On Deadly Ground (1994) – Steven Seagal

This was Steven Seagal’s 6th movie, which he made between Under Siege 1 (1992) and Under Siege 2 (1995). So he’s already been recognised as a star from Under Siege, which in most movie critics’ eyes remains his biggest & best movie ever, to this day.

On Deadly Ground tells the story of land cherished by natives and locals, ravaged by oil moguls who are happy to kill in order to secure the longevity of their oil rights on this land.

This movie of course stars Steven Seagal, as the main hero of the movie. He’s in his prime here, and plays a Native American working for an oil company who discovers foul play and is almost killed but survives to rescue the land for the locals. The action scenes are generally good, and the plot is simple but alright.

In this movie we’re also treated to a baddie played by Michael Caine. Supporting actors are not bad either.

It’s an OK movie all round – not as strong as Under Siege, and not as cool as Glimmer Man, but still very much OK, on a par with most of the movies at the beginning and middle of his career.

I was impressed to hear the speech at the end of this movie, lasting nearly 4 minutes, where Steven Seagal dropped a ton of truth bombs about the problems in this world, backed by government and big business. He mentions several issues, from suppressed technology to intentionally polluted air & water supplies. How did Steven get away with that, at the end of a movie co-starring Michael Caine? Maybe they allowed it because he had a mistaken explanation of the motives behind these problems. It’s a common mistake to assume it’s all about the money – the people causing these problems couldn’t care less about making money – they have an infinite amount of it since they control the whole financial system. 100 years ago they were printing money for fun. These days it’s all digital, they just type numbers into a computer.

Batman Begins (2005) – Christian Bale and Liam Neeson

Batman Begins (2005) is a star-studded action-drama thriller starring Christian Bale (of Equilibrium, 2002) as Bruce Wayne and Batman. In Batman Begins, we see Bruce Wayne’s growth from childhood into adulthood, we see how he became the Batman, who he formed his initial friendships & alliances with, who he became early enemies with, and we follow his first few missions as the Batman.

Also starring Liam Neeson as the Ninja clan leader who helped train Batman near the start of the movie, while harbouring a dark intentions that come back into the plot towards the end of the movie.

Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman play the roles of Batman’s senior helpers – Alfred the butler, and Mr Fox the technologist who was a former board member and friend of Bruce Wayne’s late father.

Gary Oldman (from Léon and The Book Of Eli) plays the detective who Batman forms an early alliance with, and Katie Holmes (ex-wife of Tom Cruise) plays the lead female who Bruce Wayne grew up with and Batman rescues.

Tom Wilkinson plays the main bad guy early on, and Cillian Murphy plays the main baddie in the middle of the movie.

Generally, it’s a great cast with great acting ability expressed throughout the movie. Batman’s car and technological gadgets are also very nice.

But it’s disappointing that we get some annoyingly hard-to-see fight scenes where everything’s dark and the camera keeps switching between pieces of unclear footage – this is not the kind of action scene I enjoy to watch, but I appreciate there’s no real martial arts skill to be demonstrated by any of these guys and this is a way to cover it up and make it still look credible for drama lovers and suspense or even horror genre fans. Indeed, this movie gets a bit boring with a lot of drama genre creeping in, but when the plot gains legs and the action picks up it becomes very entertaining from time to time.

There’s a great plot twist about half an hour before the end of the movie, when Liam Neeson’s character comes to Gotham.

All in all, I rate it pretty good for fans of this kind of mixed action-drama genre; but for pure action hero movie awesomeness, I rate this movie just ‘OK’ on a par with golden oldie action dramas like Lethal Weapon that have minimal special effects and gadgets etc.

Sequels

If you loved this movie, you might also love its immediate sequel The Dark Knight (2008) which brings back most of the same major cast members and gets regularly called a masterpiece by movie critics, although it doesn’t work so well for me – the star of that movie is actually the Joker rather than the Batman. Maybe it’s good for drama and horror movie fans, but it’s not so pleasant for smooth action hero movie connoisseurs to enjoy. But if you do enjoy the sequel, you’ll be pleased to know most of the same guys come back again for a threequel, The Dark Knight Rises (2012).

Batman Begins (2005)