to ditch a bunch of pill bottles, some baggies of marijuana and more than 60 crack rocks, but these are the same kids that Seagal signed autographs for last night and got them to promise to be good! Come on kids, this is not being good. And don’t give me that “I didn’t know selling crack didn’t count as good” shit. Chief Seagal specified staying away from drugs. You knew what you were agreeing to.

Seagal is obviously disappointed, and can’t really relate. “When I was their age,” he says, “I was in Asia studying in a dojo, spending 13, 14 hours a day fighting and stretching and learning, and this… never entered my life, this kind of foolishness.”

That’s why I have to question him preferring the reality of police work to the fantasy of action movies. In the real one he just saw two young kids killed before they had a chance to do anything good with their lives, and these other even younger looking kids lying to him about being good. One of them gets 4 1/2 years, the text later tells us. Why doesn’t he prefer the fantasy world where the bad guys are undeniably bad, not just kids with poor judgment, and he just gets to kill them and make the world better? I would think the “real” job would bum him out and the other one would be more fun.

But it is nice to see Seagal trying to make a connection with these guys, and I think he genuinely hopes to inspire them. “I don’t want to lose hope or lose faith, because it’s possible for anybody to change. Y’know I hope this is a wake up call for them.” What does it take to change the essence of a young man?

In the end Seagal says goodbye to his partners, and they reminisce over a montage of season 1 fun times. “So I gotta go away to make a movie for a little bit. My heart is really here, this is what I love most.” (I believe him, because A DANGEROUS MAN didn’t turn out very good.)

“I’ll really be looking forward to coming back and getting more bad guys,” Seagal says. Well, we’ll leave it to homicide to find those drive by shooters, But if Seagal doesn’t get more bad guys I’m sure he’ll at least interrupt some more foolishness.

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P.S. On the new episode of LAWMAN they advertised a pretty hilarious Chief Seagal bobblehead available at www.shopaetv.com. I went to look at it and was surprised that my book is available in the A&E network’s online store. Well, okay, it was on backorder when I saw it there, but at least it’s listed. That means that I have officially contributed to both Arts and Entertainment.

You know what, I just remembered that you guys already know what MACHETE is. But in case there’s one person out there living under a rock where nobody tells you about these sorts of things (and if that’s the case then the fact that you’re somehow reading this raises some questions about internet access under that rock), MACHETE was originally a fake movie trailer made by Robert Rodriguez for that “GRINDHOUSE” double feature he did with Quentin Tarantino. But it was so obviously a good idea for a movie that the people all rose together as one united voice and demanded that it be made for real. This sets a dangerous precedent. Saturday Night Live could conceivably be forced to manufacture fictional products that they advertised as a joke. Filmatists could decide to turn their movies-within-movies into movies-without-movies even when nobody wants to see it, like the vampire movie from BODY DOUBLE or CHUBBY RAIN from BOWFINGER. Or M. Night Shyamalan might decide to write the important piece of writing that his character was going to write in LADY IN THE WATER that was gonna inspire a kid that would go on to become president.

But here we are in 2010, a futuristic world where the best American action movies are straight to video and second best are postmodern sort-of-joking-about-it homages. MACHETE embraces absurd gore, exaggerated stereotypes and a cartoonish sense of reality, similar to BLACK DYNAMITE’s philosophy of stealing all the most awesome parts of blaxploitation but making them 10% more ridiculous. For what it is the tone is just about right. I think it’s a little closer to a Real Movie than PLANET TERROR was. I still prefer the crazy-but-serious Rodriguez of DESPERADO (before he got a computer), but I respect that this is deadpan and non-jokey enough to keep it out of any comedy sections. There were some parts in the early script that were really funny but too comical for the rest of the movie, and I see Rodriguez had the discipline to leave those out. Good job Rodriguez.

MACHETE does take its job of delivering the goods pretty seriously, though. There are several applause-worthy kills, one classic bit of gorey ridiculousness that had people laughing well into the next scene, a bunch of sexy girls (I believe Machete gets it on with four of them), six memorable bad guys (Seagal, Jeff Fahey, Shea Whigham, DeNiro, Don Johnson, Tom Savini), alot of explosions, an equal amount of decapitations (although I wish they weren’t digital), the Crazy Babysitter Twins as sexy nurses, etc.

