Customer Reviews

Exit Wounds

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Even predictable action flicks provide good escapism. Some of the predictability does not happen because the script needed another rewrite.

I am a Steven Segal fan. My first choice in films is action. "Exit Wounds" did not disappoint me on either count. However, several undeveloped script elements are just ploys to introduce characters or transition locations. Many of the problems with the movie belong to the screenwriter or film editor. I would have liked to see deleted scenes, which were not included in the DVD special features.

Segal's fight scenes are not overdone: he goes in, gets the job done without excess violence, and walks away calmly. He could be considered a knight of the round table, a Jedi master, a starship captain, or your average guy with extraordinary qualities.

This movie is action driven, but the intelligence that Segal brings to all of his characters shows through. Detroit cop Orin Boyd is a maverick officer, and his one-man shows frequently get him into trouble. The opening scene depicts him using his gut instinct, which is based in deductive reasoning and observation skills. He sees a cop, with a scraped ear, wearing an earring; the patrolman is one of the entourage who is escorting the Vice President from the podium, where he spoke about gun control, back to his hotel. Boyd rescues the VP from an assassination attempt, but instead of gratitude, he is sent from one precinct to another.

Who are these assassins? That inherent question is never answered, though I thought it would be before the movie ended. I see this as an opening gambit to create the plausible impression that "bad cops" were involved. However, even scene setting should have a reasonable answer.

Jill Hennesy is the captain of the new precinct and requires that Boyd attend a "rage class." In the class, he meets Tom Arnold, who is the comic relief, and never fails to do his job right. The classroom and meeting were also just a tool to provide a trusted resource when the investigation of a drug ring left no one to trust. Completely undeveloped is the romance between Hennesy and Segal, though innuendoes and quips pass between the two. A beautiful woman and a virile man, obviously attracted to one another, may have added the sparkle that is missing from most action films; it would have been so natural here, and not taken the focus away from the plot.

DMX, like Segal, carries an aura of calm assurance. He is dynamic and sexy, and could well be another superstar and box office draw. His character is quiet, and his reasons for the involvement in the drug investigation are excellent.

Even with the problems, I know I will watch this movie many more times. Therefore, I give it four stars. If you do not like violent, action packed movies with undeveloped script elements, then you might not like this one.

Victoria Tarrani

Despite Fire Down Below being a No. 1 hit in America, it went straight to video here in the UK and killed Seagal's career for four years. But then veteran action producer Joel Silver thrust Steve back in the limelight, put him on the Slimfast diet gave him slightly better material to work with. After all, an actor can only do as good as the script.

From a novel of the same name by John Westerman (but bearing minimal resemblance to it) the plot centers on Orin Boyd, a cop busted down to patrolman after a rough encounter with the Vice-President. Once on the streets Boyd's suspicious nose can't keep him out of trouble with undercover cops who are trying to bust local Drug Boss Latrell Walker...or so it seems.

There are many attempts at irony throughout the movie and surprisingly enough most of them work. Boyd is forced to attend rage control classes in which he meets eccentric TV host Henry Wayne (Tom Arnold) who becomes his wannabe partner. But sadly enough the classes don't work as Boyd continues to uses violence first, ask questions later. And there is a public service announcement too; Seagal survives a car wreck by airbag. A later car crash victim doesn't have one and dies.

Dozens of cop movie cliches staple the flimsy script together. And the bad guys are obvious from the moment they appear on screen. Bartkowiak's direction is better than in his debut Romeo Must Die, and adds a heavy dose of frenetic rush to such a fast-paced film. However the set-up and execution of the story is so dull you'll forget about it half an hour after the credits roll.

Seagal has learned a little, just a little, more in the acting area but still doesn't know how to express himself much. There's too much frowning and not enough other emotions from Boyd. We do want to feel more from him but he won't allow us. I guess this is just how Seagal is. He just can't get away from himself no matter what role he plays. I wish Seagal would try harder, but he just never bothers with making an effort.

Warner...release a Blu Ray, the DVD looks good, but it can look a lot better!

Was this a bad movie or what??? I was so stoked to see this for months before it came out (since Romeo Must Die was so good), but I was horrified by how bad this was. Although Tom Arnold was kinda funny at times and Steven Segal wasn't all that bad, the movie was so darn cheesy (a la the slow motion shot of DMX putting on his glasses) that I nearly puked!

