Just rolled through Pistol Whipped, a direct-to-video "action thriller" from 2007 starring big Steve Seagal. Well, "rolled through" is a little euphemistic, the fast-forward button was employed liberally, but there's still something oddly compelling about this stuff. Maybe it's that the stories in these thrillers are formulaic and yet kinda of crazy at the same time, like they're made without all the filters that tend to process bigger movies.
In Pistol Whipped (the title doesn't really mean anything), Seagal plays "Matt", a disgraced ex-cop who somehow has racked up $1.3 million (!) in gambling debts. Lance Hendrikson puts in a (short) day as a mysterious figure who buys up Matt's gambling markers then forces the poor guy to murder various bad guys and "do society a favor." Lance has a bunch of agents working for him who seem equally capable of killing "the scumbags", but for whatever reason he'd rather have the thieving, drunk, debt-ridden Seagal do the deed(s). There are the usual twists, a big and rather boring shoot-out at the end, and a screwy happy ending only available in the "deleted scenes" extras.
Seagal seems a little more engaged in this one, though his strategy for killing the bad guys isn't exactly sophisticated. He walks in, shoots or beats everyone in sight, then leaves. Police are mostly non-existent or hopelessly crooked. It seems bodyguards are about as effective as tax accountants when it comes to defending their crime bosses, and they frequently fall prey to the "talking before they shoot" problem. One idiot has the drop on Steven, but waits to tell him "I'm not going to hesitate!", in the process hesitating long enough for Seagal to kick the crap out of him.
I managed to get through about 50 regular speed minutes, better than most of these "thrillers." Kudos for the opening slo-mo scene that has Seagal spinning awkwardly and shooting blindly behind his back (!) with his sixty-six shooter. (Somehow this looks even sillier in exaggerated slo-mo.) Bonus points for actually showing him reload a couple of times. As for the rest:
Let's see, naked hooker straddling bad guy and diving for cover when Seagal starts blasting, CHECK. Lance Hendrikson has his murder meetings in a giant, deserted theater balcony, CHECK! Seagal breaks a guy's arm and twists the (rubber) fake arm to prove he's tough, CHECK! Yep, it's a Seagal movie all right...
But they lose 30 points (and I nearly lost my lunch) for including a Seagal/cute girl kissing scene. I'll have to watch a week's worth of Battlestar dailies to clear THAT image from my mental palate...
