Steven Seagal appreciation thread

Cafe Society
1

Yeah, I expect to take some flack for this, but fuck you.

I don’t care about his acting, I don’t care much about action movies in general, but damn Steven Seagal is cool.

The first movie of his that I ever saw was FIRE DOWN BELOW, and laughed my ass of at a terribly cut scene where it looked like Seagal whipped around and bashed an unsuspecting gaffer with a pole.

The left-wing message definitely jumped out at me, it was such a diversion from the usual “military action solves the world’s problems”.

What really made the movie was the old hillbilly doing a jig at the end of it, that left all of us gasping.

The next Seagal movie I saw was THE PATRIOT and, much to my glee, it had another jigging old man. I thought that was amazing, it was easily the best motif I’d ever seen. Unfortunately, those were the only two Seagal movies with a jigging old man. (The Patriot also had a really nice shot of soldiers picking flowers to save the world.)

Still, I was sold. The left-leaning messages were a breath of fresh air, usual action movie contrivances were ignored (like the clichéd love interest and the never-ending final fight scene). I love the way he kills indiscrimately to protect the environment. There’s an awesome scene in ON DEADLY GROUND where he runs into a racist Mike Starr in a bar. Seagal beats up all his friends then challenges Starr to a slap fight. After Seagal wins the slap fight, he punches Starr in the stomach then starts a philosphy lecture. “What does it take to change the essence of a man…” Awesome! I’ve never seen anything like that before! Any way you cut it, that was really frickin’ unique.

Plus, Seagal’s fight scenes appealed to me as a martial artist. Not only is he a highly accomplished martial artist, but his on-screen fights were fairly realistic. The craziness of the man’s mystique is only enhanced by being recognized as a reincarnated lama.

Seagal is the sole reason I can sit through action movies now. He’s the only martial arts star I respect for what he brings to his movies. Heck, that I respect at all. (Bruce Lee is someone I highly respect, but I consider him a martial artist first and foremost,not a movie star.)

2

Hmm. Maybe I’ll have to watch those, now.

I met the guy. He’s really, really big. And I met him before he tubbed out.

I really enjoyed his first couple of movies, particularly because they opened up the genre to the possibilities of the “soft” arts (now if only they would make a great judo movie!), but then he started to believe his own hype, and blah blah blah.

Again, perhaps early on, but that knife fight with Tommy Lee Jones was ridiculous.

Come again? I stopped paying attention when the big SS started founding his own styles and shit. What’s this about being a lama?

3

I like Steven Seagal too!

When one of his movies comes out, I always go see it, even though it may look like it’s going to be crap. The first R-rated movie I ever saw was On Deadly Ground. Oooooweeeee was that cool! That slap 'em, punch 'em scene was awesome.

Yeah, I like Steven Seagal. So what if he’s got the same range of facial expressions as a sea urchin. So what if he’s made a few movies that were thinly veiled Big Oil Sucks ads. It’s fun to watch him chew up the scenery and get the scumbags.

And after all, it’s just plain cool to see a guy with a ponytail and a necklace kicking ass in a bar fight.

Out of the closet, all you Seagal fans! :smiley:

4

I’ve always thought Steven Seagal was an oaf. Today by coincidence I rented an old video for my son - My Giant - in which Seagal plays himself and he obviously doesn’t take himself as seriously as I thought.

Guess I’ll rent the stuff that gets plaudits in this thread and try them out. I’ve only seen Above the Law and Hard to Kill and gave up after them.

5

Yeah, Seagal is cool, except when he gets too full of himself. I like that he crafted a “serious” persona in his films, as if he’s got some kind of message to put out there (something about not trusting government agencies like the CIA).

But in interviews he can be a bit pretentious. One of the best films he was in was EXECUTIVE DECISION, where he gets killed off early in the film for shock value (you’re not supposed to expect the action star to die that soon in an action movie), leaving Kurt Russell to take over. A good film, but Seagal more or less dumped on it in interviews, saying it was okay for him to do a bit part in it, but it wasn’t good enough for him to star in.

UNDER SEIGE was more or less the high point of his career. The latest one (with Tom Arnold) was a bit of a comeback, but I was sorry to see that the producers added the wirework to the martial arts mix. I always liked Seagal because he kept his feet on the ground in the fight scenes – he wasn’t trying to do some ballet of violence; he was just trying to take the other guy out fast and neat.

Steve Biodrowski
http://www.thescriptanalyst.com

6

Check it out:

http://tibet.dk/karmapa_trust/seagal.htm

7

I think he’s being really smart with his comeback. Hooking up with Joel Silver was a definite advantage, but getting DMX to co-star definitely hooked the right crowd. He took some harsh words for waiting so long to commit to another movie after the success of Exit Wounds, but now he’s got a movie with Ja Rule coming out. That’s going to appeal to just the right crowd, once again.

