Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pistol Whipped: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, March 13, 2008
The Good:
-Seagal continues to play the harder, harsher, more vulgar persona he began to portray in Urban Justice. It works well for him. He's more like an older, hard core John Wayne now; no more corny Arnold/James Bondesque one liners.
-Seagal gets some solid (intentional) laughs with some great dialogue. Example: "If I want any lip offa ya I'll rip it off your f&#king face."
-Seagal is dubbing all of his dialogue again, always a good thing.
-No doubling during the fight scenes.
-A decent number of fight scenes including some genuine Aikido.
-The camera actually stays back and lets us watch the fights. (This small detail would itself immensely improve a great many action films made today--death to the close-up shaky cam!)
The Bad:
-Seagal is again attempting to affect a bizarre accent.
-Not only does his accent come and go like a Kansas wind, he only even attempts it when speaking to certain characters. The effect is very peculiar.
-Some of the fight scenes are sped up. Always bad.
-Too many gun fights, not enough hand-to-hand fighting.
-Really cheesy blue screens during bad car chases.
The Ugly:
-Seagal's weird cotton candy hair at the back of his head.
-The naked fat and ugly tattoed girl (totally unnecessary-could have easily done without that).
-Any and all dialogue concerning the size of Seagal's Johnson (totally unnecessary-could have easily done without that).
-Any and all scenes where papa Seagal makes love to girls way more than half his age.
-The fact that Seagal's ex could be his daughter, and that, realistically, his daughter in the movie should have been his grandkid.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Let Me Ask You Something...", April 27, 2008
Another great movie recommended by Sid the Elf!
Have been a fan of Steven Segal since he's been kicking but in the late 80's as slick Italian cop with attitude. This more recent movie takes a different direction with Segal's trademark attitude, and it surprisingly works.
First thing I noticed about this movie is that Segal looks awful! Looks like he's been in a real bad accident and had tons of reconstructive surgery on his face. But alas, this imitation of Elvis' famous I-Just-Died-On-The-Toilet bloated look is just time catching up with the actor. That and the frizzy hairpiece he's now wearing.
The movie itself is classic Segal: snapping arms, blurring punches, and a scowl that still scares. His most famous--if not most used line--of `Let me ask you something," is used more than 20 times in this movie. Count for yourself and see. We are also blessed with the guy most unlikely to bed a girl, as Segal snatches a girl from a bar. Putting on more than 50 pounds since his slimmer days, this gives us "average Joe's" hope for an unlikely future. And we also see Segal's tender side--a great change from the wife-beater we all know--as he tries to be a good father to his daughter, despite being a degenerate gambler who owes too many people too much money.
I was highly impressed with this movie, learning once again to trust Sid the Elf and their many reviews. Always a skeptic, I like to see for myself. Glad I did. Segal still has it, bloated-with-hairpiece or not!
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wait a minute, Steven Segal plays a fat, washed-up drunk? Yeah it's a stretch but Sid took a chance., April 7, 2008
Why was the title of this film Pistol Whipped? Is it because you feel like you were repetedly hit in the head with a heavy metal object when you are through watching the movie? Maybe. It certainly didn't have a lot to do with the movie itself. It could have been called Pistol Snatched because Segal did his move where he grabs a gun that's pointed directly at him and disables it. So, at this point, the use of a gun in a Segal movie means nothing. It actually is more advantageous to not be armed. Sure, right. This is the same film in which Segal-who seriously looks like a panda bear at this point-hooks up with a smoking hot chick and has an even smoking hotter ex-wife. The point is that you have to know going in that this movie makes no sense. Absolutely none whatsoever; so don't try to figure it out or you'll end up cross-eyed with a blistering headache. Just sit back and bask in Segal's warm, glowing warming glow.
Segal stars as Matt(no last name given at all how great is that?) who is a degenerate gambler who never won. He's also a fall down drunk who has ballooned to roughly 415 since his days as a rouge cop. See, Segal used to play rouge cops, now he's playing washed-up rouge cops. Just like he used to be a movie star, now he's a washed-up movie star. So, our main character spends his days drinking cheap whiskey right from the bottle and eating Manwich straight from the can. Frankly, Sid was not sure if this part of the film was scripted or if they just shot a day at Segal's house. Then the thought dawned on us: if it wasn't scripted, Segal wouldn't have had clothes on.
Stealing a page straight from the Death Wish 3 playbook, Segal was offered to have a favor done for him if he killed someone. So, in order to have his gambling debts wiped off the books, Segal had to kill the coach from He Got Game, who was playing a mafioso. He also set the all-time record for saying "honest to God" 328 times in his only scene in the film which lasted like 6 minutes. Good times. Obviously Segal kills him, but this time he did it fashionably. Segal meets up with the coach at a restaraunt, and clearly couldn't just take out the mobster without taking out his henchmen too. One of those henchmen got a fork through the hand. That's right, Death Ring style, baby! That's like an instant 3 stars anytime someone reminds Sid of the legendary Denton Vachs. Now the people who agreed to pay Matt the panda's debt don't let up and force Segal to kill more poeple. Shocker!
They want Segal to kill his ex-wife's new husband who is a cop. Supposedly, the guy is dirty, but we don't see that. We only see that he's great with Segal's daughter, including the touching scene when Segal can't spend the day with his daughter and the step-father berates Segal for being too drunk to hang out with the girl...again. Hilarious even if it wasn't the case (Segal was being forced to go on a hit assignment that day). But, then we see the stepdad kill the priest(don't ask, it's not important just know that stepdad is a baaad man). And, the movie wraps up with a showdown at the priest's funeral. It was Segal vs. the stapdad. Sid must say, this was one of the better shootouts in recent memory. Of course, Segal won. The cool part about the ending was Segal asked Stepdad, "Do you want to be buried or cremated?" before he killed him to which Stepdad answered, "Buried." Then, Segal blows him up and says, "You're cremated now, m'f'er!" Awesome!
We, Sid the Elf, know that it may seem like we were very negative about Pistol Whipped. No, it is not true. Pistol Whipped was the special kind of movie that the more things sucked about it, the better it was. If you know Sid, you understand. Anyway, this was completely due to the genius that is Steven Segal. The man stared in and produced this beauty. This saved the film because if Segal wasn't in charge of himself, he couldn't have talked like his illegitamate brother, Biggie Smalls, for the entire movie. He would have been ordered to redo his lines so you wouldn't have to turn subtitles on to watch the movie. He wouldn't have saved the production all that money on lights because any shot of Segal with his face in proper light would have made any viewer vomit. He didn't have to lose weight, as no other producer alive would have allowed him to be filmed boated and waddeling around the set. Like we said, we loved Pistol Whipped. It's the cinematic equivilent of drinking heavily. You're confused throughout, you might not remember much, you may well vomit, and afterwards you feel hungover. But, did you enjoy the experience? Absolutely. Would you do it again? For sure. So, on the word of us, Sid the Elf, get a fifth of Pistol Whipped and turn it up. It always goes down smooth.
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