‘I’m gonna take you to the bank, Senator Trent. To the blood bank…’
My odyssey to the murky world of action movie legend Steven Seagal started strong with Under Siege and Marked for Death – great films both in their own weird way. Hard to Kill is an altogether different beast. While Under Siege is a proper film, and Marked for Death at least presents itself as serious business, Hard to Kill, from jobbing director Bruce Malmuth, is much more ridiculous than anything else I have seen from the big man so far…
After being left for dead in a hit attack that resulted in the death of his wife, LAPD internal affairs again Mason Storm (Seagal) goes full vigilante to avenge their death. Elsewhere, Seagal’s then wife Kelly LeBrock plays the love interest, Frederick Coffin gives the best performance of the movie as the loyal sidekick, and William Sadler is underused as an ambitious and unscrupulous senator.
Oh, Hard to Kill, let me list the ways that you are ridiculous. Seagal wakes up from a coma after seven years looking exactly the same as he did at the start of the film, for the inevitable love scene he literally lays a woman down by the fire, at one point he randomly shoots up a flower bed (I think it’s supposed to be an expression of his murderous rage rather than any kind of grudge against horticulture more generally), he ‘solves’ the crime using a very shoddily rendered internal monologue, and to top it all off, at one point in the film he looks at Sadler’s senator on TV and then chuckles to himself while dropping the immortal line, ‘I’ll take you to the bank… the blood bank’ (which doesn’t even make sense). In short, when The Simpsons and South Park are poking fun at action movies, it is films like this that provide the ammunition. For all these reasons and more, many people will probably hate Hard to Kill, but I found it utterly charming, often hilarious (unintentional), and the perfect vehicle for Seagal’s extremely limited acting range.
I think three Seagal classics is enough to get a handle on what he brings to the table. I think I’ve earned a bit of a break from the guy for now, but it is inevitable that one day I will find myself back in the land of Seagal. I’ll be honest… I can’t wait.
