Out for a Kill is the worst Steven Seagal movie I've seen - and I sat through On Deadly Ground. Then again, I've always considered him the least of the 90s action heroes. He's not nearly the biggest problem here though, as the script by Dennis Dimster-Denk is just all over the place. There were huge lapses in logic (something most DTV action flicks don't need much of, but at least enough to get by on) and such drive to pack as much into as little time as possible that I was constantly wondering what the Hell was going on. Most of my entertainment here came from the fact the generic title is so obviously a cribbing together of two previous Seagal flicks: Out for Justice and Hard to Kill.

Things do open with a modicum of style as a massacre-style killing at a strip club is shown in semi-stylish slow motion. These killings turn out to be the work of the grim, suit wearing Tongs - a legendary Asian mob who we're introduced in the cheesiest way possible as a roundtable meeting pauses to give us brief text biographies (including "hobbies") of each faction leader.

Fast forward to some really awful looking models of distant desert ruins under the credits as we zoom in on Professor Burns (Seagal), an archeologist (Yeah, I laughed too) digging for artifacts. It also turns out our Tongs have been sloppily stuffing drugs into the statues which, after being discovered by Burns, leads to a crappy car chase that includes an awful CGI "bullet camera" before our hero finds himself in prison (briefly) for the drugs, Burn's wife is blown up, there's an unintentionally hilarious sword fight at a funeral, Burns is tracked by a duo of detectives (more terrible effects here as they watch the plane he's on through binoculars), and he sets out to destroy the Tongs who seemingly spend most of the movie sitting around a table proclaiming he must be stopped.

By now I'm well aware that most Seagal fans are really only watching these things to see him beat the living tar out of various bad guys but even those moments just aren't noteworthy. It's worth mentioning a fight with one guy who does a monkey style of kung fu, because of how silly it is, but every other action sequence is so badly staged or forgettable even they can't distract from that aforementioned awful, awful script. And to think Dimster-Denk made the enjoyable killer kid flick Mikey in 1992.

I get the feeling the producers knew just how condensed and muddled the story was as they've thrown in narration by detective Tommie (Michelle Goh) to try and tie things together. I can't even begin to explain how glossed over and breakneck the plotting is - and not in a good way. We're never given enough time to absorb anything and I would've loved to have seen Seagal strut around prison defending himself from hardened criminals but, instead, I just get his usual chopsocky bullshit. This would be okay if director Michael Oblowitz could handle fight scenes properly. Instead, much like his 2001 effort The Breed, he's seen fit to stage everything in a hyperactive style that, in my mind, just doesn't fit the older Seagal's slowed down physicality. The Breed was bad, this is excruciating - and to think they'd previously teamed up for the same year's The Foreigner.

Having never been a huge fan of Seagal I can still tell you that he's miles away from his work in stuff like Under Siege and Marked for Death (my two personal favourites). DTV, and the years, haven't been too kind to him as he's fairly sluggish in fight scenes and still has that squinting, emotion-free problem when delivering his lines. He's just taken laziness to a new level when his cohorts like Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme at least still seem to be trying to make entertaining flicks. The rest of the cast is filled out with Asian martial artists, the affable enough Goh and Corey Johnson as her stalwart partner.

Is Out for a Kill going to stop me from watching the occasional Seagal DTV dreck? Probably not. Do I wish I didn't waste 90 minutes on this shit? You better believe it! Don't make the same mistake as I did and steer clear, if you need your Seagal fix watch something pre-2000. (Chris Hartley, 11/25/13)

Directed By: Michael Oblowitz.
Written By: Dennis Dimster-Denk.

Starring: Steven Seagal, Corey Johnson, Michelle Goh, Chooi Kheng Beh.