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34 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
BIG SEAGAL FAN HUGELY DISAPPOINTED IN THIS ONE, December 9, 2006
First off, I want to say that I am a huge Steven Seagal fan and I always buy his movies as soon as they come out. BIG mistake this time. I just finished watching Attack Force and am extremely disappointed in the DVD. I have been annoyed in the past when they dub his voice with someone who doesn't even sound remotely like him and always wondered why they did it. Does anybody know the reasoning behind doing that?? But this one takes the cake. I didn't even realize part of the time it was supposed to be him talking when I looked away from the TV. Then it would switch right back to his real voice (which I agree is very distinctive and nice). It was dubbed so much it was absolutely ridiculous. He's the producer and did the screenplay according to the credits - why doesn't he even take the time to say his own lines???? I think this movie is a total piece of trash and makes me wonder what happened to him. Did he lose his enjoyment of making movies? He can't POSSIBLY think this is a good movie! Is he more interested in his music now? (If that's the case, don't keep doing lousy movies.) I do know from now on, I won't blindly buy any of his movies. If he can't(or won't) put the effort into making a believable good movie anymore using his own voice, I don't think he deserves anybody spending their money on junk. If it were possible I'd not only like my money back, but also the time I wasted watching this movie.
Also, the movie was almost all filmed in the dark, so the whole feeling of it is depressing and hard to follow. I love his older movies and I watch them often. His first 4 and then Exit Wounds were my all time favorites. The last one I actually enjoyed of his was Into the Sun. Since then, they've been iffy at best (in my opinion). I know I won't ever be watching this one again and for the first time, I'm going to get rid of one of his movies. It's upsetting to me that I wasted my money on this but even more that he appears to be uninterested in making a good movie now. There are so many other great movies out there to be bought and watched, I would have given this no stars if that were an option. I wish I had rented it - it would have been cheaper and I wouldn't feel as cheated.
To sum it up, where is the Steven Seagal we saw in the good movies he used to make? Please go back to making some entertaining movies again or stick to your music. I have his CD's and I really like his music, but I liked him as an actor first. He sleep walks his way through movies these days and the "fight" scenes (and I'm using the term loosely) look so fake that they should have been left out. Wake up, Mr. Seagal, I have no doubt that because of the increasing poor quality of your movies, you're losing a lot of your fan base, and that's a shame. I'll miss your movies, but I do have all of your older ones and I'll continue to enjoy them.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
To think that this guy used to be one of my heroes!, December 30, 2006
Like many of the other reviewers here, I've been a fan of Steven Seagal's since Above the Law came out in the late 80's. I've enjoyed most of his American made films right up to Half Past Dead and Exit Wounds. When Seagal severed his relationship with long-time production partner, Jules Nasso, and then Warner Brothers ended its relationship with our martial arts hero, the quality of Seagal's movies went downhill rather quickly as did his salary. He dropped from making sixteen million a movie to a little over two million a picture. In other words, to keep up his high standards of living, he now has to do four-to-five movies a year just to equal what he used to make on one Warner Brothers' picture. Part of this is due to the increase in age (he's now 55) and weight (at least eighty-to-a-hundred pounds overweight for his height of 6' 4") and his inability to do the fighting scenes that made him famous almost twenty years ago. Add all of the above to bad directing, terrible scripts, and poor photography, and you have an actor who's barely hanging on to his career. I have to also say that Seagal isn't the only actor who's had to resort to making films almost entirely in Europe. Wesley Snipes has found himself in the same boat (though he could be avoiding the IRS) and so has Sylvester Stallone (Sly, however, is making a comeback with Rocky Balboa and a fourth "Rambo" film due out this summer). And, like many of the other people who've reviewed Attack Force, I, too, keep hoping for a really good "Seagal" film that will display his talents as they used to be in his earlier movies. Unfortunately, unlike the other reviewers, I didn't just buy Attack Force, I also purchased Today You Die at the same time. I should've read the reviews first, but I didn't, and now I'm stuck with two clunkers. Stupid me!!!
