What a Renaissance man, that Steven Seagal. He lumbers, he sermonizes, he directs!
“On Deadly Ground,” his latest outing, is a supremely silly eco-thriller with aspirations to “Dances With Wolves.” In it, Seagal plays Forrest Taft, an oil-rig worker who specializes in putting out refinery fires for an Alaskan company, a guy who belatedly discovers that oil drilling can despoil nature. Hasn’t this guy ever heard of the Exxon Valdez?
It’s his discovery that the company plans to turn tribal lands into waste dumps-and that his unctuous boss (Michael Caine) wants him dead-that makes Forrest a convert. He joins Inuit activists, among whose number is the beauteous Masu (Joan Chen), and commits to fighting oil with fire.
Despite Forrest’s new eco-consciousness, he doesn’t seem to grasp that firebombing oil refineries has its own devastating ecological impact. But people who enjoy Steven Seagal movies aren’t sticklers for logic. And what could be less logical than starring someone as affectless and inert and implacable as a Douglas fir in an “action” movie?
People who enjoy Seagal’s movies are there to see firearms discharged into the crotches of the hero’s enemies, knives plunged through the villain’s eyes and random explosions every 45 seconds. In these areas, “On Deadly Ground” does not disappoint.
Seagal fans may be surprised that the film ends with a sermon by Forrest against the evils of the internal-combustion engine that burns the oil that spoils our water and fouls our air. Now, how does the director square this inspiring sequence with the passage in the movie when Forrest and Masu abandon their dogsled for a gas-guzzling snowmobile?
I have one word for “On Deadly Ground”: mush.
”ON DEADLY GROUND”
(STAR) 1/2
Directed by Steven Seagal; written by Ed Horowitz and Robin U. Russin; photographed by Ric Waite; music by Basil Poledouris; produced by Seagal, Julius R. Nasso and A. Kitman Ho. A Warner Bros. release; playing at McClurg Court, Burnham Plaza and outlying theaters. Running time: 1:40. MPAA rating: R. Profanity, nudity, extreme violence.
THE CAST
Forrest Taft………………………..Steven Seagal
Michael Jennings…………………….Michael Caine
Masu……………………………….Joan Chen
MacGruder…………………………..John McGinley
