A Dangerous Man (2009)

A Dangerous Man (2009)
aka: On the Run

 

Starring: Steven Seagal, Mike Dopud, Marlaina Mah, Vitaly Kravchenko, Jesse Hutch, Terry Chen, Byron Mann, Byron Lawson, Jerry Wasserman, Vincent Cheng
Director: Keoni Waxman
Action Director: Lauro David Chartand-DelValle, Chad Sayn

 

Much like The Keeper, Seagal’s next collaboration with director Keoni Waxman has surpassed a 5.0 score on the Internet Movie Database. In terms of the Seagal bell curve, that is really the best thing you can hope for. This one is actually a little bit better than The Keeper in terms of action and characterization, plus it has a better all-around cast.

The movie starts off in Con Air territory, with Seagal playing Shane Daniels, an ex-Special Forces op…where I have heard that one before? Shane comes to the rescue when a carjacker attacks his wife and chases the thug away. The would-be robber is found brutally murdered shortly thereafter and the blame falls on Shane. He gets sentences to ten years in prison. He gets released six years later after DNA evidence proves that he had not been responsible for the murder. The downside is that his wife got tired of waiting for him and filed for divorce, so Daniels is greeted in the free world by loneliness.

Now a simmering pot of anger, Shane wanders around the Pacific Northwest, wasting his compensation funds on alcohol. One day, he witnesses a state policeman pulling over a pair of Chinese men. While searching their vehicle, the cop finds a sports bag full of money. Before he can do anything, the two men overpower and kill him. Also at the scene are two Russian kids, one of whom, Sergey (Jesse Hutch, who worked with Seagal on the series “True Justice”), is the son of a local mobster, Vlad. When the Chinese gangsters attack the kids, Shane intervenes and rescues Sergey.  The two discover that besides a few million dollars in cash, there is a young woman stashed inside the car.

Said woman is Tia (Marlaina Mah, who now works as film producer). Her story is that she wanted to bring her uncle into the country. As her uncle was an accountant for the Chinese military, the U.S. government had him a list of people ineligible for a visa. Thus, Tia went to the local Chinese crime boss, Chen (Terry Chen, of TV shows like “Jessica Jones” and “House of Cards”), to sneak him into the country. The problem is that since her uncle was privy to a lot of military information—he handled the books associated with China’s excursions into the Golden Triangle—some people do not want him to leave. Specifically, a man known as The Colonel (Byron Mann, who had worked alongside Seagal in Belly of the Beast), who is paying Chen to double cross Tia. Since Tia knows about the Colonel and that Chen has the local police in his pocket, the woman most assuredly has a price on her head.

And now Shane Daniels has something to live for: protect Tia at all costs.

The storyline of A Dangerous Man—written by director Waxman—is reminiscent of Lethal Weapon 4, which involves Triads and Chinese military involved with the illegal immigration of an important individual. In this case, A Dangerous Man one sort of reverses the roles of the military and Triads in terms of who is the primary and secondary villains. And heck, Steven Seagal’s Shane Daniels ex-Special Forces op who lost his wife and has nothing to live for is very reminiscent of Mel Gibson’s Martin Riggs, who had a similar background. I did enjoy watching Seagal play a hardened, angry man whose anger threatens to explode at any moment. It’s not a huge stretch for him, but it is nice to see him playing a more vulnerable character than usual.

Instead of Dickey Beer, the fights are arranged by veteran stuntman Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle. DelValle has worked on dozens of movies, big and small. Noteworthy jobs as fight coordinator include the big-budget Tom Cruise vehicle The Last Samurai and the Gary Daniels film The White Tiger. The action is good, although the occasional use of undercranking in the fighting is a bit odd for a Seagal movie. Amusingly enough, in an interview with Scott Adkins for the “Art of Action” podcast, Seagal once claimed that his films were better than Donnie Yen’s because he never used undercranking. Yeah, man.

An early fight scene sees Seagal, boiling with rage, dismantling a mugger’s pistol and beating his head to a bloody pulp. Later, there are some nice exchanges of handwork between Seagal and some of his opponents, although the final fight with Byron Mann is a gyp. Byron Mann gets into a kung fu stance, and then Seagal just punches and throws him around like he was nothing. An early fight against a Triad in the parking lot was better choreographed than the finale. Before that, Seagal fights some other Chinese soldiers at an old mill and dispatches them in graphically violent ways. Add those to a pair of are two long firefights in the last act to keep action junkies happy.

The expected nudity is here. Whenever, Shane reminisces about the wife who left him, he remembers the time that she was dancing naked for him before engaging in Finally, I thought that Marleina Mah's character should have ended up with Sergei, the Russian mob boss's son, instead of Seagal. They were more alike in age and he took care of her during the fights. Bah, I tell you. Bah!