Today You Die (2005)

As Good As It Gets

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

I love this movie. As soon as it starts out with him in bed saying, "Tell me your dreams and I'll tell you what they mean, cuz dreams mean things," my wife and I started laughing. I knew we were in for another Seagal treat. I just wish I could walk like Seagal. Seriously, just watch how Seagal walks with his arms flat to his sides. And the way he runs! Holy crap this guy is incredible. This movie has some of my favorites: Seagal doing black Seagal again - I swear the man can't quit doing it, Seagal in prison again, and all kinds of one-liners. He is a thief in this one. Steven likes the movies where is he always in the grey area of the law. He is always a good guy with a bad side, or a bad guy with a good side. In this one it is the latter. Do yourself a favor and watch this one with someone you care about, so you can laugh together at how funny this comedy featuring Steven Seagal is.

I may sound biased, but I don't like Steven Seagal(except for Under Siege and a couple of others) and most of the direct-to-video releases he's done. Today You Die is a pretty poor movie, however with stuff like Submerged and particularly Out for a Kill, Seagal has done worse. The photography and editing aren't as slipshod or as dull as they can be, Nick Mancuso is good and the final explosion is spectacular. Even Seagal is better than usual, however that doesn't necessarily mean he was good, in fact it was still a lazy performance but at least the lines were intelligible. The action didn't do much for me, because of the sluggish pace in general of the film, it felt unexciting, while the plot is derivative with too many plot holes to push a delivery truck through, Treech is very irritating, the script is really quite dumb in places and the soundtrack was not to my taste, too loud and overdone. All in all, a poor film but not among Seagal's worst. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Almost as if there was an unexpected explosion in whatever department is supposed to handle plot and character development you can almost see bits of "what might have been" scatter all over the place. Bit like the fairly realistic blood spatters from (mostly) shoulder wounds in one shoot out.Seagal always manages to get interesting co-stars. In this case I nominate Mari Morrow.And it gets a bit sentimental at the end. Quite touching, especially after such a spectacular explosion in the final warehouse the whole damn county would have been declared a disaster zone. All good fun.But you can't deny you keep watching them, and part of the fun is that Seagal seems to insist on doing exactly what he feels is right. And even if it goes directly to video, how many stations carry his films?. Dammit I watched a 2005 film tonight on an Irish channel. It all means royalties.So lets all get crazy!.

that keep using those blasted stunt doubles to try and make him into a "flying dragon". Seagal doesn't need to do all the "airborn" stunts to convince me he can kick some teeth. Movies like Glimmerman are great examples of good choreography with lots of objects being abused with human bodies slamming against them. ;) Give us back the good old Steven we loved in the 90's. This film tried to get back there somewhat. Ashame Asian director's are so fascinated with matrix style choreography and can't just "keep it real". I'm sick of Asian films trying to sell us on stunts alone. Crouching Tiger was one of those films where it's crazy how long you can draw out a story about some sword that I "suppose" is the salvation of the people or whatever. Jet Li's new "Fearless" however is one that am definitely looking forward to. Let's keep Steven doing what he does best, breaking bones and giving pilot lessons. ;)