So maybe they aren't Scorcese and DeNiro… but surely Waxman and Seagal, in the universe they exist in, are close? Right? Maybe? If you don't want to jump on this somewhat empty bandwagon I'm riding right now, I understand, but Mercenary: Absolution is the seventh uniting of director Keoni Waxman and action… guy… Steven Seagal, with even more team-ups on the way. I was gonna call Mr. Seagal an action Super Star… but we can't really do that with a clear conscious anymore now can we?
Someone has told me that this the third leg of a trilogy featuring this same character from Steven Seagal, with the first two being 'Force of Execution' and 'A Good Man', both of which we have seen here at the FCU. I couldn't really discern any similarities between these three movies, other than I think Steve sports a Goatee and mumbles his lines in all of them, but whatever, we'll roll with it. It's a trilogy now.
This time around Seagal is John Alexander, a bad man if ever there was one. He tells us this over and over again thus I'm inclined to believe him. He's gotten the job offer from his boss Van Horn (Howard Dell) that some Pakistani garbage needs to be taken out in Romania, and after Alexander mumbles what I think are threats towards this dude about something or another, Alexander rounds up his right hand man Chi (Byron Mann… who we really hope gets to live this time) and they get down to the business of killing people.
With a job well done, these two cats are chilling at the club, laying low (not really) when she stumbles in. That would be Nadia (Adina Stetcu) who has just escaped the clutches of a super connected crazed madman and needs assistance. Don't help her man… don't do it! Oh well, he helps her, crushes a few hapless dudes with his stationary lightning fast hands style, and now Alexander and Chi have problems.
All this bad dude wants, played by no less a B-movie luminary going by the name of Vinnie Jones, is for these two to give the girl back, but Alexander can't do that. He wants to do at least one good thing in his life. I think that's what he said. I mean he seriously whispery mumbling just about everything, which Keoni usually fixes by having the people he was talking to rephrase what he said in the form of an answer or a question, but he didn't do that this time. Why Keoni? Why? Regardless, people are going to get beat-up, shot-up and repeatedly kicked in the face. And Seagal will walk away in the sunset with a woman young enough to be his great granddaughter. At least it looked that way.
Want to know what was great about 'Mercenary: Absolution'? Well Byron Mann of course, but that's a given. No, what was great was when Alexander took Nadia to his home and in his foyer was this gigantic watercolor mural of Steven Seagal holding his beloved Sitar. That was pretty awesome. I've always had a deep respect of people who cover their homes with pictures and paintings of themselves.
That nonsense aside, is 'Mercenary: Absolution' a good movie? No sir, it is not a good movie, maybe falling in the middle of this alleged trilogy they tell me I'm watching, but that's okay. You see, if you watch these types of movies regularly, there's a good chance you will be entertained by this movie no matter how much you try to resist it. So while I could barely understand most of what Seagal was saying in this movie, I did understand with crystal clarity every time he said 'Fuck You Bitch' to a character, which he said often, and it was always funny. I knew with some certainty that when he got into his big final showdown with Vinnie Jones, that Vinnie would not land one single punch, despite the fact the secret to beating this dude is just staying out of his reach for about five minutes until he keels over and dies from exhaustion. I knew that all the real action was going to be handled by Byron Mann and that he would not disappoint… though he has ended up dead in the last two Seagal movies he showed up in which did have us worried about his safety. I also know that while there will be a narrative in this film, so to speak, one should not get too caught up in the details of it, because it will not be logical in any way, shape or form, so just make sure you focus on the big picture. Pretty girl needs saving from bad people who need to die. Big Picture. Just lock in on that. I mean there are seriously all kinds of narrative flaws we could point out, by what point does that serve?
The fact of the matter is we kind of enjoy these Act III Steven Seagal movies. Sure, he mumbles his words and stumbles across the screen while still maintaining his god-like invincibility, but Act III in his career has seen him palm off the heavy talking and action on to younger, more fit, more talented people. Like Byron Mann. I don't know if it's a conscious effort or maybe Keoni Waxman has tricked him into this somehow, but it works for the better. No, 'Mercenary: Absolution' is not a good movie, in the classic sense of the word, better than 'Force of Execution' but lagging behind 'A Good man', but we still didn't mind sitting through it.
