MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE

US, 2006, 96 minutes, Colour.
Steven Segal, Jacqueline Lord, Roger Guenveur- Smith, Luke Goss, Michael K. Williams.
Directed by Don Faunt Le Roy

Mercenary for Justice is yet another Steven Seagal straight-to-video action film. As he neared sixty, Seagal had become hefty and bulky, not exactly the figure for the action hero. In this film, he does very few athletic or martial arts action stunts.

However, the film is stronger on plot. Seagal plays an expert mercenary who has to rescue the French ambassador on an island off the coast of San Francisco involved in a coup. However, the audience knows that the whole thing has been set up by a dirty deeds section of the CIA.

Seagal’s good friend is killed and he promises the dead man’s wife that he will take care of her and her son – however, they also are kidnapped and he has to rescue them. However, this is all part of a plan by the leaders of the CIA section in order to force Seagal into another mission.

In the meantime, the son of a prominent gunrunner is in prison and the mission is to go to South Africa and break the son out of prison – in order to save the widow and her son. However, another plot complication is that the section wants to rob a highly-secured African bank.

The whole thing is engineered by the rogue CIA men and focuses on them and their clashes amongst themselves as well as with Seagal. The action in the bank offers some tension as does the rescue from the prison. The opening provided quite effective battle sequences.

As might be expected, at the end, all works out well – the man is broken out of prison, the robbery is stopped, Seagal rescues the widow and her son, he is able to confront the main CIA villain – whose car explodes.

Much of a muchness with so many of the straight-to-video action films from performers like Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude? Van Damme.