The Foreigner

When you watch a Seagal movie, you expect good action. You expect fighting, not just a lot of shooting like in this flick. And: you expect a rather simple story. OK, I can live with a more complex story even though it's a Seagal movie. But this one, this is, I don't know what to say. It's very, very confusing indeed. At the end of the movie, I had major problems figuring out what had happened. And I know I'm not the only one. The story lacks so much information and is so full of plot holes that it's nearly impossible to keep track of what's happening in the movie. There are many people in the movie, people change sides all the time, and it switches locations too often. Terrible. I just don't understand why it looks like Seagal is making a sort of sequel to this one.

The Foreigner is a straight-to-video Steven Seagal film that was originally intended to be released as a theatrical feature in March, 2003, an intention which was reportedly reversed when Seagal's prior film (Half Past Dead) tanked at the box office. According to some reports, the film had a lavish $20 million budget, including location shoots in Warsaw and Paris, and was completed as part of the studio's obligation to a two-picture deal which was negotiated after the relative success of Exit Wounds seemed to indicate that Seagal still had a solid following.

Despite the size of their investment, Sony Screen Gems probably made the right move in shelving this movie. It is nearly incomprehensible. What am I saying? It IS incomprehensible. I don't think I understood what was going on at all, except in the very broadest terms.

Seagal is employed by a mysterious guy to deliver a mysterious package to another mysterious guy. Other mysterious guys try to stop him. Other highly mysterious guys try to kill the moderately mysterious guys who try to stop him. Other really, really mysterious guys do especially mysterious stuff, all of which which was in fact too mysterious for me to figure out. The intended recipient's mysterious wife tries to intercept the package before it can be delivered to her husband. Because he is a self-proclaimed "consummate professional" who has been hired to deliver the package only into the hands of the husband, Seagal at first defies the wife, then later gets involved in protecting her and her daughter from other mysterious guys with unexplained agendas, as well as from her husband.

Many people have mysterious, cryptic conversations. Many people blow each other's brains out. Some guys seem to die more than once, while in other scenes gunfights end without a clear view of the result, so the audience sees somebody die, but is not sure which one of the gunslingers is headed to boot hill. Allegiances shift often, adding further mystery. Or should I say confusion?

I don't know who was on whose side, or what anybody really wanted, and the resolution was as unsatisfying as the exposition. At the end of the movie, I just sat there thinking, "That's the end? What the ...?"

I couldn't even figure out the credits. IMDb says that Aussie actress Kate Fischer (from "Sirens") was in this film, but I'll be damned if I know where. Either she was left on the cutting room floor or she wisely opted out of the project. She could have found some activities more beneficial to her career, like having unnecessary surgery, ripping those pesky insert cards out of magazines, or taking some community college courses in animal husbandry.

Seagal used to be a pretty fair hand-to-hand combatant, but the action scenes didn't manage to redeem this film at all. Seagal is in his 50's now and is a very large man, so he is reduced to a mimimal level of physical exertion and even during that he is contained in a knee-length coat to hide his inchoate Brandoesque girth. He might even get a little winded removing the wrappers from candy bars, although that's understandable if you estimate just how many of those he must have to eat to maintain his present girth.

Steven Seagal seemed to be making a comeback with Exit Wounds, but if his last film was half past dead, this one must be pretty close to filling out the other half.

1/2 out of ****

The most painfully boring action movie I've seen since (insert any recent Steven Seagal venture), I'm starting to wonder if satiating my morbid curiosity over the next Seagal disaster is worth wasting time for the hell I endure. To date, I have not genuinely enjoyed any of the man's movies (well, not entirely true, Executive Decision was excellent, but not Seagal's movie, thankfully) and it's almost always because of him. With a few exceptions, I can easily picture different stars in his past roles that would have made these subpar action pictures superior to...well, how they turned out with Mr. Expressionless himself.

Such is the case with The Foreigner, which stars Steven Seagal as Jonathon Cold, a mysterious guy who delivers packages. Gasp, it's like The Transporter, only without the hugely charismatic lead and thrilling action sequences. I'd delve further into The Foreigner's plot, if only I understood what the hell was going on. The basic premise is that Cold's latest package is something everyone wants to get their hands on and they'll kill him for it.

