The masterminds behind the whole operation are wealthy couple Jerome and Meredith Van Aken, although each have their own motives and you are kept in the dark about who the true villian is until the very end. Mimms, an eloquent British assassin and a whole bunch of other boring European villians. In the end he gets a very Seagalian arm break before being killed.ĭuring his adventures Seagal runs afoul of a number of competing agents, including a stylish American fellow named Mr. He miraculously survives a number of deaths himself, including being blasted through a second-story window by two successive shotgun blasts (he is wearing a flak jacket, you see), barely outrunning an enormous explosion and being shot in the chest by Seagal (flak jacket again). Dunoir is probably the worst secret agent ever, needlessly shooting CIA bigwigs, maids, hotel clerks and random Polish Porsche-owners. It is one of those films where everybody talks in cryptic terms about their "employer" and usually double and/or triple crosses them by the end anyway. I can't remember who he is working for because the film is utterly incomprehensible. So it turns out that Dunoir is actually a bad guy (he's a heavy smoker, a dead giveaway) and wants the package for himself. In an action scene that sets the tone for the rest of the film, pulsing techno and oodles of slow motion and camera trickery accompany every pissy little stunt, trying to fool the audience into thinking something exciting is happening. When they get to the farmhouse where the package is being stored, they are abushed by Danish agents and barely escape with their lives. Steven Seagal plays Jonathan Cold, a lone-wolf CIA agent (no surprises there) who is partnered with the weasely Dunoir (Max Ryan) and tasked to deliver a mysterious package. 3 out of 10 (and I'm being generous).The Foreigner was originally destined for theatrical release but was shelved when Today You Die tanked and eventually it was dumped Direct-to-Video. In a nutshell sub-standard and very typical `straight-to-video' fare and really only recommended for die-hard Seagal enthusiasts. Hopefully it's a trend will soon die out (that movie `The Matrix' has got a lot to answer for). And then there's that annoying, headache-inducing `fast-motion, slow-motion' camerawork that unfortunately seems to be all the rage with movie-makers right now. Seagal on the other hand has quite clearly gone to seed, allowing himself to balloon (as others have also pointed out here) to almost Brando-esque proportions and quite frankly looked laughable here. For example, Clint Eastwood was older than Seagal is now when he starred as the hard-as-nails Marine gunnery sergeant in `Heartbreak Ridge' in the mid-1980s, but he carried off that role superbly and convincingly because he was lean, mean and obviously very fit. Okay, he's the on dark side of 50 now, but that in itself isn't necessarily a barrier to being able to carry off a tough-guy action role. It tries too hard to be intriguing and mysterious and in the process ends up as a complete mess. The plot of `Ronin' was also a bit convoluted and confusing and required the viewer to pay close attention to what was going on. It borrows a major plot element from the movie `Ronin' from a few years back, namely a mysterious package that various mysterious factions are desperate to get their hands on and will walk over corpses in order to do so, and like that movie this one also has a European setting. As other hacks have pointed out on this page, the plot is messy and incoherent and it's difficult most of the time to even work out who are supposed to be the `good guys' and who are supposed to be the `bad guys'. Steven Seagal has starred in some great action flicks down the years but unfortunately this ain't one of em.
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