User reviews

Men have a place in their brains called the macho cortex (MC) buried in the limbic system which, when sufficiently stimulated, turns us into drooling morons with only two desires; survival and sex, not necessarily in that order. Most action flicks are designed to stimulate the MC by flooding our senses with big, ugly dudes who are bad (we don't care why) and we want to see killed or luscious babes who are good (all babes are good, even bad ones) and we want to...well, you know. This parses as Big, ugly = bad, Babe = good. All we need is some kind of Rambo-like hero with whom we can identify and, presto, we're there, vicariously getting off as we watch the hero (us) waste the bad guys while the babes swoon.

The problems with the formula in Seagal's formula action outing "Out for a Kill" are manifold. First, the hero, Seagal, doesn't fit the strong, silent type paradigm because he looks like a porky zombie on ludes. Second, the hero is married and then quickly widowed. So, now we're stuck with a porky zombie on ludes who is in mourning. Yuck! Thirdly, as Seagal trucks through a plot flatter than a saltine, there are no babes watching or waiting to drop their skivvies at the end. So, where's the prize? No respectable action hero would go to so much trouble with no hotties watching and waiting. Hottie cop Goh is waiting at the end but she's a platonic thing because she can't jump the hero since he's in mourning. Duh! Therefore, all the killing is a needless, senseless waste of time, the MC never gets engaged, and we, the men, are left with no reason to drool so boredom sets in and that's a bad thing. (C-)

Can he sink any lower? Probably yes, because at the rate he is going turning back is going to be very hard. It was after Exit Wounds that Seagal started his nose dive which has yet to end. Half Past Dead was a good step up from Ticker, but it still was only OK. Now we arrive at... ...this horrible film. It contains a bland to the max story of vengeance on the people who killed Seagal's wife. Some of the scenes are also so overly and ridiculously dramatic that you'll cringe. And Seagal, in this film, plays Seagal. That's right, he plays himself. He just shows up on screen pretending to be a professor and the audience expects him to start fighting with people soon and that's what happens.

No character development to speak of just mundane fights one after another. The bad guys are really stupid and just sit around a table somewhere. One by one they disappear and we are led to believe that they among the films body count. Does that sound dumb and confusing? Well that's because it is. 2/10

Rated R: violence and profanity

Either Steven Seagal has absolutely NO self-respect or the Mob were just too damn scary for him when it came to signing the contract for this total pile of crap.

They couldn't even be bothered to come up with an good title. Instead they took Hard to Kill and Out for Justice and combined them (Hard to Justice?). But don't even think for one minute that this film is up to the standards of Seagal's golden years. You'll NEVER see anything worse than this. Well, Son of the Mask maybe.

Seagal plays an archaeologist (well, it's a change from Cop or ex- CIA) who's precious Chinese artifacts and pots are seized by the Tong (the non-threatening Chinese Syndicate baddies) and stuffed with brown sugar (or cocaine, I don't know). Big Steve stumbles upon this dastardly deed and takes off for the Uzbekistan border. A hundred baddies come out of nowhere and start firing at him.

Big Steve is promptly framed and sent to jail, where he meets a character introduced as his new sidekick but is quickly forgotten about and never seen or heard from again. What the hell was the point in this? It turns out that Steve used to be in the CIA (oh for the love of crumb cake) and was their best ghost thief (huh?) and the DEA release him for some reason and he goes home to his quiet American suburb, where the Tong blow up his wife and house.

Steve goes on a killing spree. But what helps is that every Chinaman who's neck he breaks has a one-word tattoo on his arm that when added up makes an ancient Chinese proverb that provides the right order of tiles to push in case of fire in the Tong bosses office. What? Don't look at me! I didn't write this! The bad guys don't do anything apart from sit at a long table in a poorly-lit and cold-looking room and smoke cigars while looking evil. The boss isn't even Chinese but an Ian Hislop-lookalike with bushy eyebrows. Every 10 minutes the film will jump to them (subtitles list their hobbies and interests for some strange reason!) and the boss goes 'We have to stop him, he knows too much'.