Attack Force has Steven Seagal playing Marshall Lawson, the commander of a strike-force team, somewhat like Delta Force. At the beginning of the movie, Lawson's team is almost completely wiped out at a night meeting. Then, a little later, three of his remaining soldiers are murdered in their hotel room by a psycho bitch high on a new type of drug that has turned her into a killing machine with abnormal strength and reflexes, not to mention a strange pupil dilation that causes her eyes to look like those of a werewolf. Now, as it turns out, this new drug is being developed by the United States to create a superior fighting soldier. Because of Lawson's involvement due to the death of his men, certain members of the government decide to have him eliminated so that the cat isn't let out of the bag, but it's now too late. More people have been infected with the drug than first realized and the government has to put them down before a mass epidemic of murder starts taking place in the French countryside. Lawson is the only man who can do it, so he's chosen to lead a new strike force. I think this kind of sums up the plot. I'm not entirely sure because I was somewhat confused throughout the movie. I didn't always know who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. Example: Was the French detective a good or bad guy? I don't know. I suspect that this was a plot device designed to keep the viewer on his toes so that he wouldn't fall asleep due to movie-induced boredom. .
I'm now trying to think of something good to say about the movie, but nothing comes to mind except that the women in the film looked beautiful and deadly. Steven Seagal likes to surround himself with beautiful women in his movies, and I don't blame him. After all, he was one of the producers on this film. I wonder if he pulled another "Jenny McCarthy" with them and made each potential female star take off her blouse so that he could check out her talent as an actress. Oh, here's the big standout about the movie. Mr. Seagal's voice was dubbed over dozens of times during the film. Like one of the other critics, I originally thought something was wrong with my DVD and checked the "Language" section on the menu. Nothing wrong there. The only thing I can think of is that after the movie was completed, the director discovered that Seagal's voice didn't come through in every scene and so it had to be dubbed in certain places. Also, because the drug-induced villains moved so fast and looked so strange, I thought at first that maybe Attack Force was a horror movie. I mean a French undercover cop would be faced with a killer-crazed woman with weird eyes. He'd turn around to run away and then she'd be standing in that direction, waiting for him. I don't know of any drug that can make a person move with the speed of light. Not only could these people move fast, but they also had super human strength. They could knock a person through three walls instead of just one. That's one hard punch. Even Bruce Lee couldn't do that! I guess the victims had super human strength, too, because they'd get right back up and try to defend themselves against these killing machines. If I got knocked through three walls, I'd still be lying there unconscious, or else I'd play like I was unconscious so I wouldn't get killed. The movie was filmed almost entirely at night, which made the action extremely hard to follow. Maybe that was for the best. Steven Seagal does very little fighting in the movie till the very end and then it's against a beautiful babe in leather shorts. I wish I could make a living doing that! By the way, at the end when the new strike force goes after these voracious killers, each member is picked off one by one just like in the usual "teen-murder" flicks. Rather than sticking close together, the strike force makes the mistake of letting each other out of sight for a few moments, thereby enabling the enemy to kill them. The only one who acts with any common sense is Seagal's sidekick, Na-boo, who stays glued to him like a new wife, while keeping a sharp eye out for anyone trying to sneak up behind them. That was kind of funny to watch. I guess this is the best that we can now expect from Steven Seagal. He'll be sixty in a few years and doing wine commercials like the late Orson Wells. I certainly don't anticipate his future movies getting any better. I feel like everyone else in that I should've rented this film, instead of buying the damn thing. Of course, I bought two clunkers, instead of one, so I've really learned my lesson this time around. I'm now marking Steven Seagal (7th Degree Black Belt in Aikido, guitar player, director, producer, writer, former Tibetan monk in a previous lifetime, former husband of Kelly Le Brock, former C.I.A. operative, and who knows what else) off of my to-buy list. Tomo aregato, Sensei Seagal.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't bother, March 24, 2007
What can I say?
I would've been disappointed if I'd only rented this DVD, let alone bought it. Like the other reviewers, i too have been a seagal fan since Above the Law. His movies have been going down hill recently - but there have at least been some saving qualities amongst them! Attack force is pure unadulterated insidious crap. If you haven't stuck cutlery (or any convenient household utensil) into your ears by the half way point, there's something wrong with you. The voice dubbing is pathetic. A female voice with an indian accent would sound closer to Mr Seagal's own voice than the gravelly whisp that emanated from his mouth for most of the dialogue.
Maybe that's the movie's saving grace: you can't turn away - if you do, you won't know who's talking!
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