Review of Belly of the Beast (2003) by Jan H — 26 Aug 2007
This movie had a very weak and unoriginal plot, but then the majority of oriental martial arts films are like that anyway.
With a movie like this, like most martial arts movies, you're mainly watching it for the fighting scenes and special effects rather than the lame plots they use, so you expect the fight scenes to kick ass. Well, there is some reasonably good fight scenes in the movie, and some cool effects, but they're average compared to what else is out there nowadays.
The movie's worth watching if you love martial arts films and/or Steven Seagal, but he's not going to win an Oscar for this role anytime soon.
The dialogue in the movie is very weak and forced too, but again, that's expected from this type of film.
What happened to Seagal anyway? He used to be one of the best-of-class martial artists making movies, and his movies had good plots and total kick ass action start to finish. Then at some point about 10 years ago he went downhill to low budget Chinese type films with poor plots and crappy acting.
My overall thoughts are that I liked the choreography in most of the fight scenes, as it's always fun to watch Seagal go all Aikido on people's ass - but other than that the movie was a disappointment.
One effect highlight, is he cuts an arrow that's flying at him in half the long way with a sword, which was pretty cool.
This review of Belly of the Beast (2003) was written by Jan H on 26 Aug 2007.
Belly of the Beast has generally received mixed reviews.
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