The fight scenes are horrible. What is the deal with the kung-fu monkey barber? Seriously! What is the deal with that? The computer- generated effects are the worst ever (second to Son of the Mask, nothing will beat that in terms of terribleness). I've seen more convincing stuff on a ZX Spectrum.

Seagal puts NO effort into this film. He looks incredibly bored through-out and looks like he'd rather be praying to Budda. However, you can almost see Frankie Fingers from The Mob loitering off- camera, pointing a gun at his head. I know I wouldn't show enthusiasm if that were the case.

Out for a Kill is directed by Mike Oblonglowiscz, the same amateur responsible for the equally as horrible The Foreigner. The man has NO idea how to make films and should never be allowed near a camera again. He desperately tries to mime Michael Bay (a dubious choice of inspiration) with his pointless stutter-cuts and incoherent editing which only makes the film look worse, turning it into an avalanche on top of another avalanche. It's quite possibly one of the ugliest-looking film you'll ever see. Considering some of the high-profile and veteran production members it's phenomenal they made a film so indescribably bad.

Eternal, everlasting shame on all those involved with making this trash. Utter crap of the lowest order.

The DVD is in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, showing off the ugly photography and poorly planned camera angles in all their rubbishy glory. The Dolby 5.1 soundtrack also turns the films unbelievably bad sound design into pure torture for the ears. The cover also features 2 exploding helicopters. There are no helicopters in the entire film, never mind exploding ones.

Seagal is back, more monotonous than ever and with even less personality than usual. Unfortunately, that's only the beginning of all the problems with this so called 'movie'. Now, I'm a big fan of cheap, mindless action, but even I have limits. 'Out for a Kill' is beyond all hope.

Seagal plays Robert Burns, a Professor of Chinese History, and Killing People. Naturally, he has a secret past that he keeps hidden when he is framed by a Triad family. He is obviously innocent, but for the sake of keeping the movie going, and thereby torturing the mind of anyone watching , the lead cop decides he must be guilty, and he is thrown into a Chinese prison. Naturally, the DEA decides that if they release Burns, he'll do their job for them and take out the Triads, and so Burns is free to on a global stroll of death.

Sometimes laughably bad, but generally very cringe-worthy, 'Out for a Kill' is easily one of the worst movies I've seen. Right from the start when we are treated to poorly done CGI bullet-time, followed by a massive break from action clichés when bullets actually penetrate a car and kill a good guy. Some clichés we can do without, but action movies need the bullet-proof cars. Bullet-proof cars are an essential part of action movies, and one element you just don't mess with.

I still haven't scratched the surface, because after Oblowitz (the director) spits in the face of action-movie values, we get treated to a plot, a very poor plot. Now, I don't think anyone anywhere has ever watched a Seagal movie expecting a good story, but when there is not enough action to distract us, we will start paying attention to such things. In this case, Seagal swears he will get vengeance, but to do so, he must follow a series of clues which are - get this - conveniently tattooed on the arms of every bad guy Seagal kills. Bravo. It would have been much easier for everyone if the Triad boss just invited Seagal over for a game of mahjong. Throw in a pair of useless and annoying cops who follow Seagal everywhere and many pointless scenes, and you may start to get an idea of how bad this movie really is.

There are a few action sequences in the movie, but maybe only two that are of any real worth. Sadly, the best bit of this movie is a scene in which Seagal takes on a monkey-boxer who can defy gravity. Well, there goes Seagal's unique style of using Aikido in action movies. A few more movies like this, and Seagal flicks are going to be nothing more than 3rd rate clones of Hong Kong action movies, mark my word. Most of the fights are poorly choreographed and poorly edited, all based around trying to make Seagal look like an action hero while trying to hide the fact that he is still out of shape. It worked in 'Half Past Dead', but not here.

