My first Steven Seagal film was Hard to Kill. I might not have caught up until Out for Justice so I didn’t even have the full, totally credible backstory that he was a CIA black ops agent who went rogue after witnessing US agents performing enhanced interrogation in Vietnam. Above the Law was also before he grew his ponytail out (only to cut it for Under Siege), and he got a lot more mussed up than it ever would in subsequent films.
Perhaps it’s hard to explain if you weren’t there. Whether accurately represented or not, Aikido was unlike traditional kicking martial arts we’d typically seen in movies. He even breaks his first arm in this one, and seeing bones break backwards was also new. Seagal was always the righteous, peaceful hero and it was only because bullies and corrupt villains came at him that he was forced to fight. If they’d just leave the innocent alone, they’d have no beef with him. Whether he lived up to those ideals in real life or not, the persona embodied admirable values.
Toy Robot’s new 4K UHD maintains all the film grain of director Andrew Davis’s gritty Chicago shoot.
Bonus features include an interview with composer David Michael Frank who did Hard to Kill and Out for Justice too. He may also do a new martial arts film that Seagal shot a cameo for but it’s stuck in limbo so far.
An archival Seagal interview from AskJimmyCarter.com displays his full persona. He says “to act is to not act” and trash talks the action stars he would comfortably replace for a few years, but not forever.
Andrew Davis recorded a new commentary with Pam Grier, who plays Seagal’s partner in the film. They get off to a good start with Grier sassing Seagal’s childhood photos and revealing how she messed with him between takes. Davis says he and Seagal agreed politically. I bet they don’t anymore now that he’s moved to Russia and gotten close with Putin.
The talk does slow down a bit and become more sporadic, but Davis defends Seagal running. He says Seagal was tall so he’s got a lot of limbs to move. He also cops to using AI for storyboards towards the end. It’s presumably for films in development that he’s still pitching.
Grier teases some interesting projects too, including streaming series about her life and a Foxy Brown reboot!