Like Dolph Lundgren and Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal is one of those fallen stars that refuse to throw in the towel. Strangely enough, the last good film he played in (Executive Decision) was made the same year he divorced his third wife - proof that there is no life after Kelly LeBrock. Following Executive Decision, Seagal made a handful of theatrical mediocrities, some of which crossed the delicate eco-awareness line and treaded heavily into the blatant-hippie-shit category (although it was fun to see Randy Travis as a bad guy in Fire Down Below… a film that also crossed the Southern line into the shit-kicker category).
I think Exit Wounds was the last Seagal film I watched… at least I think it was… if I did see it, it obviously did not have that much of an impact on me… in the words of Ronald Reagan: "I don’t recall." Face it, after you’ve seen one Seagal film, you’ve pretty much seen them all.
Pistol Whipped is another in a long line of post-2002 direct-to-video features that Steven Seagal cranks out on an annual basis (he averages between two to four per year!). It starts out decently enough (considering the budget), and then, as if the editor started smoking some seriously killer ganja, the film suddenly begins to cut violently from scene to scene, often omitting character relations. Well, I could be mistaken… there’s no way of telling if the writer even jotted down any character relations on the cocktail napkin he referred to as ‘the script’ for the director to film in the first place, so I cannot blame the editor entirely. He was stoned, however… he had to be: nothing else accounts for the jumpy slashing--er, editing of scenes - one particular bit with two people rolling around on the ground has you wondering if there’s another (cloned) couple frolicking next to them.
 While I’m on the subject of rolling, it doesn’t look like it’ll be long before Steven Seagal rolls on-camera: the once slender Aikido guru has turned into large gelatinous blob with legs attached! Remember that odd my-turtle-head-is-poking-out walk he had in his older films? Well, now it’s more of an oh-I-think-I-just-shat-myself-said-in-a-Jabba-the-Hutt-voice kind of walk. Not that there’s anything wrong with a hefty guy… some of the greatest martial artists in the cinema have been fat-asses: Sammo Hung, Victor Buono, William Conrad, The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man… the list in endless!
So anyway, Seagal plays a guy named (drum roll, please): Matt. Impressed yet? Matt is a full-time compulsive gambler and part-time alcoholic that used to be a cop until some drug money disappeared (along with his partner) and everyone pinned the blame on him. His former colleague, Steve (Mark Elliot Wilson) cleared him of the charges… and then married his ex-wife Liz (Blanchard Ryan) and has legal custody of their daughter.
Hold on a sec here… in 2007 (when this movie was made), Seagal would’ve been about 56...the actress that portrays his wife (Ryan), would’ve been around 30...and they have an on-screen daughter that’s about 14 or so… which would’ve made Seagal close to 42 and Ryan somewhere in the vicinity of 16?! And people say I’m a perv! Jeez!
 So, back to the stupid movie: one night, Matt is approached by a guy named Blue (Paul Calderón, the Barack Obama looking-guy that almost had Samuel L. Jackson’s career… and he says "motherfucker" in this film a lot just to make up for it!). It seems Blue works for The Old Man (yeah, original huh?), an old man that claims to work for the government (or some such nonsense) and has bought up all of Matt’s debt so that he can force Matt to kill the local gangster scum infesting whatever city this movie takes place in.
The Old Man (Lance Henriksen, another former star and whose scenes were probably filmed in a single day) also has in his employ a woman named Drea (Renee Goldsberry), a young lady who becomes Matt’s quasi-lover (at least I think… again, character relations are damn-near non-existent in this flick - hard to believe this came from the same guy that wrote Ronin).
 Short story even shorter: Matt finds out Steve is a bad guy and has to kill him. There’s a big shootout in the middle of the city (note the real policeman stalling traffic in the background - then note that they were holding traffic off instead of redirecting it: a sure sign that the big shootout was filmed in just a few hours!) that leads to a cemetery, Blue is killed (along with some bad guys) and in the end, despite having murdered the sole provider of both his daughter and ex-wife, Matt manages to make amends with his estranged family! The end!
Whoops, I almost forgot to mention the special effects! They suck. Phew, I’m glad I got that out of the way - might’ve lost some sleep otherwise!
Presentation
I’ll keep it simple: it looks fine and it sounds even better, a’ight?
Extras
Just in case the second-class feature isn’t sufficient: you can opt to watch the whopping 2 minutes and 47 seconds of Deleted Scenes! These two (2) non-anamorphic letterboxed bits are really more like alternate takes and are about as useful as a condom machine in the Vatican.
As with every Sony title (particularly these B-flicks), there are a lot of trailers thrown in for you to watch after you’ve decided the movie sucks: Revolver, Southland Tales, Zombie Strippers, Seagal’s Urban Justice, the direct-to-video Until Death starring Van Damme and Stephen Rea (of all people), The Death And Life Of Bobby Z (aka Paul Walker Still Can’t Act), Wesley Snipes in The Contractor (ah, another washed-up  action hero!), Damages: Season 1, Rescue Me: Season 3, We Own The Night, April Fool’s Day (2008), Bats: Human Harvest (ooh, I can’t wait for this one!) and the Samuel L. Jackson/Eva Mendes/Ed Harris vehicle Cleaner (the story of Formula 409).
The Bottom Line
Reasons to watch this movie:
a) You have absolutely no concept of how a movie should be sewn together.
b) You’re really, really drunk and high.
c) Fat guys whose faces blend in with their tan-colored leather jackets turn you on.
d) You’re studying film editing and your teacher says "Watch this film if you want to know how not to edit."
e) The gay porn film with the same name isn’t in stock and you don’t want to go home empty-handed.
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| Pistol Whipped |
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| 1 |
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| Feature - I’ve seen a lot worse: take Fox News for example… |
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| 3.5 |
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| Video -
Shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm. Not bad, really. |
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| 4 |
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| Audio
- The sound was very good -I was actually very pleased. |
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| .5 |
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| Extras -
Trailers and useless footage salvaged from the laptop Recycle Bin just don’t cut it anymore. |
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