Environmentalism – Action Hero Movies

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.

Continuing the environmental protection theme of On Deadly Ground, this time Steven Seagal plays a federal government agent called Jack Taggart, tasked with tackling a rich businessman disposing of toxic waste in a small Appalachian town with the help of the locals who are intimidated into co-operating. Many federal agents have attempted to tackle this issue in this location before, but they’ve all been dealt with, until now.

Steven Seagal does a good job as his usual self in this movie – he’s still kind of in his prime here – well, in the latter end of it. He plays the lead role here – the whole movie is kind of based around him. This was his first movie after The Glimmer Man (1996) which is many people’s favourite Steven Seagal movie of all time. Before that, he had a brief stint alongside Kurt Russell in Executive Decision (1996) but was written out early due to conflict behind the scenes and from that moment on his level of Hollywood backing decreased, his trajectory to stardom declined, and he focused more on his own style of movie with humbler budgets from that moment on. In this movie, Fire Down Below, Seagal even showcases his guitar skills.

Kris Kristofferson (from Blade) plays the chief baddie in this movie. He does a decent job of it. Marg Helgenberger plays the lead female role, befriended by Seagal’s character – she puts in a fair performance too. Other supporting actors do alright here too – no superstars, but their performances are all respectable in this movie.

The back end of this movie is pretty well executed, which is a rare thing – most martial arts action flicks have weak endings, but this one had plenty of script creativity until the final moment – it’s not a complicated plot, but had plenty if energy continuously to create the desired vibe and plenty of scene changes to keep things interesting.

Overall I rate this movie about equal to Under Siege 2 – a bit better than On Deadly Ground, and almost as good as Under Siege 1 and The Glimmer Man. Therefore this is about the third best movie in Seagal’s career up to this point, when he’s still in his prime but not for much longer.

Seagal’s career after Fire Down Below

His following movie – The Patriot (1998) – was originally intended for cinemas but ended up being straight-to-VHS, then Seagal took a few years off and came back strong with Exit Wounds (2001) alongside DMX. Anthony Anderson (the funny fat guy from Romeo Must Die), Michael Jai White, Eva Mendes, Tom Arnold, Bill Duke, etc. Then he did a couple more movies with small theatrical releases in some countries (Ticker 2001 and Half Past Dead 2002) before focusing mainly on straight-to-VHS/DVD movies for the rest of his career, beginning with The Foreigner (2003), Out for a Kill (2003) and Belly Of The Beast (2003) all in the one year. He kept up this pace of about 3 movies a year until 2011 when he slowed down a bit, but he continued to release at least one movie a year until 2019 (when his last movie was released) and in 2016 he had a mad spell of 7 movies in one year!