Born to Raise Hell (2010)

This is How Movies Should Be Made

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

I wish I could meet Steven Seagal, not only to ask for his autograph but also to sit down with him and discuss what's made his recent string of movies so disappointing for even a devoted fan like me. I would use BORN TO RAISE HELL here as an example, being sure to compliment the film's strengths but also making clear to him exactly what about it sucks. I'm not so naïve to believe that Seagal is in total creative and technical control of each of his features, but perhaps I could convince him to take a more hands-on role in their production and perhaps aikido-chop the idiots who are truly responsible for the lackluster nature of some of these movies.The plot: An international drug task force operating out of Romania, headed by ex-Interpol agent Samuel Axel (Seagal), sets its sights on bringing down the operations of a deadly and sadistic gang of drug traffickers...People who don't like Steven Seagal by default are going to hate this movie. Seagal occupies most of the scenes (perhaps still making up for his absence throughout most of AGAINST THE DARK?) and his character is boisterous, arrogant, and most of the other characters cow to him in one way or another. Surprisingly, I found myself appreciating this: a supercilious Steven is still more fun to watch than the detached, bored-looking dope he played for a while in movies like FLIGHT OF FURY. However, whatever effort he seems to have made for this film is marred by extensive dubbing of his voice - something not present in his movies to this degree since the picture I just mentioned. There aren't any other real technical snafus to be seen, but further post-production add-ins like nonstop slow motion, freeze-frame shots galore, and way too many time-killing collage scenes continue to have the movie feeling more like Seagal's trash pictures of yesteryear, moving him further and further away from the high standard he had achieved with URBAN JUSTICE.The action scenes are composed mostly of boring shootouts, but there are a couple hand-to-hand encounters which, while not too flashy, feature Seagal doing just about all of his own moves and getting some good aikido throws in. There's also an impressive instance wherein he kicks a thug so hard that the man flies about six feet through the air before crashing through a bench. These lead up to the finale with martial artist Darren Shahlavi, who had been running around the rest of the picture as the necrophilic, drug-dealing main villain. This is where things get *really* disappointing, to the point of costing my rating an entire star. Shahlavi had consistently delivered great physical performances in the past, and one of his most recent movies at the time - IP MAN 2, released on the same day as BORN TO RAISE HELL - featured him in some very good fights with Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung; in this one, however, he has one very brief fight halfway through the film before getting absolutely manhandled by Seagal during the climax. The fact that Shahlavi had just been in an internationally-acclaimed martial arts masterpiece makes this ugly and one-sided encounter more disappointing than Seagal's similar exchanges with Gary Daniels and Byron Mann: at least they didn't have any recent major successes behind them to live up to.At this point in our conversation, if I had been able to speak freely and if the rumors concerning Seagal's temper and ego were true, I figure he'd either have left the room in disinterest or he would have me by my throat. I'd quickly try to point out that the acting is decent in general and, despite being shot in Romania, the film's cinematography is less grey than I expected and pretty fun to look at...but would this be enough to save me? It certainly isn't enough to save the movie, which I fear can be shelved along with the growing number of failed DTV outings starring the Buddhist Bonecrusher. I doubt that I'll ever actually have this conversation with Steven, but I'm still holding out on the hope that he's going to get back on the horse and make it worth being a fan of his again; when this one came out, it really wasn't.

Seagal in Born to Raise Hell seems almost identical to Seagal as himself in his reality series. In some ways this might be a good thing. It means that the film acknowledges that there is no point in asking him to play act stereotypes anymore, like he did in his last film A Dangerous Man. Here he's just being himself. Something else which makes that a positive is the simple fact that the movie isn't really about him. It's more about a drug war between cops and Eastern European mafia. Seagal is just one cop out of a handful. As a screenwriter, Seagal chooses to write him self out rather than in, and subsequently we spend more time with the mafia.The fight scenes come with a crunchy sound mix, and they allow us to see more Seagal than Stunt man, but they reek of bad editing. the people who direct movies like Born to Raise Hell are not qualified for anything except music videos. this movie implements a very miscalculated Goddardian style of cutting, and a severe overuse of slow motion. We don't need to see a guy ripping a bedroom apart for jewels at five frames per second. The last scene is kind of touching (at least for a Seagal movie). It was around that part when I realized that the movie is not really about Seagal. That and the fact that we only here his name about five times. I don't wanna mislead anyone however. Born to Raise Hell will probably do the job for whatever fan base the old man has left. He's done better, but he's also done way worse.

For a Steven Seagal movie it's not to bad. That's the nicest thing I can say about "Born to raise hell". There's really no plot (read the summery, that's all you need to know) and the acting is, well, I'm no expert but I've seen better.As usual Seagal is a cop. And an martial arts expert. And yes, he is a hero. There's also a lot of shooting. He applies street justice to the bad guys. As usual. Now and then Seagal speaks with a soft voice and uses the F-word and profound language. By now you're thinking: "Hey, I think I've seen this movie." True. If you have seen any Steven Seagal movie before you don't have to see "Born to raise hell". There's nothing new in it.The best thing about the movie is actually the camera work. There's some shots, especially in the action scenes where the camera is in slow motion or "fast motion", there's stills in black and white etc. That's the freshest thing about the movie and keeps it some what interesting. For a Seagal movie that is. But if you like Steven Seagals previous work you won't be disappointed. It's a traditional Seagal movie.

After seeing A DANGEROUS MAN I almost said I'm through with Steven Seagal movies but then I decided to pick up this one in the hope Seagal could be redeemed, it turns out this film was one of his more solid DTV efforts aside from the fact that it was still flawed, it had the dubbing problem but not as much as his other films, Seagal's fight scenes were edited a bit fast although there were shots that showed him actually doing the fight scenes and Seagal wears a thick coat to hide his weight now I regarded that as one of his trademarks so I didn't really give that much thought.The best moments of the film were the shootouts, they were very well done and also pretty tense, something I haven't seen from a Seagal movie in a long time, the acting was surprisingly good this time even from Seagal himself but there are two other actors that stand out, Darren Shalavi who was ideal for the part of the villain and Dan Badaru who plays a Romanian gangster out to get revenge for the death of his wife and son.Also now that I thought about it, this film features a brief love scene between Steven Seagal and a woman possibly young enough to be his daughter but she does look legal and very attractive, after seeing that scene and remembering Seagal also wrote the script, I reckoned this is one of the interesting things about being a writer and an actor, you give your own character a story and a hot little number and you add a steamy love scene between the two of you, now that's a different kind of fantasizing right there only Seagal puts it down on paper and it gets put on film with him in the scene, "sigh" some guys have all the fun.Overall, its one of the better Steven Seagal DTV entries but it is way too flawed to measure up to the caliber of a Steven Seagal classic like UNDER SIEGE.