Review of A Dangerous Man (2009) by Jason D — 13 Feb 2010

A Dangerous Man is yet another movie in a long line of standard, direct-to-DVD Steven Seagal action vehicles that maintain some sense of fun and simple aspects that Seagals' first batch of films had, yet work on a small budget and appeal to a small crowd that goes for the non-mainstream action films.

A Dangerous Man has Seagal protecting his wife from a scumbag criminal only to be convicted and imprisoned for that same criminal's mysterious death. After serving several years, Segal is freed thanks to new evidence, but life isn't the same anymore since his wife left him.

Broken down, Seagal intends to drink his problems away until he gets himself in a bad predicament involving crooked Chinese officials, Chinese mafia, crooked cops, and the Russian mafia where all are gunning for each other, especially Seagal, a newfound partner in Jesse Hutch, and their uncovered kidnap victim Marlaina Mah.

In the end, A Dangerous Man wasn't all that bad, but of course, it is a far cry from Seagal's glory days, but thankfully, an improvement over his rough days (i.e. Glimmer Man, Fire Down Below).

The mish-mash of Americans fighting Chinese, Chinese fighting Russians, or Chinese fighting Chinese gets to be overly complicated at times and silly, but you generally come into these kinds of movies to see Seagal and his ass kicking, which is fun, though in his later years, he's pretty much sticking to up close hand-to-hand combat, which can be good and bad at times.

The film packs some surprisingly gruesome moments, and Seagal is fun to watch, even if he's intent of going the route of using an overt Cajun accent all the time now.