Onto even more bad news: Here Seagal tries to act a lot, and his character is just boring. I never thought a boring action hero could exist, but here you are. He is more monotonous than usual, his character rarely says or does anything amusing (there is only one scene where his character does or says something cool) and just lacks personality. As for the bad guy, the movie returns to his office every few minute just so he can repeat what he has been saying for the whole movie, which is something like: "The professor is giving us trouble, we must get rid of him". I actually felt tempted to barrack for the bad guy, had he not been so repetitive and annoying.

Some final complaints: The special effects are pretty bad. Apart from the once-off terrible use of bullet-time, the fake backgrounds stand off as being laughable. Would filming in daylight have been that hard? As for Seagal speaking Chinese: it sounds worse than his use of Italian in 'Out for Justice'.

'Out for a Kill' is a terrible movie. Well deserving of its place in IMDb's worst 100 movies (it could probably take a higher spot...). I would not recommend it to fans of Seagal, but anyone willing to see something so bad it offends that it will offend good conscience should have a quick look - 1/10

When he finds that his Chinese artefacts are really being used to smuggle drugs across the world, archaeologist Professor Robert Burns (no, really) makes a break for the border. His colleague dies in the ensuing chase but he makes it to safety, only to framed and arrested for the very crime of drug running. The American DEA get him released and he goes back home to his wife. However the criminals who framed him, come back after him and, when they miss him, kill his wife instead. Of course what they didn't know was that the mild mannered and slightly portly Professor was once one the world's greatest thieves and a martial arts expert to boot and, when he is struck, he strikes back.

Early on in this film, Professor Burns notes that pilot "Crash" Kupper used to fill proper airplanes and that his current job of flying rubbish little passenger planes shows that his career has really taken a turn for the worse. About 90 minutes later I couldn't help wonder how many takes they had to do of that scene before they were able to get Seagal to deliver the line without the irony bringing tears to his eyes (although his "highs" were never really that high were they?) because even by his standards "Out for a Kill" is a poor film, whose unimaginative title only hints at the dreariness to come. All the clichés are present – a hero who "used to be a top etc", a shady mastermind etc etc. None of it really engaged me and the globe-trotting nature of it just didn't work at all. Usually the action makes up for all the rubbish but here it was also pretty poor; the direction of them are unimpressive and attempts at something fancy in the barber shop were really just ridiculous.

The cast can do nothing to stop the rot, in fact they are a big part of the problem. In every scene Seagal looks like someone has just woken him up and that he just wants to get this all over and done with. He mumbles his way through it, only doing well with a bit of the action here and there. Goh is equally as bad and her narration is just plain awful in terms of dialogue and delivery. Johnson doesn't have much to do and just hangs around till someone decides he isn't needed any more. The support cast are made up of Asian actors who fill space on the screen and a baddie who we know is a baddie because he spends all his time in a big room, smoking – they must have shot all his scenes in about a week.

Overall this is a poor film and even fans of Seagal will struggle to find any value in this one. The direction is messy and derivative while the actual story could only aspire to those standards. The cast clearly are not up for it one bit and Seagal looks like a man carrying a crushed spirit as he repetitively goes through the motions with a lot of mumbling and a dead look in his eyes.

Where, oh, where do you begin talking about the plethora of problems with a film like this? This film is technically and artistically inept from beginning to end. It plays as if it were literally assembled out of scenes from other films and slapped together as this mess. Most of Seagal's dialogue was added in post-production because he's always speaking when he's out of frame -- an obvious sign that this thing - story and all - was basically created in the cutting room. The director uses odd transitions and focus pulls for no reason. Boring slow motion scenes are an obvious attempt to push the movie out to a full 90 minutes. Transitions are abrupt and make no sense -- all of a sudden Seagal is in the middle of a car chase that goes nowhere. Characters appear from nowhere, and lesser characters suddenly have voice-over inner monologues that make no sense. Every rule of common sense filmmaking and storytelling are completely broken. The plot makes no sense. Everytime we see the bad guys they are in the same room, at the same table, wearing the same clothes -- again, obviously shot in one day to piece this tub O' crap together in post production. The editing is choppy, the action clumsy, and the climax is a total joke. To be avoided at all costs. Surely one of the worst films made in recent memory. Seriously -- what were they thinking? Garbage.

