Critique: Film> Reviews.

Give a little bit of credit to Steven Seagal: He has at least attempted to make a film that promotes an environmentalist message, when most continue to treat Planet Earth as a dumping ground, having no idea of the damage they're doing. He has also attempted to give his character some spiritual development, wanting to go beyond the usual macho stereotypes made famous by the likes of Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Seagal himself.

The ambitions may have been high, but the bottom line, however, is the execution of On Deadly Ground is pretty damn awful. The film is badly written, badly acted and badly edited. Even the action scenes, which Seagal fans always watch for, are considerably lacking.

The story is concerned with Forest Taft (Seagal), an expert in dealing with oil drilling-related fires. He works for CEO Michael Jennings (Michael Caine), but soon uncovers something dodgy about the company's safety equipment, which is being used on various oil rigs. Fearing the company will be exposed for their discrepancies, Jennings and his chief of security (John C. McGinley) set Forest up to die in an explosion. Forest, however, manages to escape, and vows to bring down the company with his Eskimo sidekick (Joan Chen).

Hardly sounds like the most exciting synopsis, but it's Steven Seagal -- surely we can expect some decent action to carry us through the dribble?

Erm, no actually. Apart from a fairly entertaining scrap in a local bar, Seagal's direction prefers to focus on an incredibly overlong scene where his character meets a bunch of Inuit activists, who have rescued him after the recent explosion. "I'm a mouse hiding from hawks in the house of the raven," says Forest, attempting to rediscover the true essence of his soul. The dialogue is so clumsy it's laughable; despite Seagal's best efforts, there's no way you can take the story seriously from here.

The film goes on to preach some more about how corrupt businessmen are ruining our planet. This may well be true, but On Deadly Ground is such a drab affair that you'll hardly remember its message when it's all over anyway.

Seagal, as an actor, I have to say, is horrible. As a director, his concept of pacing is just as bad that you start to wonder if anyone really has the patience to like this mush. Still, I could've seen past this considerable lack of talent had it been for some good old-fashioned arse-grilling (per se Nico and Out For Justice), but when that does eventually come (mainly in the last quarter of the film) it's hardly significant enough to make up for a majority of the story being incredibly dull. Basically, for every kick in the nuts, there's an overdose of political correctness with Seagal's message about the environment -- it just doesn't work. And I won't even bother going into how much I hate Michael Caine for being in this movie.

Unsurprisingly, On Deadly Ground was a commercial and critical failure at the time of its release. This, however, didn't stop Seagal making another environmentally-conscious film, Fire Down Below, in 1997. The latter, I'll admit, I did enjoy that little bit more, considering that Seagal was much less preachy and much more charismatic. Surprising, one would think, considering how awful he is here.

(C) Andy Carrington, 2009.