Second Chances
Crime Lord Alexander Coates (Steven Seagal) is a man of morals; you give respect you get respect; you make a mistake you get punished. But he isn't unnecessary cruel so when a hit in a prison he is asked to arrange by fellow crime lord Ice Man (Ving Rhames) Alexander hands over his main man Hurst (Bren Foster) to be beaten up by Ice Man's men for killing the wrong person. It leaves Hurst a broken man, living in a one room dive down a back alley where his mangled hands struggle to open the booze which he desperately clings on to. But when things start to turn bad Hurst is treated by mysterious cook Oso (Danny Trejo) who has some special skills when it comes to getting Hurst right again and giving him a chance to redeem himself.
Walking down a corridor Hurst uses the wall to skip up and around someone before snappily putting them down and he does this more than once. It is one of only a few highlights in "Force of Execution" a rather processional movie which simply fails to come to life despite a reasonable premise and a few familiar faces. In fact beyond Danny Trejo bringing some life to the character of Oso the only highlight is watching Bren Foster displaying his martial arts skills although sadly whilst Foster can bring the excitement and energy to kicking butt he can't bring much character to his character.
The annoying thing is that "Force of Execution" has all the pieces of the jigsaw to make a decent picture; the crime lord whose past involved the government and has a tough but fair moral code, another crime lord who is more evil and duplicitous, the hero who has chance to redeem himself after suffering a crippling injury and there is even the mysterious restaurant owner who knows the old medicinal ways. None of these elements are in any ways revolutionary but when pieced together with the right cast and the right linking scenes can make for an entertaining movie. But not all the bits are here and the end result is a movie which fails to draw you in and keep you interested and entertained for its duration.
The worst thing about "Force of Execution" is that it is billed as a Steven Seagal movie except he is in it a lot less than the rest of the cast and when Seagal is in a scene he is just doing what he does in every movie which is mumble and move slowly. Yes he has some action scenes but they are so heavily edited and filmed in such a way that you kind of expect that his body double did most of the work.
What this all boils down to is that "Force of Execution" is a frustrating movie not only because it is another Seagal movie where he doesn't appear that much but it is a movie which has the potential to be good but is lacking the parts to make it really work.