I haven't seen The Foreigner but if it's the same director Michael Oblowitz, then avoid it and this film like the plague. Talk about directing/editing basics, this man has no idea of either when it comes to action films. I've liked most of Seagal's films but this is lower than the pits.

Oblowitz has no idea how to edit or direct an action film, he should go back to film school and start again. In fact Oblowitz don't bother.

A disaster for Seagal, the biggest bore of a film I've seen for a long time, to give it 1 out of 10 is being too kind.

Real Shyte.

I only wish there was a rating below 1 for this turkey. What can I say: bad editing (oh and you don't have to be an expert to catch this), terrible acting and dialogue, ridiculous fight scenes, stupid character development and on and on.

Seagal must have been short on alimony payments or something to put this mess together and lay it our for viewers. Most action heroes get better with experience but Seagal'S earliest works are so superior to this.

Instead of being a semi-plausible character like a Navy Seal or CIA operative or cop, he plays an archaeologist who dresses like he's auditioning to be Neo in the Matrix or John Shaft. Looks completely ridiculous on a dig in the wilderness of China. They try to explain in hindsight where this professor got his superior kung-fu fighting skills, but it works as badly as their attempt to explain how a convict gets a doctorate in archaeology while in prison (without any field work of course).

Then there's the simple technical aspects of the film like being in Bulgaria, but all the signs are in English and the people are either Chinese or American. Even some of the Chinese dialogue is subtitled in English completely wrong.

Then there's the acting. First the movie contains some of the worst Steven Seagal pseudo Feng-Shui/Asian/mysticism/philosophical babblings that one could ever imagine. Stupid metaphors that apparently only make sense to him. Chooi King-Beh as Wong Dai is definitely the "Wrong Guy" as he desperately tries to deliver each line as some sinister comic book villain rather than the Chinese businessman that he is. Cory Johnson is equally as stupid as a FBI agent who has no role other than to wander through scenes and deliver lines that insult Catholics, Chinese and the French. What I didn't understand is how him and his partner seem to be able to walk around steps behind Seagal invisible to him and the Tong until almost the very end.

This is not even a good action film for those who enjoyed Seagal as Casey Ryback. The fight scenes are either prolonged patty-cake slapping with dubbed bone cracking to the height of dumb with the monkey style kung-fu in the barbershop complete with all the ridiculous gravity defying stunts of Crouching Tiger.

I cannot conceive of any audience other than reviewers for the worst film of 2003 that this movie would appeal to.

So I finally got around to watching my copy of Out for a Kill (2003) and ugh! I didn't realise this was seen as one of Steven Seagal's worst films. So after watching it, I can see why. I was so bored, that it eventually became background noise as I did other tasks while tuning in and out. The premise was fine, but the execution falls flat. Seagal being half-ass mumbling, or preaching his lines of wisdom, providing the same nothing impression (looking constipated) every scene (be it from discovering priceless artifices to the sudden death of loved ones) and then when it came to the action he magically appears out of thin air, swipes around his arms real fast to look like his giving it his all, but as usual the stuntmen along with the film editor are doing overtime to make "him" look good. Also some of the CGI was god awful... oh man, that bullet sequence!? Actually the whole archeology scenes at the beginning where Segeal's professor (mmm I know) character is framed, comes off laughably dumb in its set-up. However the stupidity of it all quickly turns into tedium.

This is a totally awful and boring movie.

I was impressed that a totally bad directing and mediocre script reached to be a Seagal film! Seagal did this movie with no pleasure, you can notice that, he's plain and bored trough all the movie; he usually don't move while fighting, but in this movie he almost fall asleep while taking down the bud guys. He also looks fat and like he just woke up. I like Seagal movies, but this is really awful. Some scenes have no meaning or sense, and some fights are absurd (Like the Kung Fu Monkey style guy that walks trough walls, i laughed at that!). The Chinese mafia (from all the world) meets always in the same place, and this scenes are put almost every 10 minutes in the film, all the time in the film they show the day and the place in red letters (without too much sense), like the comments of the Chinese mafia leaders in the beginning! This movie try to copy a bond film, taking Seagal trough the world as a 008 agent but without the toys and financial support of the British.