Whether it’s him or an agency, someone’s managing him right.

8

I hated that part of Executive Decision. “Hey, it’s Steven Seagal - he’s dead.”

9

I’ll stick up for Segal, but with qualifiers. First of all, his earlier movies were much better – he actually did an entertaining job of beating people up, breaking people’s arms, throwing people through plate glass. He had a unique style. In his later films, he seems to be skipping most of the actual martial arts, and he’s relying more and more on some character in the movie delivering a canned spiel about what a superbadass he is, rather than showing us superbadass action.

In the early movies, his action scenes sell his persona. When his action sequences become boring later on, his persona is not enough to deliver itself. He’s corny.

I’ve been in this argument before on the SDMB, and I will state again that the knife fight scene was fantastic. Yes, of course, nobody ever knife fights like that in real life. I believe you, without question. But it was a great scene, and not any less great for being completely insane.

As for Segal’s lamahood, it hasn’t made him any cooler. A lot of people feel that he basically bought a religious title, and in any case, while I’m not an expert on eastern religions, I thought such a title was supposed to go with a certain pacifism, which seems contrary to a career of making action films (though it may be consistent with Segal’s no longer kicking any ass).

10

I love it when Will Sasso plays Steven Seagal on Mad TV.

11

I liked ‘Above the Law’, and I respect the guy’s martial arts ability, but there’s something not quite right about him. The claims he makes for his past don’t hold up to scrutiny. His politics are bizarre. From all accounts I’ve heard, he’s quite a prima donna. And some of his later movies are just pure dreck.

When I saw ‘Above the Law’, I thought perhaps we were seeing a new kind of renaissance man. Writer, producer, star, he could speak several languages, claimed to an ex-CIA spook (the movie was supposedly semi-autobiographical), was the first caucasian allowed to open an Aikido Dojo in Japan, etc. So I was pretty impressed. But now it seems like a lot of that was not much more than self-promotion.

12

His movies were never fun for me because, at least in his early flicks, no one ever lands a punch on him. Not even the biggest baddie at the end of every movie. That’s not exciting. I find Van Damme films much more entertaining because he always gets the complete crap beat out of him before rallying.

13

I really enjoyed his early films, but after he started to plump up, I really lost respect for him. I just have a hard time respecting an out-of-shape martial artist.

14

I like the Seagal movies. Also, movies with Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Chow Yun-fat.

15

I like the seagal, sure his acting sucks, but who goes to see those sort of films for acting anyway. I did like his earlier stuff more. I thought the patriot and exit wounds sucked. I hate the wire stuff.

16

I saw him do an interview where he was talking about stuff he did during his ‘Mysterious CIA Past’. I believe he claimed that he was acting as a bodyguard for some important woman who was bringing her dog with her on the trip, and the story was long and had a bunch of irrelevant details, but it ended up basically being a retelling of the dead pet that gets replaced with a live one urban legend.

Heh, when I went to look up that legend it seems they have already remarked on Seagal claiming it as true. What was funny was that Letterman called him on it, and Seagal got real quiet for a while and then implied that it was true and must have been the origin of the legend.

17

Oh yeah. I love Steven Seagal. Not for his acting, because he sucks as an actor. I love either his sense of humor, or his overly inflated sense of self worth, I’m not sure which.

That says all you need to know about the guy.

18

Yondon, I though I might find you here…

Anyway. SS is cool enough. I just wish he would get over his ‘bad cops are bad’ deal. We get it!
I watch his movies, though he is too full of himself.
I greatly admire his talent, though (MA).
He gives seminars on self-defense and stress-fire techniques to various police depts.

19

Hmmm… things I’ve learned from Seagal:
Big Oil is Bad
CIA is Bad
Dirty Cops are Bad
Drugs are Bad
Jamaicans are voodoo masters and are Bad.
Politicians are Bad (unless they listen to him talking about how the CIA is Bad)

I’m sure I’m missing some… haven’t seen one of his movies in years…

What’s good?
Acupuncture is Good
Inuit are Good
Killing people (as long as they are bad) is Good
Blowing up an oil rig thereby spilling untold amounts of oil and causing a huge ecological disaster is Good (as long as many people are killed)

Aside from the bad acting, the simplistic messages, the poor writing, lack of believable characters, and the utter invincibility of SS… I guess his movies are ok. :wink:

20

I don’t know what’s happened to him lately but I understand that, regarding true martial arts talent, he was, at one time, the real deal.

Still, there’s that scene from one movie where he kicks some guys asses in a store and then chases one or two of them down the street for another fight.

Watching Segal “run” is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on the screen. Bwhaaaa! It’s like he’s trying to immitate a drum majorette and crack open a fortune cookie with his ass at the same time. He lost a lot of physical credibility with me right there.