Simply Perfect

Overrated

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Routine, predictable and bloodthirsty, this time Seagal winds up in the slammer, escapes and proves he didn't intentionally steal $20m and seeking vengeance on the man who framed him. Today You Die has some good action, and a buddy exchange that works quite well. The third act peters out a little in terms of tension because the villains are no match for Seagal and the villain is revealed too early. As a footnote, this is at least watchable compared to the likes of Submerged and Half Past Dead where the directors went for crass visual tropes to try and spice up the camerawork.

Unlike the list of producers in the opening credits, I'll keep this short. This is another of Seagal's latter day "bad" movies. You know this within the first five minutes. Stock footage ripped from another flick, another body double for Steven in a disjointed, awful fight scene. Today You Die is a rarity in it was filmed in the States and features recognizable faces in the supporting cast. Oh, but this was 2005, and we hadn't relocated to Romania or the Eastern Bloc yet. The storyline is simple enough. A former thief wants to do honest jobs. Okay … but he does so by working for some mysterious man on high who surrounds himself with goon-like subordinates? Have I mentioned the laughable quips about dreams and mysticism that come courtesy of Seagal? Notice how I haven't mentioned any of the supporting cast yet? Yeah for good reason.Of course, this is an action flick, direct to video withstanding, and all would be forgiven if the action was well shot and exciting. Its not. No, the best thing I can say about Today You Die is Steven actually smiles. Its something you don't see very often anymore.

Steven Seagal does it again. Another daft and dull… well for most part straight-to-DVD action vehicle with him whispering his lines, providing intellectual discussions (about dreams and their meanings; "I had an awful dream.") and whooping some ass… well maybe not so as the director does a really good job hiding Seagal's face during many of the fight sequences. Quick combat we get a good look, but the extended scenes not so. Thanks stunt-man. Quick and flashy editing helps, which has Seagal always walking away from an encounter with his back facing the camera. Seagal is a thief (a Robin Hood of sorts) who decides to go straight, but a job he takes on as an armour guard truck driver turns out to be a set-up. He finds himself spending time in prison, but he happens to be the only one who knows where the stolen 20 million dollars was hidden. The criminals who set him up want their money, but Seagal wants revenge when he breaks out (in a rather unconvincing manner) with a hommie. "Today You Die" actually started off promising (with an explosively barnstorming car chase sequence), but when it hit's the prison yard and from then onwards it rapidly becomes uninterestingly old-hat with its heavy-handed plot devices (betrayal, corruption), try-hard attitude and flimsy characters. Well at least it provides hilarity. Just listen to the lame dialogues. "He's evil. Something beyond this earth." Throw in one wannabe gangsta known as Ice Kool (Anthony "Treach" Criss), talking all tough and the jovial banter between the two is embarrassingly bad. Watching Seagal going around handing out his own sort of punishment simply was mind-numbing… since Seagal is invincible. Not even a scratch. Must be that politeness and muddled intentions. Good for a laugh, but not much else."You want to dance with the devil. Lets dance."

I may sound biased, but I don't like Steven Seagal(except for Under Siege and a couple of others) and most of the direct-to-video releases he's done. Today You Die is a pretty poor movie, however with stuff like Submerged and particularly Out for a Kill, Seagal has done worse. The photography and editing aren't as slipshod or as dull as they can be, Nick Mancuso is good and the final explosion is spectacular. Even Seagal is better than usual, however that doesn't necessarily mean he was good, in fact it was still a lazy performance but at least the lines were intelligible. The action didn't do much for me, because of the sluggish pace in general of the film, it felt unexciting, while the plot is derivative with too many plot holes to push a delivery truck through, Treech is very irritating, the script is really quite dumb in places and the soundtrack was not to my taste, too loud and overdone. All in all, a poor film but not among Seagal's worst. 3/10 Bethany Cox