Review of Exit Wounds

Introduction

Steven Seagal is an actor so wooden that pieces of wood have been known to take him as a personal insult. So, given his limited thespian capacities, it’s unsurprising that his alleged return to form places him as a rogue inner-city cop who constantly bucks authority in a gritty action-vehicle called ‘Exit Wounds’. The plot, from what I could gather, concerns police corruption and a mysterious drug runner (DMX) who seems to be playing both sides of the law. Naturally, the entire movie has practically run its course by the time it’s decided what the hell is going on, but there’s plenty of squibs, kicking and gratuitous smash-ups for the easily distracted.

Video

Extremely impressive. The detail on the images is really quite excellent with no signs of compression, dirt or other faults and the standard of the colours and contrast is reference quality. The visual style is what we’ve come to expect from the films of producer Joel Silver and contains plenty of frenetic MTV cutting and highly stylized violence.

Audio

The 5.1 surround track is almost as good as the image, but it does have a tendency to be a little too quiet during the dialogue scenes in relation to all the bangs and incessant gunfire. Still, hard to complain.

Features

A pretty lame ‘Making of’ which would scare off all but the most determined viewer, for example, Silver comments: “the movie is fun, but tough” (gulp.) There’s a short video diary from the rather annoying supporting player Anthony Anderson, a vaguely terrible DMX music video, the pompous theatrical trailer and a cast/crew list. Uninspired.

Conclusion

A violent but derivative opening salvo of destruction sets the tone for this entry-level actioner with a terrible non-script and slightly lame action scenes. Seagal floats through his generic role with all the charisma of a meringue as the movie desperately tries to combine his old school whup-a-guys-ass-with-a-flick-of-the-pinky with trendy CG-treated martial arts. DMX has a great look and probably a good Hollywood career ahead of him, but here his role has about as much emotional complexity as the bicycle he’s presumably named after.

Director Andrzej Bartkowiak (ouch) is dressed to impress with his flagrant style of imitating the fashion of the week (plenty of ‘Matrix’ style action then?) which fail to compensate for the dramatic lack of plot coherence and vapid attempts at emotional dimension (DMX has a wrongly imprisoned brother, who, naturally, is forgotten during the mayhem of the denouement and is brought up in the final seconds as an after-dinner mint). The tacky hip-hop soundtrack and naff wire-fu posturing add nothing but acute embarrassment to the proceedings, and a whole cadre of wasted supporting players is cause for concern: Isaiah Washington in particular, did anyone see this guy in ‘True Crime’?!? Somebody give him a decent part!

The undemanding may have a six-pack movie to drown away a couple of hours, but lets face it, this is lowest common denominator fodder, more interested in DMX’s costume changes than anything else, and its success proves an age-old axiom, that people would rather taste what’s new, than what’s good.