“Well,
I’m sorry to hear about that. Because now, I will snatch every motherfuckin’
birthday.”
On Friday, I finally received my DVD of A Good Man after putting off buying
it for two years. This will probably be the last Steven Seagal movie I purchase
for the foreseeable future, because the man’s politics, conspiracy theories,
and scandals have become intolerable and I no longer want to put money in his
pocket. I’ll still review the films of his that I own as I please, and to that
end, I’m reviewing this one. I initially wrote about A Good Man when it came out in 2014, but my perspective has changed
enough since then to revisit the movie. No analysis here; just plain old
reviewing.
The story: While tracking a dangerous arms
merchant in Romania, ex-Special Ops agent Alexander (Seagal) is caught up in
the perils of a family threatened by a local gangster.
In the “behind the scenes” featurette, the
filmmakers go on about their intention to make this more of a “classic”
Seagal movie, with more in common with his past work than the DTV stuff of the last 12 years. Their statements remind me of those made by Don FauntLeRoy
and Christopher “mink” Morrison while hyping their own Seagal vehicles, and considering
that, I could have told A Good Man’s creators that the effort was in vain. It’s impossible to
turn back the hands of time, and A Good
Man is never going to be mistaken for Seagal’s Warner Bros. adventures.
The story isn’t like anything he’d have done back then, and the film doesn’t
play out like his best work, either. (This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as I’ve enjoyed
the unpredictable nature of Steven’s non-theatrical work.) This one has some interesting touches,
but it’s not the miraculous return to form we might have hoped for.
One thing that I enjoy is how
Seagal shares the action scenes with a prominent costar. He’d done this before
with Byron Mann, Steve Austin, and Bren Foster, and now, Victor Webster takes up
the role of the workhorse. I hadn’t seen the Mutant
X star before, but I became a fan over the course of the film. He’s the
total package, possibly the best actor in the film, and in some ways, he plays the real hero of the story. The most
important thing that he contributes, though, is a smattering of solid fight
scenes. There are nine full-length ones, and Webster leads five while Seagal takes
four. Some viewers who pine for Seagal’s glory days may not satisfied by the simple insertion of a nimbler sidekick, but I think it’s
great – not just for the general upgrade of fisticuffs but also for the variety
it brings them. Webster has a noticeably different fighting style than
Seagal and thereby brings an alternative tone to the brawls. The Buddhist
Bonecrusher mixes up his game a little by regularly drawing a short sword (“Oni
no hocho – the devil’s butcher knife”), but too many shots still feature a
stunt double. Doubling in non-combat scenes seems rare and Seagal overall is
more involved in second unit shots, but still, the fights could be better.
Beyond its action scenes, the movie is
pretty decent, if conventional. The way that Alexander pursues the arms dealer
– Mr. Chen (Tzi Ma) – is fairly inspired, and the way the movie handles intrigue is one of its best surprises. Less
pleasant is how the screenplay blatantly kills time with two unnecessary police characters
(Ana Perjoiu and Ovidiu Niculescu). There are a lot of European gangsters,
scenes in strip clubs, some kidnapping – all things you can see in plenty of
other Seagal features, so it feels a little more akin to previous films than I’d
have wished for.
Dramatically, the movie is a thing of extremes,
and one of the few films for which Seagal can claim to be one of the best
performers. He can do these tough guy roles in his sleep, and Victor Webster
and Tzi Ma provide solid anchoring performances alongside him. Everyone else,
though, is in serious trouble. I respect actors who have the courage to perform
in a second language, but holy heck, was this script ever not written for them!
Some performers obviously deliver their lines phonetically, but even those who
have a greater grasp of English have a tough time making their dialogue sound
natural. Typical U.S. expressions sound contrived when coming from people who already
have difficulty pronouncing basic English words, and given that the film already
features a good deal of subtitled Romanian dialogue, I would have preferred a
little more of that over what’s there.
In the DVD featurette, at least one of the
filmmakers alludes to the film as a morality tale, but even if it fits that
label, it’s got a pretty mean spirit. I hate it when writers use arbitrary
cruelty as cinematic shorthand for “this is gritty and realistic,” and A Good Man is full of such instances.
The threat posed to Victor Webster’s onscreen sisters (Iulia Verdes and Sofia
Nicolaescu) by the gangsters is a driving factor of the story, but this could
have been conveyed without the former being called “bitch” at every other
opportunity or the latter being sold to a pedophilic businessman (Massimo
Dobrovic) for a little while. These are unnecessary, unimaginative touches that
merely strain the film’s likeability.
A
Good Man remains one of the better-written,
better-produced, and better-treated exploits from Seagal since 2002, and in
that regard, my opinion of the film hasn’t changed much since I first saw it.
However, my opinion’s lessened in regard to the action and my appreciation of
how the characters are handled. This is a movie for established fans, and it’s
a decent one, but it’s not worth the money of a rental for people who either
don’t like the star or are looking for a more creative slice of martial arts.
A Good Man (2014)
Directed by Keoni Waxman (The Keeper)
Written by Keoini Waxman, Jason
Rainwater (Chick Street Fighter)
Starring Steven Seagal, Victor
Webster, Iulia Verdes (The Last Incubus),
Tzi Ma (Rush Hour 1 & 3)
Cool costars: Martial arts master
and security specialist Ron Balicki (The
Prodigy) plays one of Mr. Chen’s two main bodyguards. The other is played
by Elias Ferkin, who’s previously appeared in two other Seagal films – Shadow Man and Born to Raise Hell.
Title refers to: Alexander, described as “a good man who does bad things to bad people.”
Potential triggers: Extreme
violence, child abuse, child murder, violence against women,
sexist dialogue, kidnapping
Copyright Lions Gate Entertainment,
Inc.
B-Movie Dragons 