But not a single plot point is the slightest bit comprehensible. Supporting characters appear at random, looking for the package, rarely ever establishing a clear reason why the want or need it. Excruciating monologue upon excruciating monologue is inserted into the script to no avail; I wonder if the actors involved even understood what they were saying or doing. The movie's silly, too, with Seagal's character acting in ways that might seem clever to a five-year old (switch cars with someone else, give bad guy a fake package), which apparently means most of these bad guys aren't much smarter than your average kindergartener.

After Exit Wounds, The Foreigner became (mostly) a return to typical Seagal. Like his previous early works, the title could be used to describe Seagal's character (i.e. Steven Seagal is...Out for Justice, Marked for Death, Above the Law, Hard to Kill), the fight scenes are almost as short as those in The Patriot, and the lead villain is pathetically easy to defeat in hand-to-hand combat. In an attempt to give the movie style, director Michael Oblowitz applies slow motion to the shootouts, sometimes also speeding up the footage. How exactly he thinks this could do anything for the movie (especially for action scenes as short as these) is baffling.

As usual, Seagal is wooden as ever, proving himself the worst actor ever to have been considered a star. He's also getting chubbier, usually hiding his weight gain with abnormally large coats. If someone else, say Jason Statham, had this role instead, the movie's quality would easily jump up a *, as plot incomprehensibility could still be made somewhat bearable with a charismatic lead (which Statham amply provides).

I read somewhere The Foreigner is originally slated for a theatrical release, but after Half Past Dead bombed, the studio dumped this into the video market almost immediately. So the movie should be very availabe at your nearest rental store, but I suggest you ignore it, even if you are a Seagal fan, and check The Transporter out instead, just to see why Jason Statham will be cinema's next big action star and how a movie about a guy who delivers packages can be made with style.

The movie fascinated me because of the plot, but once it got underway my fascination took a different direction. I think for the only time in my life I laughed at people getting shot. Segall's Dutch accomplice shoots everyone! He himself is shot four different times. The hotel clerk won't give out a room number? Ask her to call and see which number she dials. Then, instead of unobtrusively going to that room, shoot her!

The farce is complete when Segall faces down an opponent holding a gun 20 yards away. He flings a flight recorder CD with a little C4 stuck on like gum at his assailant. We see the disk igniting in mid-air in slow motion. Does the other guy shoot? No, he just stares at a CD coming to blow him away. The CD has the extra fun effect of propelling him backwards and upwards through a conveniently placed 2nd story picture window.

I must admit; I enjoyed this so much that I immediately went out to get another Segall movie to see if it is as ridiculous. I can't explain why this is entertaining, but it is! IT IS!!

Steven Seagal has starred in some great action flicks down the years – but unfortunately this ain't one of ‘em. As other hacks have pointed out on this page, the plot is messy and incoherent and it's difficult most of the time to even work out who are supposed to be the `good guys' and who are supposed to be the `bad guys'. It borrows a major plot element from the movie `Ronin' from a few years back, namely a mysterious package that various mysterious factions are desperate to get their hands on and will walk over corpses in order to do so, and like that movie this one also has a European setting. The plot of `Ronin' was also a bit convoluted and confusing and required the viewer to pay close attention to what was going on. But the `The Foreigner' is far worse. It tries too hard to be intriguing and mysterious and in the process ends up as a complete mess. And then we come to Mr. Seagal himself. Okay, he's the on dark side of 50 now, but that in itself isn't necessarily a barrier to being able to carry off a tough-guy action role. For example, Clint Eastwood was older than Seagal is now when he starred as the hard-as-nails Marine gunnery sergeant in `Heartbreak Ridge' in the mid-1980s, but he carried off that role superbly and convincingly because he was lean, mean and obviously very fit. Seagal on the other hand has quite clearly gone to seed, allowing himself to balloon (as others have also pointed out here) to almost Brando-esque proportions and quite frankly looked laughable here. And then there's that annoying, headache-inducing `fast-motion, slow-motion' camerawork that unfortunately seems to be all the rage with movie-makers right now. Hopefully it's a trend will soon die out (that movie `The Matrix' has got a lot to answer for). In a nutshell – sub-standard and very typical `straight-to-video' fare and really only recommended for die-hard Seagal enthusiasts. 3 out of 10 (and I'm being generous).