Above The Law
Steven Seagal came into Hollywood filmmaking with a backstory that would make most established movie stars envious.  Said to be a world class aikido martial artist who had also worked as a Special Forces Operative for The CIA, Seagal had ultimately landed in Southern California working as a martial arts instructor for the rich and famous beautiful people, reportedly having been told on a number of occasions that he had the look and presence to be a movie star himself, but it wasnât until he had legendary Hollywood power player Mike Ovitz as one of his students that the wheels started to turn in such a way that before anybody knew it he was being set up as being the next big action movie hero. They certainly tried to make it as prestigious a project as possible, pooling their story from a pile of rejected Clint Eastwood scripts and bringing in director Andrew Davis who would later hit the big time with The Fugitive but who at least here gave us a great LOOKING movie (set in Chicago) and a brisk, tight pace that doesnât give us much time to ponder any story absurdities. To top it off, they cast 70s female action legend Pam Grier to play the partner of Seagalâs rogue cop along with Sharon Stone (sporting a little bit of butterface) as his wife and a slew of fine character actors in supporting roles topped off by veteran bad guy Henry Silva playing the lead villain here.  The real question was in the rewrites that were made to the script by Seagal and Davis, particularly the material related to the alleged activities of The CIA during both The Vietnam War and afterwards as Seagal had insisted that he had wanted elements of the story to be âautobiographicalâ. Itâs not known if the production had run into any real problems from the government concerning some of the âallegationsâ put forth by the story, although having CIA bad guys in a movie was really nothing new at the time but having an alleged former real life agent not only starring in but also contributing to the storyline of the film must have given at least a couple of intelligence officials some serious pause. Released in 1988, the film succeeded in putting over Seagal enough to move him along to his next film, the undisputed action revenge classic Hard To Kill and the rest was history as far as sustaining his run as an A list movie star until he was downgraded to supporting roles and making his starring movies almost exclusively out of Eastern Europe. For all of this particular filmâs flaws, the fact that itâs definitely well directed is what keeps it working. The film starts off with Seagal doing voiceover narration talking about how he was born in Sicily and had emigrated to this country when he was 7 years old (not true) and upon attending his first martial arts demonstration as a boy found himself hooked into wanting to learn more all while we see old (and real) photographs showing the young Seagal growing up before getting into The CIA / Vietnam portion of the film where Seagalâs Nico Toscanni and his best friend / mentor (Chelsie Ross) arrive at a Vietnamese hut so that Seagal can witness his first âchemical interrogationâ of Viet Kong soldiers at the hands of the cold and ruthless Zagon (Henry Silva). This means whipping out with the hypodermic needles full of truth serum and injecting them nonstop into the victims (with the strong possibility of a painful death in the process) before threats of dismemberment come next. But when Seagal witnesses Silva demanding to know where the opium fields are located instead of extracting useful strategic military intelligence, he calls bullshit and knocks Silva on his ass instead with only his friend being there saving his life from the wrath of Silva. Flash forward 15 years and Seagalâs Nico is now a cop on the streets of Chicago with Grier (shortly to leave the force in order to join The DAâs office) as his partner and it isnât long before he gets a tip that his wayward female cousin is hanging out in a house of ill refute doing drugs and giving away sexual favors. Seagal comes in and busts the place up (naturally) but soon gets an even hotter tip from the junkie screwing his cousin that a MAJOR drug deal is about to go down, being given all of the details and setting things up for a major bust. Little does he know that the real item being sold is military grade C4 explosives and upon arresting the perpetrators, is suddenly approached by FBI agents who secure the immediate release of the criminals with instructions not to follow or harass them since they happen to be âcooperatingâ with an ongoing investigation. Seagal sees through all of this, connecting the same criminals to a terrorist attack involving the same explosives and as he digs deeper into just why the government seems so preoccupied with protecting these scumbags, he eventually runs up against Silva once again. Unfortunately, the film seems to be trying to play up some armchair politics (Seagalâs?) with any number of different crimes and atrocities being seen and hinted at during various points including narcotics, prostitution, terrorism and even the endangering of illegal immigrants from south of the border (it turns out that the priest at Seagalâs Catholic church is harboring a whole bunch of them). In the end, it doesnât really matter what particular crime it is that Silva and his goons specialize in, all that seems to matter is that theyâre behind it and that they have the backing of The U.S. Government with Silva more than ready to come into any situation with his handy âdoctorâs bagâ to find out any necessary information needed especially with he and his goons ultimately planning an assassination on a crusading U.S. Senator who is threatening to expose all of the illegal activity that is being done and the fact that it is incredibly important to Silva that nobody outside of his own trusted circle knows about these plans (although how a young novice priest who gets subjected to the needles managed to find out anything that in turn made him a target is never properly explained). In the end, none of that really matters in terms of any of the actual crimes being committed by the government as it’s all just a murky mess (purposely?) possibly so the real U.S. government wouldnât literally block the release of the film suffice to say that anytime Silva comes into the story is reason enough to believe that lines have been crossed. The real reason that the film has any real entertainment value is in several setpiece fight scenes that usually depict Seagal going against multiple opponents with invariably the same outcome. Seagal made sure that the filmmakers exclusively employed his own dojo students to play any and all of the thugs that he takes on at various times (although the aforementioned terrorist bombing is shown being carried out by a woman who is never seen again) although curiously a known female badass like Grier is never shown standing shoulder to shoulder with her partner since she is continuously told to either stay in the car or to wait behind before Seagal walks into a particularly hairy situation. But watching Seagal practice his aikido moves (which mostly uses advantages with leverage to either disable your opponent and even to break bones or cause death) on various idiot bad guys is mostly fun to watch except when he leads four would be killers at gunpoint into an innocent business ownerâs grocery store only for all of them to make a rush at him all at once and in the process destroying the poor guyâs store as Seagal lays them all out despite the ownerâs protests (maybe it was meant to be funny?). But another good bit is when Seagal is surrounded by armed thugs only to disarm the one carrying a machete and then IMMEDIATELY hack off the hand of the ONLY thug to be carrying a gun as he nonchalantly beats another thug down with the HANDLE of the machete. Even as we question the plausibility of high level CIA spooks like Silva openly consorting with low level street punks to achieve some sort of apparent common goal, anyone with a distaste for Seagal might be pleased to know that during the filmâs final confrontation, Silva would legitimately break Seagalâs nose even as Seagal would return the favor by legitimately breaking Silvaâs arm (shown on camera). In the end, definitely a cinematic effort that would establish Seagal as being second to none when it came to fight scenes even if the actual story itself and the motives behind what it was really trying to say were just as shadowy as the man himselfâŚ
7/10