About the Movie: Seagal plays here the role of Archaeologist professor Robert Burns, excellent in the matter and who received a prize for his discoveries at Yale University. The story begins when an international Chinese drug mafia cartel tries to use the shipments of Archaeological discoveries from the Chineses border, to export drugs from China (these drugs look more like brown sugar), and Burn find out this and try to escape, in the pursuit, a student of him dies and he is believed guilty of homicide and drug traffic and is send to prison. Some DEA cops, due to their lack of exit chasing these drug lords, use professor Burns (believed guilty) as bait to get to this mafia. In this the Chinese try to kill the Proffesor in order to protect their operations; surprise that the professor is an martial arts expert by some reasons of his past, and the task became harder than they expected. The mafia consist of: (1) Sai Lo (heroin market in Paris), (2) Thang "The Bird" Zhili (New York drug market in Chinatown), (3) Yin Quinchi (Sofia Bulgaria Eastern Europe drug cartel) (4) Li Bo (drug export in Shanghai China) (5) Fang "The Barber" Lee (Paris drug cartel) (6) Mr. Chang (Drug money in London) and (7) Wong Dai, the boss and more powerful drug lord of all. The story takes place in different parts of the world (like a James Bond movie), specially in Chinatowns of all world.

About the Cast: Seagal, terrible!, the Chinese bad guys are the worst actors of all time!, Michelle Goh, beautiful but bad actress, and her DEA partner is even worse than the Chinese; i haven't seen such bad acting in months! (and i watch movies almost every day)

Great acting, brilliant plot, memorable dialogue, unforgettable music, inspirational directing - Out for a Kill is unquestionably none of these.

At least you've got to hand it to Steven Seagal who effortlessly maintains his unassailable position at the absolute pinnacle of the "films guaranteed to bomb" list with this non-performance in this non-film. (I was tempted to use the word wooden but trees show more expression that Seagal).

I swear, throughout this film Seagal's expression never changes.He adopts the same tight lipped expressionless face when his colleague gets shot, his wife gets blown up, he has to fight a man monkey (what the hell was that scene all about), he has to fight the obligatory several dozen Chinese Martial Arts experts armed with swords and guns who are inevitably no match for Steve who can't even be bothered to get up off his arse to fight in one scene and remains seated whilst he counters every punch and blow thrown with his greased lightening hands.

I think what happened with this film was, when they swept the cutting room floor up they mistakenly canned and released the rubbish on the floor and threw the film away. Its the only explanation as to how this 90 odd minutes of utter nonsense could have been put on general release.

Don't say you haven't been warned.

Steven Seagal has a decent run of action films in the early 1990s with Under Siege being the high point. His decline was swift as his ego got the better of him.

For years he has been out of shape, portly and with bad hair. He still has loyal fans hence the slew of straight to DVD releases which tends to have the same fight scenes. Seagal basically moving his hands around quickly.

Here Seagal plays an archaeology professor in China. The artifacts have been used by the Triad gangs to smuggle drugs and the somehow police think that this award winning expert is behind it and sent to jail.

The US cops get him released hoping that he would lead them to the bad guys, but as always Seagal is a man with a shady past and worse his idiocy leads to his wife being killed. Now he is bent on revenge and no amount of bad CGI will stop him.

This is a film if you want to see bad acting, bad dubbing, bad special effects, bad script and to see how the once mighty have fallen.

The high point is the monkey style kung fu fight scene.

Well, I would have awarded this on a "0" if I could have. cos this Shiite ain't worth anything else.

I'm not going into the plot as its none existent. Let's say, Seagal is a archaeologist, "Out for Justice". Other than that, you don't want to know.