Avoid this stinker!

this glop sets new standards in movie incoherence. We open with an attack on the vice president by people dressed as cops, seagal runs in and saves the day by throwing the VP off a bridge into what we've just been shown is shallow water with jagged rocks. he looks back over the side of the bridge after throwing him and guess what the VP is fine, rocks nowhere to be seen. We're told the attack was the work of 'some michigan militia', case closed, which is on a par with the substitute when one guys asks why there aren't any cops on the scene our hero responds 'He (the badguy) paid them off'. 'some michigan militia' sounds interesting, how come they were so organised, what were that political beliefs? who cares! the VP and the 'michigan militia' (sounds even stupider every time i write it) abandoned for some story bout crooked cops. seagal gets demoted for saving the VP's life, which is the most ridiculous 'ain't authority stupid' happening in any action movie ever, makes dirty harry's superiors seem reasonable, and the guys behind the demotion are segal's friends (?). Enter tom arnold, always excruciating, no different here.

Anyway forget the plot, its not important, lets examine the bare faced stealing of lines from better films. DMX explains that he promised his father he would always be 'his brother's keeper' (new jack city). the villain swivels around in his chair and says 'the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist' (the usual suspects) so cringeworthy was this moment i struggled hard to stop myself throwing something at the tv. a good guy authority figure blows away a crooked cop 'you're fired' (robocop and probably a few arnie movies).

As for action... at one point seagal (who is totally impervious to pain and physical harm) jumps at a car heading fast for him, we clearly see that he is barely going to clear the windscreen, but whadda you know? next shot shows he successfully vaulted the thing. Seagal seems to added new tricks to his armoury, now when kicking people it seems the man can fly ala crouching tiger etc.

The inanities just keep chalking themselves up, we're told a big cop is 'real dumb' then told as if to confirm this that he infiltrated and brought down an entire Ku klux klan chapter undercover, what a dummy eh? Seagal walks out of a shoot out with his gun at his side straight into a swat team, he flashes his badge and they go straight past him (just like in real life). the list goes on and on and on, add to this an actress who seems to have been selected because she looks like gina gershon (gina obviously too good for seagal movies now) and a hilarious ending where facing imminent death the character that demoted seagal earlier in the film bursts in to his rescue with a shotgun. This moment brings to mind the DVD of 'the great silence' with klaus kinski which has an alternate happy ending as an extra in which a character who we see killed earlier in the film suddenly appears from nowhere and shoots all the villains in the back.

All the cops in the precinct below captain are crooked, in the final shoot out we see dozens of villains in their police uniforms running around with machine guns. Where are the gangster's in this city? where are the drug dealers that would object to the cop's operations? How were all these cops corrupted into being merciless killers?

And to top it all off, the head traitor gets to do his 'after all my years on the beat what have i got to show for it' (ransom springs to mind, as well as a hundred other movies) routine.

Still its a step up from the patriot and the glimmerman, this is total trash, but at least i made it to the end.

If this movie doesn't contian every single cliche for a cop movie it wasn't for the lack of trying. The first ten minutes of the movie was almost comicly bad with a helicopter exploding from being shot with a handgun, to the top offical dressing down the hero for saving the day. Fortunataly the movie recovers with some fairly good action sequences. Some of the dialoge is actually amusing, and as with most Segaul movies the fighting is done in a fast powerfull and very enjoyable style. DMX has a solid performance, and if the acting isn't ocar quality, it is solid and consistant between the actors. What seperates the good from the bad in this genre is how little the story acts as a conduit for the action while manageing to stay out of the way. Story problems have killed Segual's last couple of movies and badly hurt "Romeo Must Die" of which this movie is an odvios clone. This story about corrupt cops and heroin dealers is a good one in that anyone who has seen a cop movie before knows every plot turn before it happens, and the actors don't have to stop and explain what is going on.

Overall this is a great piece of thoughtless entertianment, for that weekend evening when thinking is just too much work.

This is one of the better Seagal Action movies and features a convincing DMX who shows he has some movie star charisma and acting chops. It's not UNDER SEIGE but it's far better than GLIMMER MAN, ON DEADLY GROUND and FIRE DOWN BELOW. It's also better than all of Seagal's direct to video fare. You also don't have to worry about him singing any Country-Western or blues songs in this one.

Seagal does not really act, but he does have an interesting charisma. At his best he's a poor-man's Clint Eastwood, who's spare Akido influenced martial arts moves are bone break-ingly no nonsense, macho stuff. He frowns a lot, he grimaces once in a while, he's sometimes photographed at unflattering angles, has vampire like teeth, runs like a girl and he almost never raises his voice and stays very very-- sometimes zombie-like, calm.

At times, Seagal's acting is so minimal you want to laugh at the irony that you actually wanted to spend your money to watch this guy. I mean I still can't decide if I think Seagal is a first class jerk with little talent (rumors of his big ego persist) or if he's kind of cool. It's remarkable he's gotten away with what he does in more than a dozen big screen movies and at least that many direct to video mistakes.

