Before Al Gore there was... Steven Seagal. Yup, right of his box-office hit Under Siege Seagal used his moment of fame (and power) to create a movie about what concerns him the most; the environment. In his directorial debut Seagal directs himself as a lone crusader who stands up to an evil oil-company by blowing lots of shit up. How's that good for the environment you say? It's all about the message, not about the packaging.

of course nobody would watch a movie like this without the packaging. Not until 2006 that is when a documentary concurred the earth and political agenda. Looking at that Steven Seagal is a visionary. He calls himself a God, damn in 12 years we'll probably find out he wasn't lying. Back to the packaging; the story this time is really simple (aren't they always?): Steven Seagal is an ex-agency-man named Forrest Taft who's now working for a Oil Company for handling difficult tasks. When we first see Seagal he has to put out a fire nobody else is able to. A friend of him tells him that there were faulty preventers used which caused the thing to catch fire in the first place. Seagal does some snooping around of his own to find out if that is true and of course in the mean time his friend gets murdered by Aegis Oil hardmen and they also try to blow up Taft. Taft merely survives and is picked up by an Eskimo and brought to his village. There he's healed by magic Eskimo medicine and starts on a spiritual journey to find himself or something like that. Once he's totally recovered and wrestled a bear in the spirit world he's going out to bring the oil company down by blowing up that rig... of course the oil company isn't going down without a fight, so Forrest Taft is ... On Deadly Ground!

This movie can be split up into four parts, let's take a closer look at each of them.

Part 1: Forrest employed by Aegis Oil
Forrest is introduced as the ultimate bad-ass. He comes in to put out a fight no one else is able to. We see hem get off the chopper in a cool way. The camera pans from his feet up to his head when he turns around and lights some sort of sigar. Then he goes into the blazing fire and rigs it with explosives. Everybody is ducking and taking cover, but not Forrest... oh and the head of Aegis Oil; Michael Jennings (Michael Caine). They stand there like nothing is happening. The first part has another one of those badass moments when Seagal does his ultimate barfight. He helps a native eskimo who is bullied by one of the oil workers. This ensues in him beating up a dozen or so people and breaking lots of limbs. Even one of them is an senior citizen. Maybe he was just reaching for his rollator. Now he needs a wheelchair. Way to go Forrest.
By the way, I'm not sure how an employer would react if one of his employees puts 20 others in the hospital with broken limbs, but it is never heard of again. Maybe they were from a competetive company, who knows. But barfights are nothing out of the ordinary, what is, is the showdown between Forrest and head bully Big Mike (Mike Starr). This memorable scene consist of them playing a game of handslap. "One man leaves the circle. I miss, you get a shot. You miss, I get a shot". This results in a severe ass-whooping of Big Mike and is ended by the following conversation:

FT: What does it take to change the essence of a man?

BM: I need time..., I need time to change

FT: I do too

And Forrest pats the man on the back and walks out with the eskimo native. Now when did you ever see a barfight end like this? Never! That's the kind of film we're dealing with. It goes deeper than you'd ever imagine. I bet you are still pondering about what it takes to change the essence of a man?
So here we are; Forrest Taft: established badass and philosopher. Oh, and grandpakicker.

Random act of violence against a senior citizen

Part 2: The spirit journey
Ok, so Forrest gets on the bad side of Aegis Oil so they decide to let him go. Instead of handing him a pink slip they plan to blow him up. Well they blew up the building he was in but as in Darkman his body is merely launched 100's of meters away. Unlike Darkman there are no burning wounds, just some shrapnell in the back. Het gets picked up by an eskimo and wakes up under their care. This is where Forrest comes in contact with alle kinds of stuff about the spirit world and him being Nanook The Man-Bear. I wonder how that works, being a man-bear. Do you hibernate and eat raw salmon or something, or is it more like Marshall Bravestarr where you just yell "strength of a bear" and become really strong. Forrest doesn't need that. He can handslap.
But ok, so part of his healing process is a lengthy sequence made up of montages where naked indian women in all sizes (look for the fat one!) doing some ceremonial dancing and stuff like Steven fighting a bear (to test his bear strenght). Really crazy shit. After 20 minutes of eskimo exposé Forrest is finally one with the bear or something like that and he's now also established as man-bear. See his character developing from badass to philosopher to grandpakicker to man-bear.

Part 3: Payback on Aegis Oil
Now the man-bear is healed and out for destruction while Aegis Oil has to get a rig operating within a certain deadline or they'll lose their oil rights to the eskimo's. So to ensure Forrest Taft isn't a problem they hire a crew of mercenaries led by the drill seargeant from Full Metal Jacket. It's in this part we get the mayhem we expect from a Seagal film. Mountain cabins are blown resulting in helicopter crashes, boobytraps are placed and one on one fights result in extreme maiming of the victims. Other than the barscene the first part it was kinda low on action. After taking out half of the mercenaries they retreat cause they know where he's going. Yeah, you could probably figure thát out without losing half your men first by chasing him in his territory. So we all end up at the Aegis Oil Rig where of course everybody eventually gets beaten or blown due to Seagal. It also seemed there were tons of new henchmen just around the corner. They must be half price at Wal-mart or something. Even the FBI shows up after receiving news about the terrorists threat this is Forrest Taft. They leave quickly after things start blowing up.

Part 4: The epilogue
Now there are two things about the epilogue: Forrest is about to give a speech, But how is this possible? The man killed dozens of men and blew up an entire oil rig. Even if his friend or his spirit-journey-mentor from the eskimo's was murdered, or even if there was an environmental disaster prevented by blowing up an oil rig (I still don't understand how that works...) that doesn't give a civilian the right to just murder and destroy as he sees fit. Maybe man-bears stand above the law in Alaska. But that wouldn't make sense because according to Nico Toscani nobody is above the law.
Now the other part is that Forrest gives a lengthy speech about the environment and oil pollution by a large companies. This guy was just a week ago making $350.000,- a year working for one. Now he's a passioned preacher about how bad and evil the oil industry is. That's kind of quick to adjust your point of view and even become a spokesperson in my opinion. Unless they pay him $400.000,- or more of course, than it makes sense.

So this is Steven's masterpiece... well actually not quite. It isn't as bad as it is generally conceived but it isn't better than all of his previous films also. The packaging is ok, lots of classic-Seagal fights, but does an environmental message really belong inside? It made no difference to the world. For that we needed to wait 12 years. But hey, it's a fun movie and certainly Stevens most personal it's just that after Under Siege we'd expect something better.

Spot the fat chick!