I saw this film on TV the other day when it was on before "Bloodsport". The TV guide gave it one star more...WTF?!?!?! The f*****g Shiite ass wooden acting of Mr Seagull, resembles that of a fat, overweight wooden doll. Clearly impossible, but he pulls it off, in spectacular fashion. Plot is total arse and none of it is convincing!!! The fact he hasn't probably seen his pen-is in the last ten years clearly shows his craving for macho crap in this film, clearly the single worst film I've ever seen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, so we all know Seagal cannot act. This movie is beyond that though. Its so badly made that even the time wasted to write this review is too much for it already. Don't waste your time watching it.

Michael Oblowitz must have been stoned out of his mind and I will be avoiding movies made by him in the future. Watching this movie must be like a bad trip. The perspective is zooming in and out all the time and jumps from one location to an other so often it will make you dizzy watching. Though Seagal never was more than a martial art action hero, good OLD Seagal became a cartoon of himself trying to hide his fatness in a big leather coat, which hardly ever comes off. I think I saw him getting dressed in it when he woke up and went out of bed. Excuse me for not wanting to look at it again to make sure. Probably he became so slow that every fight scene was edited in slow motion with lots of smoke and flashes to make it look like a fight scene. He meets hoods in several parts of the world that are in a smoke filled room in the U.S.A. the next moment and back in Europe the next. At least the few women were pretty nice although they couldn't really act either.

I love how you can see Steven Seagal's career go down the drain just by looking at his titles. In the early 90s he used to be all "Hard To Kill" and "Out For Justice", here he's..."Out For A Kill"? What does that even mean? Does that mean like, any kill? Does he just kill the postman and call it a day? Never thought I'd ever be confused by a Steven Seagal movie, but here we are. The action in this movie is incredibly repetitive, it's the same pattern over and over again. Chinese mob guy sends over dudes to kill Seagal, doesn't work, sends new guys, doesn't work, new guys, doesn't work, same old same old. It's somewhat mind-numbing, but luckily you can still laugh at the poor fight scenes and at Seagal being as agile as a washing machine. It's a well-known fact that Seagal has often had fighting doubles in his more recent movies, but in this movie his outsourcing goes even further: he has a talking double. A whole bunch of his lines are dubbed over, around halfway I started to wonder if Seagal even knew he was in this movie. And the ending, oh God the ending. Nothing could prepare you for that. This movie pretty much defines "so bad it's good".

I just finished watching "Out for a Kill" which seemed to take a huge step in getting it right for Seagal giving back to the fans what they want to see from him. The supporting cast was the movie's biggest downfall, but the action sequences prove that Seagal still has it. The Foreigner was a huge disappointment after the cartoonish "Half Past Dead" (A Seagal movie should not be rated PG-13) and this is definitely a step up. As a monster Seagal fan it was a positive thing to hear that his straight to DvD releases are doing as well as they are, perhaps setting him up for a huge comeback with The Yakuza or US3. The martial arts were spectacular and held this movie together, and it was great to see Seagal finally break somebody's arm again (it has been since Exit Wounds...)...The only item that particuarly perplexes me is that anyone owning this DVD, looking at the cover art and also the disc one can get a glimpse of helocopters-why? There wasn't a single one in the film....Looking forward to Belly of the Beast.

Well, the subject line says it all, doesn't it? At this point in his plummeting career, Steven Seagal has simply refused to play any role other than Steven Seagal. Which doesn't mean he's been known to play other roles before, because in all honesty, I can't recall if he has or not. (My guess would be No.)

Here, Seagal plays Seagal, which means he is invincible. He is the greatest. He is The Man Who Cannot Be Touched Or Beaten. I would wager good money that if Seagal played a movie where he had to fight God, he would win without breaking a sweat.

In the case of OUT FOR A KILL, Seagal manages to fandangle his love of Chinese people and all things Chinese into the movie. Of course it begs the question: if Seagal is trying so hard to promote Chinese culture, why does he help propogate the stereotype that all Chinese people know kung fu, because absolutely EVERYONE who is Chinese in this movie knows kung fu. Of course, they only know kung fu just enough to take up a couple of seconds before Seagal snaps their neck like a chicken wing.

Seagal plays Seagal. Nuff said.

4 out of 10