It is not hard to imagine a world without Steven Seagal movies. Video store bargain bins would be that bit emptier, late night TV schedules would be spotted with sad 90-minute bursts of white noise, and the on-board entertainment industry that services 3rd-class long-distance South American buses would be hard hit, but otherwise, life would probably go on as normal. But if it’s impossible to claim any sort of real importance for his back catalog, his sheer productivity and impressive dedication to not really ever fucking with a formula, means that Seagal has established a kind of low-level ubiquity. You may not think you have, but you have seen a Steven Seagal movie, probably more than one, and not just his “Citizen Kane” — “Under Siege.”
Today Seagal, action star, producer, occasional writer, one-time director, 7th-dan black belt Aikido instructor, guitarist, high-profile Buddhist and Reserve Deputy Sheriff of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, celebrates his 61st birthday. And while we’d usually do one of our “Essentials” features to celebrate, let’s be honest, the meaning of the word “essential” is simply not elastic enough to stretch to even his finest work. However we have to say, as far outside our wheelhouse as Seagal is, we have a sneaking affection for him, if only because he has not taken the path more frequently traveled by other ’80s action stars: he’s not in “The Expendables.” He also never made a bid for Serious Acting Credibility. He hasn’t even gone the “JCVD” route of turning his life into some kind of parodic art experiment, though perhaps avid viewers of “Steven Seagal: Lawman” will tell us otherwise. And despite his recent foray into comedic commercials that lampoon his persona (proving that he has some timing and self-deprecation in him), for the most part he has steered well clear of comedy and persevered, with stoic self-seriousness, in delivering clunky direct-to-video action thrillers long after most would have turned the lights off and gone home.
He’s found perhaps a slightly more comfortable place now with TV show “True Justice” on Reelz, but in honor of his birthday, here are 6 movies of his that maybe just edge ahead of the others in terms of quality, badassery, or defining his unique, stolid, bizarrely earnest appeal.
“Under Siege” (1992)
The sine qua non of Seagal movies, it’s several degrees sub-“Die Hard,” but “Under Siege” is still the closest thing to a real action blockbuster on this list. With its top-shelf villainy (from the ever good-value Tommy Lee Jones and the ever slimy Gary Busey) and somewhat coherent plot and competent direction from Andrew Davis (“The Fugitive,” here re-teaming with Seagal after 1988’s “Above the Law“), it’s really head and shoulders above the rest of his filmography in terms of making the crossover between his avid action/martial arts fan-base to the mainstream. Seagal plays the world’s unlikeliest ship’s cook (“I’m just the cook”), who turns out, of course, to be a highly trained lethal Navy SEAL (“I… also cook”). Initially overlooked because of his lowly status, he gradually wins back control of his nuclear battleship from terrorists by means of killing them all, averts the annihilation of Honolulu, saves his comrades and snogs a Playmate (Erica Eleniak). It was his fifth feature and Seagal is actually pretty good in it. If it’s true that he owed his career to some kind of bet made by super-agent Mike Ovitz who allegedly used Seagal as testing ground for his theory that he could make anyone a star, then it shows that given better material to work with, Seagal could probably have been as big a star as some of his contemporaries. But it didn’t work out that way. Perhaps drunk on impending mega-stardom, Seagal’s next move was to direct and star in dull, preachy eco-actioner “On Deadly Ground” which tanked. Never again would his career hit these heights. “Under Siege 2: Dark Territory” would try and fail miserably, though at “dire,” it still nearly qualifies for a spot on this list, but gets a further points deduction for having Katherine Heigl in it.