“Above the Law” (1988)
So really, there’s “Under Siege,” a big gap, and then all the rest, jostling for far-off second place. We’re going to award that spot (because we can’t give it to the gap) to “Above the Law,” not because it’s very good or anything, but because it was Seagal’s first film role and proved to be the archetype for a great deal of what would follow. Seagal, in marked contrast to the puffy immobility of his later roles, is young and lithe and downright pretty on occasion, and his mullet holds merely the promise of ponytails to come. Teaming for the first time with his “Under Siege” director Andrew Davis, here we can see their Scorsese/DeNiro relationship is in but its nascent stages, yet Davis already then clearly had a better way with action than some of Seagal’s subsequent directors — the fight and stunt scenes here are more fluid and comprehensible than the impossible physics and bewildering cutting of some of those later films. Plus, Pam Grier and Sharon Stone make for appealing eye candy, albeit in totally subordinated female roles. Nico Toscani (Seagal) is a disillusioned ex-CIA covert ops agent turned cop, who is teamed with Jacks (Grier) and is tasked with taking down a drug gang. But in the same twist that occurs in 95% of Seagal movies, the gang turns out to be involved with the VERY SAME BAD GUY who caused Nico to leave the CIA! A church blows up, a villain sidekick gets a memorable death plunging from the hood of a car that’s protruding from halfway up a skyscraper, and Nico cracks the Big Bad’s back in grisly fashion. It’s the kind of film where people say “C’mere, you!” before diving into a fight, but for all of that, it’s not even half as cheesy as films that would follow. Including…
“Out for Justice” (1991)
This is the one where Seagal’s fellow cop and best friend is killed and Seagal spends the rest of the movie going to every place the perpetrator has even been known to hang out, and beating up and/or killing every single person he meets until he finally finds the murderer (with whom he again has personal history) and kills him too. With “Out For Justice,” we are three movies into Seagal’s career and reaching the midpoint of what could, relatively speaking, be called his golden age. It should be noted that in contrast to the near somnambulism of some of his later performances, here Seagal is a much more nervy presence, bobbing his head when he talks, and apparently actually attempting a character portrayal of sorts: an Italian American who “wanted to be a wiseguy,” sample dialogue: “You were still sucking your thumb when your brother was around town sucking dicks.” Wildean. There are some neat fight scenes, of course, especially one where he takes on all comers in a dive bar armed with a cue ball wrapped in a napkin, and another in a deli in which he skewers one guy’s hand to the wall with a cleaver and dispatches another with a salami. But it’s the storytelling flourishes that will keep you coming back for more — he actually saves an abandoned puppy midway through, and ends the film reuniting with his estranged wife for a romantic walk on the boardwalk, where he kicks a guy in the groin such that he falls down groaning “My balls! My balls!” while the puppy pees on him, they chuckle and the credits roll. Amazing.
“Exit Wounds” (2001)
Ok, we’re controversially moving into “late period” Seagal here, and out of the relative canonical safety of his first 5 films, but having recently watched “Exit Wounds” we’re quite happy to go brazenly out on a limb and assert that it’s one of Seagal’s very least bad films. Admittedly it suffers from some truly appalling editing, mostly serving the fact that the once nimble and dexterous Seagal has rather calcified here and just isn’t as limber as he used to be, making the bullet-dodging antics and chop-socky (beg pardon, Aikido) a harder sell than before. But we’re grading on a serious curve and actually, as a film it’s relatively watchable, with the younger crew, headed by a game DMX (reuniting with his “Romeo Must Die” director and co-stars Isaiah Washington and Anthony Anderson), actually bringing some life to their fight scenes. But perhaps that’s just in contrast with the shrub-like zen of Seagal, whose opponents are often shot in slowmo, perhaps to compensate. Tom Arnold shows up as an annoying TV host, Eva Mendes briefly appears and, awful dialogue notwithstanding, the moral inversion of the cops being largely the bad guys, and the gang-bangers being the good guys, or millionaire tech wizards in disguise, makes for at least momentary flares of interest between punch-ups. Mind you, it’s still terrible.