Kill Switch (2008)

Kill Switch (2008)
Aka: Killing Point; A Higher Form of Learning

 

Starring: Steven Seagal, Isaac Hayes, Holly Elisa, Michael Filipowich, Chris Thomas King, Mark Collie, Karyn Michelle Baltzer, Phillip Granger
Director: Jeff King
Action Director: Steven McMichael, Larry Lam, Scott J. Ateah, Marcus Young

 

After the entertaining Urban Justice and Pistol Whipped, we get Steven Seagal's Zodiac…or Steven Seagal’s The Bone Collector. Usually a serial killer premise does not give itself to martial arts movies, on the grounds that there would only be one opponent for the hero to fight. A good example of that was Jeff Speakman’s The Expert, in which the martial arts action was left for the end. Obviously, the creative way to work around that is to make the serial killer a martial artist as well, like in Tiger Claws; Bloodmoon; and the relatively recent Kung Fu Killer. Another workaround is for the psycho to ally himself up with other bad guys, like in Beauty Investigator. This film, one of Seagal’s more action-packed films from the 2000s, gives us two serial killers plus a some tertiary bad guys for Seagal to take down.

Here he plays Jacob King, a homicide detective for the Memphis (played by Vancouver) Police Detective. King is plagued by memories of his adolescence, specifically the memory of his watching his twin brother get killed by a serial killer at their birthday party. In the opening scene, he takes down a psychopath named Billy Joe (Mark Colllie, who worked with Seagal in Fire Down Below), who has a penchant for stitching bombs into his female victims. After roughing him up something good, King turns his sights to another killer known as "The Grifter."

This particular piece of work leaves the bodies with astrological signs carved into the bodies, but not before savagely beating them to death with blunt objects. The Grifter also leaves behind coded letters that nobody has deciphered yet. So, while King is on the case, working overtime to figure out the code in hopes that it will lead him both to the killer and his next victims. Meanwhile, he also has to deal with a green-in-the-ears FBI agent (Holly Elissa, of the TV series “Whistler” and “Arrow”). Things get even more complicated when Billy Joe is let out of jail on account of the extreme brutality that King used while arresting him.

Kill Switch is an entertaining Seagal flick, albeit not quite as good as his previous efforts were. This one gets points for doing something a little different by Seagal standards, even though viewers will get a certain feeling of déja vu from the proceedings. The most original touch is having Seagal play a Memphis policeman, and watching Seagal fake a Tennessee twang for 90 minutes is absolutely surreal. A year later, Seagal would star in the TV series “Steven Seagal: Lawman,” following his work as a reserve deputy sheriff in Louisiana. He receives ample support from his supporting cast, including award-winning Blues musician Chris Thomas King as King’s partner; the late Isaac Hayes as a police coroner; and Mike Collie as the crazed killer Billy Joe.

The only major fault in the plot is a subplot involving the Grifter framing Seagal’s character for one of the murders. It is brought up in the third act, never actually comes to King’s attention, and is solved offscreen. I mean, we can probably complain about the psychology of serial killers and how this film handles it, or how unnecessary (and borderline fascist) the police brutality portrayed is. However, this is a Steven Seagal film, and a post-2002 one to boot. We judge it on other merits, like: Do we hear Seagal’s voice most of the time? Does he perform his own fighting? Is there any fighting at all in the film? The answer to all of those is “Yes, for the most part.” So as a Seagal film, it justifies its existence.

There is a fair amount of action and, unlike most of the Big Man’s movies, the fights are all very lengthy. That surprised me. He also takes more lumps than he usually does in his movies, which is also unexpected. The first fight has Seagal repeatedly throwing (or shoving) a guy through walls, which goes on longer than most Seagal throwdowns. Shortly afterward, he is heavily doubled in a lengthy fight against a pimp and his henchmen, which pours out into the streets and becomes a lengthy shoot-out. Later fights feature more punching than Seagal usually does, sometimes taking on the character of an MMA ground pounding. There is lots of “elegant” arm flailing--especially in his second fight with the Grifter—the closest we get an old fashioned Hong Kong cinema exchange of punches. The action has a mean-spirited streak, with Seagal's character taking pleasure in maiming his opponents--watch him break a guy to pieces with a hammer in once sequence. For the most part, the action satisfies, although it could have done with less quick cuts and drop-frame editing in some places.

The prerequisite Seagal sleaze comes during the film’s coda, set some years after the resolution of the main conflict. Seagal's character comes home to his beautiful young Russian trophy wife (and two Russian-speaking sons), who takes him to their bedroom and bares her breasts before Seagal closes the door behind him. Final scene titillation is a Bond thing, not a serial killer movie thing. And it's even stranger considering that Seagal's character had an ill-fated girlfriend whom he spent the film ignoring, even when she was waltzing around his pad carrying a sign that read "There's room in my knickers for you." It is a frankly bizarre and inappropriate way to end such a dark and gruesome film.