Seagal's Best Film Ever? - 'Out For Justice' Review...
I just watched Out For Justice again for the first time in more than 15 years, and it's surprisingly different from how I remember it. I've seen a lot of Seagal's other work since then, mostly his more recent and more disappointing stuff, but mostly I'm struck by how much more abrasive and violent his character is. I mostly just remember that last fight scene with Richie and the part where he rescues the puppy that some guy dropped out of his car. But contrary to his normal fashion, Seagal's character is rough and violent and doesn't care a bit about the rules.Granted, Seagal has a tendency to play guys who don't care about rules, "go it alone cops" and whatnot, but in this movie he spends a lot of time throwing the first punches in situations where all he has to go on are suspicions.
By now, Seagal has discovered that the revenge theme is something of a cash cow for a guy like him (this continues right up to his 2009 film Driven to Kill), and it shows in Out For Justice. He plays Gino Felino, a Brooklyn cop whose best friend gets shot to death in the opening minutes of the movie in broad daylight in front of his wife and kids.
Complicating matters is that Bobby, his friend, was shot by Richie Madano, a brutal gangster with whom Bobby and Gino have been enemies since childhood. Gino sets out on a mission to find him and avenge his friend's death.
During his search for Bobby, he interrogates all of Bobby's crew on their own turf. Waltzing right into bars and smacking people around. Highly satisfying Seagal fare, I have to say, but a little out of character in the way he punches first and asks questions later. Or asks questions while punching, that's pretty effective too.
At any rate, it doesn't help that Gino had a tough childhood, his father struggled to provide a knife and scissor sharpening service in a time when more and more people were switching to disposable knives and scissors (although I guess those never really caught on), leaving Gino and his family pretty broke until a local friend of the family, Mr. Madano, gave Richie money so he could go to the amusement park with the other kids. Now, he is hunting for Mr. Madano's son and plans to kill him. Oh, what a tangled web we weave.
Richie, by the way, is a brilliantly vicious and heartless performance by William Forsythe, and is arguably the best villain in any Steven Seagal film ever made. He's brutally violent and completely unhinged (no doubt because of a tremendous crack habit), and clearly doesn't care if he lives or dies, making him all the more dangerous. Forsythe's performance almost overshadows even Seagal's, and that's saying a lot, given that this might be Seagal's best film ever.
But what really sets Out For Justice apart is that it pulls no punches. It's tremendously and unapologetically violent (there is a scene involving a bad guy getting shot in the leg near the end of the movie that's one of the most graphic and disturbing images I've ever seen in an action movie) and yet has character development and an interesting story, which has become something that is almost uniformly lacking in the Seagal films of at least the last ten years or so.
Seagal in his prime! Enjoy!
[caption id="attachment_33118" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="4.5 Beans out of 5."]
[/caption] 
