Seagal Teaches us the Inadequacies of Government - 'Above the Law' Review...
OK, so I have been a fan of Steven Seagal since I was a kid (although I can't remember why my parents allowed me to watch early Seagal films), and lately I have been going back and watching his oldest and best movies. Out of pure curiosity, I looked him up on Youtube because I realized that I had never seen a single interview of him, and the first thing I find is an interview where he says, "I was born clairvoyant, I was born a healer, and I was born very different." He then goes on to claim that he, along with everyone else who shares his beliefs, is God, and then he apologized for any pain or suffering that he has ever caused any sentient being. Unbelievable! I don't know this guy at all!Anyway, Above the Law is totally different from how I remember it. Mostly I was struck by how gritty and poorly made it is. It starts out almost like an autobiography of Seagal. He tells his own story, about how he studied Aikido in Japan and soon found himself studying with the masters, but then he gets drafted by the CIA to go to Vietnam and any ties with reality that the movie might have had suddenly end.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Seagal is a powerful action star, and the film moves along at a fast clip as he is brought to Vietnam and almost immediately begins lashing out at military corruption as he sees a group of superiors mistreating prisoners. He is promptly booted from the military and becomes a cop in his hometown of Chicago.
We jump to years later, he's married and has a kid and a comfortable life as a police officer, but it seems that he never lost the bad taste in his mouth after seeing those officers interrogating an Vietnamese prisoner about drugs. Soon learns of a pretty major smuggling operation involving drugs and plastic explosives.
As he investigates deeper and deeper he discovers an intricate plot to assassinate a senator. And when I say intricate, I mean far more involved than the rest of the movie is able to carry. The movie is slow-moving and confusing, and the action is sloppy and careless. Nico, for example, at one point is on the roof of a moving car being fired at by two bad guys inside the car, neither of whom can manage to hit him even though he's less than a foot away from their heads. Makes me wish I was a bad guy in an old Seagal movie!
There is, of course, not an ounce of subtlety in the movie. I especially love the characterization. There is one scene where Nico is driving his car and he stops for some schoolkids to cross the road, waving and smiling to him as they do. Seconds later, the bad guys jump out of a nearby van and shove the kids out of the way and start shooting. Real deep character development there, guys!
Ultimately the movie makes a comment (which is spoon-fed to us as the end credits start to roll, by the way) about how as long as we have people who can escape investigation we'll always have people who are above the law. That strikes me as a little self-explanatory, but I can understand the message about the corruption of people in the CIA (or any other government institution) who feel that they can do whatever they want and never have to answer for it. But who's gonna answer for the insufferable stream of bad movies that Seagal has been issuing forth for the last decade and a half?
[caption id="attachment_33111" align="aligncenter" width="223" caption="3 Beans out of 5."]
[/caption] 