The movie takes place in a world of racist politicians, corrupt political advisors, immigration cops and nutbag border patrol militias fighting a highly organized underground network of militant illegals. But having read an early draft of the script before the recent Arizona law turned this into a big election issue I gotta call sucker on the people who seem to take it seriously as an angry anti-anti-immigration statement. In fact in my review of the script I made a wish for somebody on Fox News to “get riled up” about it, because I thought it would be funny for all those windbag pundits to have to decide their stance on a Danny Trejo movie. I already saw talkbackers on Harry’s review complaining about its depiction of anti-immigration people as racist gun nuts, when in reality it’s not that cut and dry, there are many different facets to this thing, obviously some of them have shot people for reasons barely even having to do with how completely racist they all are.

Nah, I’m just playing with you, I know it’s a complex issue. Let’s everybody calm down before you guys start shooting minorities. It’s just jokes. Anyway my point is that this is a movie about a badass illegal alien who hacks up bad guys with knives and garden tools and plays tricks like videotaping himself fucking a guy’s wife and daughter, leaving the camera on the guy’s desk but taking the ladies away passed out naked in the back of a hearse. What I’m proposing is that perhaps working a thoughtful, nuanced exploration of the immigration issues raised by the plot would not be an improvement in this particular case. In this movie broader is better. But to be honest the right wingers in this are not even as exaggerated as, say, the racist white cops in the DOLEMITE pictures. I’m sure they meant them to be when they had Johnson shoot a pregnant Mexican so the baby wouldn’t be born a citizen, but then the Republicans went and started talking about changing the 14th amendment. So don’t put that one on MACHETE. That was supposed to be a joke, it was that representative from Utah that made it seem like the boot might fit.

Nothing in the movie can really be taken seriously, but I don’t think it’s a parody either. It genuinely respects the same conventions of Badass Cinema that we do, even if they make us laugh. So Machete is a good cop who disobeys orders to do the right thing, he often finds himself carrying naked damsels over his shoulder, he has a little bit of a “just how badass is he” moment (”He’s FBI, CIA and DEA all rolled into one!”) although I remember one from the script that I wish was still in there (something about his “Old Testament style concepts of vengeance”). His wife and child are killed, his brother (Cheech Marin) is a priest who used to be a gunfighter, he has a bullet stuck in his skull, he wins a street fight without putting down his taco. These are the types of things I enjoy.

So MACHETE is a real fun time at the movies, but I do think it could be better. The biggest problem is the same one I had with ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO: there are so many different characters that there’s not enough focus on the lead badass I came to see. I mean there are alot of really cool characters and performances, and I was more interested in what would happen to them than I was with PLANET TERROR. And I’ll go over some of them individually here in a minute. But like I said, there are six major villains and two female lead/love interests not even including the two girls he makes out with under the waterfall. Alot of these characters could almost be a spin-off on their own, but shit, I’m still hoping for Johnny Depp in “THE MAN WITH NO EYES” ever since the after-the-credits deal in MARIACHI 4. MACHETE is the same deal, there’s so much going on here that it has to spend more time than you’d expect on talking about what’s going on and less than you’d expect on glorifying Machete. Let’s be honest, for a movie where Danny Trejo kills this many people it’s kind of slow. But not that bad.

I guess it has a unique problem from being adapted from a trailer: all the parts that are designed to be the highlights are the old parts you’ve already seen before. It is kind of funny to find out their context, though. For example the younger of the two waterfall ladies is now supposed to be Lindsay Lohan.

Yeah, I think this would work with just Trejo and no other recognizable faces, but Rodriguez gets some mileage out of his weird all star cast. Lohan is one of the smaller roles, but it’s surprising to see her willing to just playing a drugged out ho. She gets a little bit of redemption (or something) so it comes across as a sympathetic portrait. I liked her in it.

The main female lead is Jessica Alba as immigration agent Sartana. Since her body is partly made of twigs she isn’t believable as a badass kickboxing cop, but she plays it admirably straight and doesn’t seem like as bad of an actor as she does in some movies. It’s always bothered me that they tried to paint her white in the Fantastical Four movies, because I figured if it was that important to have a blond haired blue eyed girl they shouldn’t have hired Jessica Alba. So it’s nice to see her actually playing a Latina. You know she’s for real too because when she kills a hitman in a lucha libre mask she knows to take off his mask, because she defeated him. Blue-eyed Mrs. Fantastic wouldn’t know to do that. I also gotta give Alba credit for doing a partially nude scene since she chose not to do that in SIN CITY even though she was playing a fucking stripper.

I think Alba gets a little more screen time than necessary. The other female lead is Michelle Rodriguez as Luz, who secretly runs an underground immigration network out of a taco truck. It’s weird because not long ago I was really tired of Rodriguez always playing these same type of tough girl roles, but somehow in AVATAR and this (and even FAST AND FURIOUS) she’s suddenly likable again and weirdly hotter than she used to be. In some people’s opinions.

