Ticker got a straight-to-DVD release in 2001 for a couple of glaring reasons:

1) it's absolutely one of the worst films I have seen in recent memory, and yes, I do like Seagal movies for what they are
2) after 9/11 this movie must have looked like one of the worst decisions anyone involved with it could have made

To sum up--Sizemore is a cop on the edge, Seagal works in the bomb squad, and Dennis Hopper is an ex-IRA mad bomber terrorist who is blowing up San Francisco because...I don't remember, really. After 9/11 the mad bomber/terrorist story line made Ticker about as bankable as a Howard the Duck sequel. And, of course, the film is appalling.

Where to begin? I wasn't expecting much. Just a bad B-movie with enough action to while away 90 minutes or so. Between Seagal, Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Peter Greene, and Nas all showing up, how bad could it be?

Bad. The film is literally so incoherent that I had difficulty following what was going on in whole sequences. There are gun battles where everyone looks the same, everyone is shooting, and you can't follow the action. The editing is so bad that the film often resembles a series of scenes just spliced together. A bomb is being disabled in one place, and then there's an explosion in another, and then someone is walking around somewhere, we don't know where. The police station is filmed from the same angle over and over, suggesting that if someone stepped the wrong day the set wall would come crashing down. The acting is laughable, as if everyone was equally embarrassed to be involved. Dennis Hopper's Irish accent (which disappears and then reappears in true bad-film-accent-style) is amusing, as are the other Irish 'terrorists' (merely bad looking guys in black leather jackets). Jamie Pressley, whose face looks like it
was warped by one of those computer programs, plays a terrorist. Uh huh. By the time Ice-T showed up for all of 15 seconds, I was convinced he just happened to be wandering by the set that day when they gave him a part.

Speaking of black leather jackets, it seems the entire cast got a cut rate deal on form-disguising wardrobes. A very bloated Tom
Sizemore walks around the entire film in the same outfit. It looks like he had a month between rehab stints or court appearances to make this film, and he phones in a performance that includes him screaming in his dying partner's face, "Don't die!" as well as screaming at witnesses to "Tell me his name!"

Then there's Seagal. You want to believe he can mount another comeback, but there's no chance. You'd think that after Exit Wounds he would be back in the game. Instead he's back on the Weight Gainer 2000, like he's gone from worshipping Buddha to trying to resemble him. He's enormous in this film, clad in black, his hairline disappearing, his dialogue (and bizarre accent) as laughable as any he's done, and then some. He spends most of the film sitting down, filmed like Brando in Apocalypse Now to hide his appearance. By the time he hoists his bulk out of a chair, his fight scenes are once again filmed in almost total darkness so we have no idea what's going on. We see hands moving, limbs flying, Seagal's face a mask of constipation, all to hide the fact that he is completely incapable of doing any stunt work or anything resembling a convincing fight scene. Matter of fact, I have no doubt that Seagal's contract stipulates that he cannot be photographed to look as fat as he really is or that he can't actually exert himself beyond reciting Zen nonsense while someone is trying to disarm a bomb. The man is an embarrassment, but the fact that he goes on with the charade lends him a certain charm. I will continue to watch his movies with the morbid curiosity of someone who wants to see just how bad things can get.

The amazing part is that 99% of the people watching Ticker will know more about police procedure, terrorism, and film making than the people behind this movie. Some kind of credit must be given for the total disregard of anything resembling quality that went into it.

Seagal is determined to play up his bad boy, mysterious man with a mysterious past, Zen spouting, tough guy persona to the bitter end, so why not tune in for a good laugh? He has at least one classic bit where he actually kicks the bumper of a car hard enough to deploy an airbag, a scene I had to rewind because I was laughing so hard.

I could go on and on, that's how bad the whole affair is. Ticker is, in my humble opinion, Seagal's worst hour. And given such efforts as Half Past Dead and The Patriot, that is saying something. Don't let anyone in the cast fool you--it's bad. It's bad-TV-movie bad.

For all not-so-bad cast of Dennis Hopper, Tom Sizemore, Jamie Pressly, and Peter Greene, the film doesn't know how to tell a story. Okay, actions temselves are so-so, but no tension, no exciting feeling comes from them. As I was watching it in theater in Japan (yeah, I went to a theater all the way) in May, 2001, the guy behind my seat actually said, "Man, during that gun-shooting scene at the climax, I couldn't tell which side is which!... Which was the bad side, anyway?" That kind of complaint. Yes, because of poor editing and awful staging of the action sequences, everything looks confused and disjointed. And with this cast. What a waste.

SO, I tell you something else. As if reflecting the trend of the recent movie industry in Hollywood, "Ticker" shows many faces from music industry. We have seen Whitney and Maria. We have DMX in "Exit Wounds." And now in "Ticker" we have NAS (Nasir Jones) as a cop and Chilli (Rozonda Thomas) from TLC. Plus, veteran guitarist Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown can be seen playing; and in the same jazz bar scene, you can see a glimpse of Billy Preston, who played the keyboard in the legendary "Let It Be" session of the Beatles. And as a terrorist commander, Ice-T shows up briefly ... what kind of casting is this! AND finally, while the ending credit rolls up, you can hear a blues song called "Love Doctor" whose lead vocal sounds very, very familiar to you. Oh yes, who else?