Out of Reach (2004)

Out of Reach (2004)

Starring: Steven Seagal, Matt Schulze, Ida Nowakowska, Agnieszka Wagner, Robbie Gee, Jan Plazalski
Director: Leung Po-Chi
Action Director: Yuen Tak

 

Steven Seagal must have enjoyed his experience working on Belly of the Beast, or at least found it lucrative enough to do the same thing. This time, Seagal teamed up with critically-acclaimed director Leung Po-Chi and Yuen Tak, once of the most important action directors in Hong Kong during the 1990s. With this sort of pedigree, how could he miss? Sadly, lightning did not strike twice and Out of Reach ends up being a run-of-the-mill effort. It is mainly interesting in that instead of ripping off another film, it feels like a test run for the much-superior Taken.

The Rotund One plays William Lansing (which is an in-joke, as Seagal was born in Lansing, Michigan), a former CIA assassin (here we go again) who now lives off the grid at a federal nature preserve in Canada, taking care of sick animals. His favorite hobby is writing to a penpal, a young girl named Irena (Ida Nowakowska) who lives at an orphanage in Poland.

We soon learn that the woman who runs the orphanage, Mrs. Donata (Maria Maj), is a bad apple indeed. She uses the place as a front for human trafficking ring, supplying the traffickers with unsuspecting young girls who dream of becoming models and movie stars, who then hire their services out to rich diplomats and other foreign VIPs. Well, Irena is included in the next batch of girls—her removal from the orphanage is supervised by the main villain, Faisal (Matt Schulze of The Transporter and the Blade films).

Irena’s sudden departure from the orphanage arouses suspicion in Lansing, who books a flight to Poland to visit her. At the same time, his former employers have since caught up with him and want him bumped off. As Daniel Craig said in Casino Royale, [government assassins] have a very short shelf life, but one who has been in the game as long as Lansing would obviously know a few secrets or two. While Lansing thwomps the first wave of agents sent after him, the CIA stays on his tail for the rest of the movie.

Meanwhile, while Mrs. Donata has nothing helpful to say to Lansing, a quick inspection of her bed at the orphanage reveals that she left him a message in code, as he taught her by letter how to be an amateur cryptographer. Thus begins a search all over Warsaw for Irena, with Lansing working against the clock to find her before she gets shipped off to be some Turkish millionaire’s love slave. Joining him for the ride is a Polish policewoman (Agnieszka Wagner) and a young boy from the orphanage, who saw the men that took Irena.

While there are some fits of action here and there, director Leung Po-Chi structures the film as a cat-and-mouse thriller, with Lansing spending the bulk of the film looking for clues and following leads as he closes in on the traffickers, who are always one step ahead of him. This gives the film a greater degree of suspense than many of Seagal’s other action thrillers, in which you’re usually waiting for the next time Seagal shoots someone or snaps a neck. Leung Po-Chi is an interesting director, in that he never pigeonholed himself in one particular genre. He is best known for his period drama Hong Kong 1941, starring a young Chow Yun-Fat. But beyond that, he started off his career directing Jumping Ash (1976), a prototype for the gritty police thriller that we’d see in the 1980s in films like The Long Arm of the Law. Leung also made He Lives By Night (1982), which is the Hong Kong version of an Italian giallo (or violent murder mystery) film. Indeed, there is a scene involving a message written on a mirror that will remind viewers of Dario Argento’s Deep Red.

Despite the uncomfortable (and unfortunately still timely) subject matter, the filmmakers thankfully spare us prolonged scenes of minors being victimized. We see them talking about themselves in front of a camera, and one of them is killed offscreen after trying to flee. But the bulk of the film revolves around Lansing’s investigation and even when Faisal keeps Irena close to him as Lansing zeros on him, she remains resourceful and Faisal never resorts to beating the hell out of her on camera. Nonetheless, this is a Steven Seagal movie, so there is a gunfight at a Polish brothel, where the establishing shots show its employees cavorting about in sexy, butt-revealing lingerie.

The biggest flaw in the film, surprisingly enough, is the action. What little fighting there is consists of standard, cookie-cutter Seagal screen aikido, plus a swordfight at the end that is more Western fencing than tai chi sword. With a Hong Kong choreographer, I expected a little more. With a name like Yuen Tak, who won critical claim for his work in The Dragon from Russia; Fong Sai Yuk; Hero; and Bodyguard from Beijing, I expected Belly of the Beast levels of fighting and carnage. There’s none of that here, save a stylish exchange of firepower at the aforementioned brothel. It is depressing that a man of Yuen Tak’s talent would waste his time on such banal action sequences, although a glance at his filmography would show that his career was on a general decline of both quantity and quality after the turn of the Millennium. Only a few bright spots—Shaolin; The Gallants—shine in an otherwise dark pit of cinematic mediocrity, exemplified best by Out of Reach.