Fahey gives maybe the best performance as Booth, the sort of Karl Rove figure who sets Machete up. He’s no stranger to the types of movies this is paying homage to, so he knows exactly what to do, and even his hair looks sleazy. Johnson comes off more comical because he has what I have to assume are an intentionally fake looking pair of sideburns and doesn’t take his sunglasses off until near the end of the movie. He plays his yahoo border vigilante kind of like Michael Parks plays Earl McGraw (who, incidentally, does not appear in this movie).

DeNiro is fine, a little goofy, meets a good end, but not necessarily a great performance. It definitely seems like comedy DeNiro as opposed to KING OF COMEDY DeNiro.

Daryl Sabara got some of the biggest reactions from the crowd I saw it with. He has a small role as somebody who works for Luz, and these twentysomething dudes could not stop laughing whenever he was on. I realized after a while that it was because they grew up on SPY KIDS, and also that I am really, really old.

But the biggest reaction was actually for Seagal when he first walked in early on as the cruel drug lord Torrez. I guess people hadn’t seen the advertising because there was gasps and “Is that Steven Seagal?!”s all around the theater. It’s a triumphant return to the big screen and I don’t know if you guys are aware of this but I actually have some interest in the subject of Seagal’s movies, there is a book, etc.

As a Seagalogist there’s alot to enjoy here even with his relatively limited amount of screen time. This is not only his first theatrical release since HALF PAST DEAD in 2002, it’s also his first villain role ever. He never had a henchman period like Van Damme, and even in the Korean film CLEMENTINE where he’s the guy the hero has to fight at the end he turns out to be a nice guy. As Torrez Seagal clearly enjoys being a bastard. Weirdly there are implications of human trafficking (a crime he was absurdly accused of after the filming) and he has an entourage of young Asian women bringing him things (a legal activity he has also been accused of). So I think they sort of take advantage of how people see him already to create this character.

Seagal has always enjoyed playing with accents and showing off his Spanish pronunciations, so he’s obviously happy to be playing a character who’s presumably Mexican. He gets to call people “cabrone” and “pendejo” and speak full lines in Spanish and everything. But don’t worry, he doesn’t leave his love of Asian culture behind. Torrez is also an expert swordsman and demonstrates knowledge of samurai concepts like honor, beheading and sepukku.

It’s weird but strangely natural to see Seagal on the other side, the guy who thinks he’s above the law. In fact I believe he refers to Machete as “notoriously hard to kill,” as if to say look fellas, Trejo is the Mason Storm in this one, he’s the one who’s hard to kill, I’m the one who he’s gonna take to the blood bank. Torrez has some qualities of a classic Seagal villain. Like Tommy Lee Jones in UNDER SIEGE he’s revealed to have the same background as Machete. His “just how evil is he?” scene is when he surprises Machete with the appearance of his wife and then beheads her in front of him. He’s kind of the top-of-the-pyramid villain posing a constant threat from far away, orchestrating events via webcam before showing up for a duel at the end.

If you’ve thought about Seagal being in this there’s something that maybe occurred to you: the EXECUTIVE DECISION factor. (SPOILER) And yes, as you could guess this is the second movie where Seagal gets to die (not counting HALF PAST DEAD where he dies but is resuscitated). You just know Trejo is gonna have to get revenge for Machete’s dead family and for Seagal putting him in a trunk at the beginning of MARKED FOR DEATH. In my opinion Torrez gets an excellent death, one of the best moments in the movie, and part of why I love it is because it’s not at all the approach I thought they would take. They find a way to make him more awesome in defeat. In fact you could argue that he isn’t even defeated. I’m already close to ruining it so I will say no more. You shouldn’t have read this though, I wrote SPOILER up there man. You can’t put this on me, pal.

But of course as exciting as it is to see Seagal in this unusual role, even for me the main attraction is Danny Trejo. We’ve admired his craggy face for decades, in good movies and very bad ones. We’ve seen him in that one scene of DEATH WISH 4, or playing various inmates, gang members or bodyguards. We’ve gotten excited when he gets a featured role like the knife thrower in DESPERADO or the bartender in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN or even in that shitty movie THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS because he got to shoot at Chow Yun Fat. Even though he has these directors who love him like Rodriguez and Rob Zombie he’s still just getting these supporting roles or cameos and then for his day job he still has to fight some Eyeborgs or something. So here at last is a movie that thinks Danny Trejo is just as awesome as we think he is, that makes the universe finally revolve around him, that gives him more women than Shaft.

So to wish it was even more Trejo-centric than it is might be asking too much. But fuck it. I’m asking for it, I want more Machete. The credits promise two sequels, and we’re gonna hold them to that.