On Deadly Ground

Get set for the most Seagal of them all! Seagal’s directorial debut showcases the star’s newly-discovered environmentalism, his blossoming interest in Native American culture and the best bar room brawl in all of Seagalogy. Yep, our hero is Forrest Taft, “patron saint of the impossible,” an expert in putting out oil rig fires who must battle an evil corporation to save Alaska and its indigenous people. He wears a fringed jacket, goes on an Inuit vision quest and totally hates pollution. As Outlaw Vern, the man who literally wrote the book on Seagalogy, said in his epic tome, “before this movie, he was a popular action star, like so many others. Only now did he become Steven fucking Seagal.” But it’s not just a one man show, On Deadly Ground features great performances by a truly embarrassed Michael Caine, Joan Chen as an Eskimo love interest, R. Lee Ermey and Billy Bob Thornton as vicious mercenaries and Scrubs star John C. McGinley as a henchman named MacGruder. Vern sums it up eloquently: “you can’t understand Seagal if you haven’t seen On Deadly Ground.”