Urban Justice (2007)

Urban Justice (2007)
aka: Once Upon a Time in the Hood; Renegade Justice

 

Starring: Steven Seagal, Eddie Griffin, Carmen Serano, Cory Hart, Liezl Carstens, Kirk B. R. Woller, Mary Evans, Al Staggs, Jade Yorker, Jermaine Washington
Director: Don E. FauntLeRoy
Action Director: Dickey Beer, Mike Smith

 

If we consider Black Dawn to be the absolute nadir of Seagal’s output during the aughts—someone would argue that said distinction belongs to Attack Force—then naturally that meant that anything else he made would be something of a step up. Flight of Fury, made by the same schmos who gave us Attack Force, was a step in the right direction, I suppose. That also means that the bar was still pretty low during the second half of 2007. It thus comes as a surprise that Urban Justice is as good as it is—had he followed up the (relative) box office success of Exit Wounds with this (instead of Half Past Dead), his theatrical shelf life might have lasted a few more years.

Urban Justice is in many ways vintage 1990s Seagal film cross-bred with the sort of ghetto movie that was popular during the same decade—think Boyz in the Head; South Central; or Jason’s Lyric. Before we go further, let’s get this out of the way: I haven't heard so many F-bombs in a movie since Menace II Society. There’s an F-word in practically every other sentence…sometimes two per sentence for several consecutive lines of dialog. Even Seagal, who has never been above swearing in his movies, goes full Samuel-Jackson-in-a-Tarantino-film potty mouth for this outing.

Seagal plays a Simon Ballister, a loner with a questionable history whose son is murdered in what we the viewer know was an ordered hit. We also know that some corrupt cops are involved, albeit to what extent, the film holds its cards close to its chest. Ballister strolls into Compton, California to set up shop and do what he does best: snap wrists and break arms in his search for the Truth. A police informant, Gary (Jade Yorker, of He Got Game and The Gridiron Gang), suggests that the Mexican gang might have called the hit; Ballister’s son was a cop who was shutting down the local betting parlors on El Chivo’s (Machete’s Danny Trejo) territory.

At the same time, Simon gets a hit placed on his head after showing up at a hideout for El Chivo’s rivals, the East Side Gangstas, and breaking a few necks. A hard ass named Armand (Eddie Griffin, the second biggest name in the cast) runs the gang and we soon learn that he is in league with some dirty detectives, including the one assigned to the Ballister murder case. The question still stands, however: Who exactly ordered the hit and who carried it out? Ballister is raising hell all over South Central with one goal in mind: find the man who pulled the trigger.

Seagal does himself (heh) justice by showing up to all of his looping sessions and performing all of his fight scenes, which are more plentiful here than in many of his other DTV movies. The fights are often filmed in Bourne style, but I'm confident that it's Seagal doing those lethal front kicks. We get a fight scene early on where he beats up some Mexicans in front of a liquor store, followed in short order by a fight at one of Armand’s safe houses. We get a few more throws and clothesline hits when he visits a Mexican bar, plus another fight at a gangsta’s house. The movie also ends with a violent fight in which Ballister completely manhandle’s his opponent in vintage Seagal form.

There is a lot of graphically-violent gunplay in the film. I am talking John Woo level of redrum getting spilled here. Nobody gets shot without two pints of blood spurting out of the exit wound…and A LOT of people get blown away in this movie. The penultimate action sequence is a long, bloody exchange of gunplay near the store where Ballister is staying. A couple of dozen gangstaz do the dance of death here, and if Chow Yun-Fat weren’t a pacifist in real life, he’d be proud of the carnage on display. Add all this to strong supporting performances, a lack of the usual quotient of Seagal Sleaze--there is one scene where Eddie Griffin jokes to two scantily-clad women about snorting lines off of his penis—and Seagal doing his own voiceovers, and you get a pleasant surprise.