Seagal you'll notice almost right away in this movie still has that walk of his. Movie stars like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Robert Mitcum, Humphrey Bogart, and James Cagney, to name just a few used to have interesting walks. Walks which were full of attitude and set them apart from regular people. Seagal has a special way of walking... strutting actually. It's a modified Pimp's walk. Oh not the herky jerky kind of Huggy Bear (of Starsky and Hutch fame) walk, but more the Fred Williamson or Ron -Superfly- O'neal type of strut. When you add Seagal's greased back hair (he got rid of his pony-tail a few years ago) perpetual frown, wrinkled forehead and slanted eyebrows, with the strut, he drips with the I'm a pis-ssed-off-bad-a-s-s-vibe that action movie hero's since Eastwood and Bronson are supposed to exude. Seagal's got the attitude, and he's shed most of that beer belly gut he had during the last few films he walked through (on video about three years ago, on screen it's been four years). He may be 50 years old but he's quite willing and able to do some impressive looking martial arts moves and play cops and robbers quite well.

The film also stars Issiah Washington-- a real actor. Why he isn't working in better movies I have no idea. Issiah isn't actually asked to do much acting, but you can tell if the script asked him to do any, he would have been able to pull it off.

DMX (aka Earl Simmons) is another reason people were initially curious about this film. Perhaps the biggest reason. And he has some presence in the film. I'm not sure how good of an actor he actually is since he's playing a pretty cliché'd kind of character through most of the film. He acts tough, does some physical stunts (or seems to be doing them) very well and when he's supposed to have some warmth and the audience is supposed to like him--we do. He doesn't embarrass himself and has some on-screen charisma that's not the same as other rap stars turned movie stars. He contributes a few songs to the soundtrack as well--including an interesting version of the Bill Wither's hit Ain't No Sunshine.


Maybe the worst news about this movie is that we have not one... but two characters who are in the movie mostly to provide comic relief. They are written into the movie in a very forced manner and the actors that have been cast don't do themselves any favor by trying much too hard to be funny with the material they are given. Anthony Edwards and Tom Arnold try way to hard to be funny. They usually annoy. You might enjoy their end credit comic riffing however.

So what's THE STORY? The story updates ,merges and dumbs down Dirty Harry and Serpico.

During the first sequence some bad guys impersonate cops to try and kidnap a politican. Seagal as Orin Boyd, a decorated but Lone Wolf kind of hero-cop, is the only officer who notices that the impersonating cops are breaking regulation by wearing earrings. Hundreds of cops around and only our hero sees the irregularity and suspects something funny might be going. Some sort of gadget passes hands and Orin is the only guy who pays this any attention.

Cue the action complete with some bloodshed and a climax involving the fiery explosion of a helicopter.

In the process of saving the politician's life Orin has embarrassed the politician and caused lots of damage, endangered lots of lives and broke lots of rules. He's a decorated hero cop so he's transferred to the worst ghetto precinct you could imagine where a lot of misfit neanderthal cops work.

Oh that old chestnut huh? Yep.

What you couldn't imagine is that this precinct is run by a woman whom everyone pretends doesn't look like a cover-girl model. She's tough though and sends Orin to anger management classes and eventually demotes him to traffic cop. It's at the anger management school that Orin meets up with the t.v. talk show host played by Tom Arnold.

However Orin has quickly had a run-in with the local drug king pin, Latrell Walker (played by DMX), and his over-weight comical assistant and combo dance/strip club owner, T.K. (played by Anthony Anderson). When he tries to be the lone -wolf hero and take Latrell down he winds up screwing up another cops undercover operation. This is what gets him demoted temporarily to a traffic cop.

Oh but something isn't quite right with the picture and Orin discovers that dirty cops are involved and not all the players are who, they at first, seemed to be. I know this will come as a huge shock to action movie fans (NOT).

This leads to Orin getting involved in several scrapes that lead to a fairly big shoot-out/ action scene to wrap things up.

All of this takes supposedly takes place in Detroit. If you haven't been to Detroit you probably won't notice that Toronto is where the movie has been shot.

There's no romance in the film and outside of some naked club dancers and the brief hint of a flirtation, none of the stars have any on-screen relationships with women. In fact we have no idea about Seagal's private life in the film at all. You want depth? Go swim in the deep end of the pool. This is a Joel Silver action movie darn it.

Exit Wounds, is just one more time-wasting action movie that too many people weren't able to resist, so it became successful at the box-office. It's slightly better than you probably think it is, but you would still be better off satisfying your macho movie 'jones' by watching some action movies from Hong Kong (directed by Johnny To, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark or John Woo to start with), but hey, this one is in English.

