Deadly Crossing

There were two glaring omissions from Stallone's recent action hero reunion 'The Expendables' - one was Jean Claude Van Damme who I believe is considering a more 'arty' strand to his career after JCVD, and the other is Steven Seagal. So it was good to receive this DVD and see that Seagal was still with us and still trying to give us our action fix.

It's worth saying that I have never really a fan of his. To me, he was always a second division action man, well below your Willis' and Arnie's. It was only his appearance with Kurt Russell in Executive Decision that I look back on fondly. With that in mind, I wasn't sure what to expect with this, one of his 'mature' outings.

When it started and credits rolled, I was convinced i had seen it before. I must have, it was all so familiar. I pressed pause, did a bit of internet research, no, i definitely hadn't seen it. Then it became clear that the opening credits, look, music, feel were all just as you would expect from any American cop show of the last 20 years, and by brain had been conditioned with the exposure over the years. The plot, nothing original there either - a cop trying to save his hometown city from the threat of gangland violence and drugs. The script also could be slipped into any number of shows, with flatpack banter between the cast - tab A into slot A etc. Seagal, who was on writing duties as well, has obviously been watching a lot of American TV in between his martial art practice sessions. In between scenes we are treated to grainy images of the Seattle skyline.....we've been here before.

There is one thing that no other show has had though, and that's Seagal as the hero cop. He plays Elijah Kane, who grew up as a poor man on the streets he now protects. He mutters his lines with serious whispers, never smiling, and pronounces police 'Po-lease' and says 'man' at the end of every sentence. Someone needs to tell Steven that there's nothing more embarassing than a granddad speaking 'youth'. Any grain of believability evaporates when it becomes clear that Kane is actually super man. He can beat anyone up, summarise a murder scene in 10 seconds (another rip off, this time from the CSI type shows), and then he speaks Mandarin all of a sudden. What chance do the Russkies have?

Having said that, I wasn't bored, it ticked along at a nice pace and there were a couple of unexpected moments. Seagal fans will, I'm sure, enjoy this and come next year there will be a few people singing the praises of Southern Justice when it hits a satellite channel in the UK somewhere. Just don't be surprised if it gets lost in the already congested genre.