Out of Reach (2004)

An action thriller set in Poland. The premise is quite good - a pen pal who has lost touch with a young girl from an orphanage who has become a missing person. Seagal plays a former covert agent turned survivalist, tracking the human trafficking ring into which the young girl has entered. It has some similarities to Taken but it's a low budget production. Unfortunately, some of the supporting acting is poor, and the story is directed in a style that resembles a fable rather than a feature film in parts and so it is inconsistent. As a result tension is reduced somewhat and detective work becomes the main interest for the viewer. It is also badly dubbed in places and editing is poor. There is a memorable sword fight-off scene at the end between protagonist and antagonist which has an ironic subtext about purity in its setting in a white palace. It's prey vs predator in the end. This sequence is well directed and choreographed. For all its faults, and there are many in the storytelling, there is a heart to the film and an important subject.

The rugged and chubby Steven Seagal is William Lansing, a caring ex- CIA agent who takes care of injured animals and sponsors an orphanage in Europe who also corresponds with one of the orphan's as a pen pal, Irena (Ida Nowakowska.)The orphanage is actually a front for a child sex trafficking ring run by Faisal (Matt Schulze) that kidnaps the teenage girl along with others to sell them to some Middle Eastern types it seems.Seagal springs into action to rescue the girl. Of course as Seagal has put on some girth we get less action here, presumably not many fat stunt doubles around with martial arts expertise and we see Seagal using more brain power to solve riddles. Which presumably is the reason why he has a carpet on his head.The plot is nonsense with lots of plot holes. At least Schulze takes it all seriously as the baddie and brings some style and menace as the villain. As an action film its boring and shows us a Seagal way past his glory days.

For those browsing the shelves of your local film rental establishment and perhaps entertaining the idea of renting this film, let me give a quick summary to save you any unwanted trauma (and wasted cash).This is basically the same Seagal film formula which has been applied to all of his recent movies: Seagal plays the usual ex-military/CIA/clandestine agency/secret hard bloke who has retired to the countryside, living amongst the animals, his house festooned in native American memorabilia, who for some preposterous reason ends up in Eastern Europe busting up a criminal gang (usually led by a corrupt businessman). And of course there is the obligatory love scene with an attractive girl thirty odd years his junior (who is he kidding)- please note, I'm writing this review before seeing the whole thing, but I'm fairly confident in it's predictability. The plot of this movie sees Seagal (as described above)somehow involved with a young Polish girl living in an orphanage whom he exchanges letters with. She gets kidnapped by a human trafficking gang and well, you can probably guess the rest.The most (unintentionally)amusing thing about this film is the dialogue. Half of Seagal's dialogue has been re-recorded by another actor with a completely different voice! I don't know if this was because he couldn't be arsed or whether the producers changed the story after filming (as with one of his others, can't remember the name), who knows.All in all, this film had a preposterous plot, abysmal acting, sub-standard fight/action scenes (Seagal is dreadfully out of shape and slow) and the overall production values worse than Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus! Coupled with the comical dialogue, this film was farcical from start to finish! For the record, I do enjoy Seagal's earlier films (Under Siege, Out For Justice), but to be quite frank he should have packed it in long ago!

steven seagal has got many kick ass action flicks out there, sadly this ain't one of them, this time we find seagal writing to and supporting a young orphan girl, and when one day she is took away to be used as prostite, seagal goes looking for her, i mean come on the story alone is bad, steven seagal goes to rescue pen pal it's laughable, and while there are some decent little action scenes, there is nowhere near enough and that remains one of the films biggest flaws there is simply not enough action in it, sure there's more than the patriot but simply not enough, overall possibly one of seagal's worst movies if not the worse, come on seagal you can do better than that you used to be the king of action flicks