IMAGE AND SOUND

Overal the 2.35:1 anamorphic wide screen transfer looks very good. The film has lots of nigh scenes and the black levels are strong and shadow details pretty good. There's some pixalation in a few scenes and if you want to be really picky you'll notice several white spot drop outs that are the result of some wear and tear on the original print used for the transfer. That's a bit disappointing that they didn't find a print in better condition or combine a couple of prints to Create one pristine one to transfer, but it's a pretty minor distraction. There doesn't seems to be too many problems with edge enhancements or bouncing video levels either.

There's only one soundtrack on the DVD and it's in 5.1 dolby. If you don't have the 5 channel system you'll be hearing a squeezed version of it which others call a down-mix. That means some of the squeezed together separation will create some muddier sound effects but usually it is not problematic and it won't affect your ability to hear dialogue.

The 5.1 track is utilized quite well. There's lots of big bangs and sound is bounced around from the various channels so there are plenty of left to right, back and forth, and right to left sound effects. When a noisy Humvee drives across the screen the sound moves through the room as well. This however isn't always the case... which is a bit puzzling. Why in the opening action sequence is the bun battle now nearly as lively as the one later in the film? The music score , occasional DMX songs and several sound effects are base heavy, so the LFE is being used throughout the film.


Extra Features:

The longest extra is the obligatory behind the scenes puff piece. There's the expected discussion about Seagal's come-back (of sorts) the casting of DMX and pre-planning for the film. Everyone is upbeat and positive and congratulating and praising everyone else of course. You do hear from Seagal, who sounds a bit tired and bored as well as producer Joel Silver who sounds enthusiastic. We get to see how a few stunts were done and see how the wire work played a big part in making Seagal look pretty good in the action scenes. Seagal as we see is a very agile athletic guy and he doesn't look 50 years old.

There is also the 9 plus minute feature called A Day on the Set with Anthony Anderson. Anderson plays T.K. in the film and he's often called upon to be the comic relief. We follow him from his hotel room, to his trailer, to the set for a scene he is shooting, and then, at the end of the day, he does a bit of a comic rant about what a long hard day it has been and how he has sacrificed so much to give those of us in the audience some entertainment value. Anderson's running commentary is only occasionally amusing and we don't see enough on the set type action for the piece to have much value.

The music video is presented in wide screen (but it is not anamorphic). Mysteriously the audio for the video is in Dolby 2.0. It should certainly have been in 5.1. The re-make, hip-hop version of the Ain't No Sunshine sounds okay in 2.0.

this is without doubt seagals worst. He looks stupid in every scene, and he flips and kicks like in some kung fu movie. Thats just not his style, (not that hes got style anymore)hes style was raw aikido bonebreaking and his typical "acting". that was the now is now, and I recommend seagals first movies to the one who thinks of bying or even renting this one.

You have a choice remember that!!

After last couple of Seagal flops like Fire Down Below and The Patriot this movie is quite a relief. Very entertaining with some good humor and a lot of bullets and explosions. The story is not something you will follow, its really all about the action. Will be all very familiar to those who saw Romeo Must Die, but not quite as good though.

Steven Seagal plays the same character he played in all his other movies and will most likely play in the ones to come as well. This is a typical cop story where a hero cop gets demoted and the bad guy is never who you think it is. There is really not much else to say. Good fight scenes, colorful environment, matrix like stunts (wirework), and quite a few car chases.

Good old dumb fun.

I saw this movie at the theatres and it was an entertaining, but forgettable piece of film fluff about a cop chopping up drug dealers and crooked cops in Detroit. Steven Segal stars as the strong silent type cop and rapper (*groan*) DMX (is'nt that also the name of a sneaker?) plays a role in this action fest as well. A word of caution: While watching this movie, do not use too much of your brain. The fight scenes and explosions are very good but no one in this film can act, but then again, they don't have to.

When I saw previews for this movie, I thought to myself man I want to go see this movie. I never did though go to the movies to see it. I finally rented it though and I wasn't disappointed one bit. The action is off the chain, the plot is pulsating, and Seagal is his typical bad ass self. There were other good performances in this movie as well. DMX is equal to Seagal in the bad ass department, Isaiah Washington shows off his versatility as the cop teamed with Seagal, and Michael Jai White is very convincing as the devil cop Louis Strutt. The best part in the movie is when Boyd (Seagal) fights Strutt while Rollins (DMX) fights Bontini. If you're a movie fan who likes over-dramatized Oscar movie dribble, then this movie isn't for you. If you like an entertaining plot with pizazz and style, then this movie is right up your alley!