Driven to Kill (2009)

there's a pattern starting to emerge here. follow me his direct to DVD movies are getting better and better, yea sure there were many clunkers like attack force.. just a horrible film,, but they are getting better,, Belly of the Best , and Pistol Whipped come to mind,, in this one he plays a retired Russian Mobster, turned novelist,, his wife is dead,, and his daughter is either killed or kidnapped not sure.. so he goes after the bad guys in typical Seagal fashion, lot's of Aikido in this one,, his skills are mind numbing what he can do with his hands.. kinda wish you would see his movies in the theatre again,, like Rambo and Rocky revivals of sorts. I didn't care for all of the lousy dubbing again,, accents are way off of the mark,,i think Seagal has found something here and is on the track to regaining credibility in the acting world again very soon. not a bad picture at all.

Driven to Kill starts in California as ex-Russian mobster Ruslan (Steven Seagal) now works as a crime novelist, he gets a phone call from his ex-wife Catherine (Inna Korobkina) who informs him that their daughter Lanie (Laura Mennell) is engaged to be married & invites him to the wedding in New York. Ruslan is straight out there on the next plane, Ruslan meets his perspective son-in-law Stephen Abramov (Dmitry Chepovetsky) who happens to be the son of powerful Russian mobster Mikhail (Igor Jijikine). On the day of the wedding both Catherine & Lanie are attacked, Catherine is murdered & Lanie is left in a coma although the police & Ruslan feel it is better if it is reported she was also killed while they hunt for those responsible. The police have to go through official channels while Ruslan doesn't, Ruslan buy's himself a gun & sets about finding those responsible & dishing out some revenge...Also known under the title Ruslan (the version I saw had this title but the title Ruslan doesn't sound very exciting or action orientated unlike Driven to Kill) this American & Canadian co-production was directed by Jeff King & is yet another straight to video action thriller starring the prolific (if nothing else) Steven Seagal who seems to churn these things out by the dozen these days, while not as bad as some of his recent output Diven to Kill is hardly any sort of classic & just isn't that good. The script is your average uninspired stuff, you know the sort of thing where some hard as nails guy is wronged in some personal way & sets out to bash some heads in & break some arms in pursuit of revenge. The script is both lazy & poorly written, there are many questions that I felt were left unanswered & character motivation was left vague to say the least. Why did Stephen's father have Catherine & Lanie killed? Why did the killers take the wedding ring & then pawn it? Why were they described as bait? Why did those Doctor's barricade themselves in that room despite the fire alarm going off? Would a fire alarm going off not indicate that maybe the building was on fire & that hiding in a room in a building that might be on fire might not be a good idea? When Mikhail & his people at the end storm the hospital & start killing people would he not be seen on CCTV? Would he not then expose himself as killer? I don't understand how Mikhail thinks he will get away with going into a public place like a hospital & start killing Doctor's & patients & get away with it. The ending where Seagal talks to his comatose daughter Lanie for the first time during the entire film who then suddenly wakes up is bordering on the hilarious & is impossible to take seriously. There are other baffling aspects to the plot but I'm running out of space. At almost 100 minutes Driven to Kill has a decent enough pace but is maybe a little too long, the final twenty minutes or so is a shoot-out set inside a hospital that feels like a low budget homage to Hard Boiled (1992) although comes nowhere close in terms of excitement. The character's are pretty poor, the dialogue is inane & it's only the frequent fights & shoot-outs that save Driven to Kill from scoring a lowly one star out of ten.Surprisingly director King shuns the recent straight to video action film trend of shaky hand held camera-work & machine gun editing (blink & you'll miss it!) as the action scenes in Driven to Kill remain fairly coherent & you can generally tell what's going on & who's shooting who which helps, a little. The usual Seagal is on show here as he sadistically beats & kills his way through armies of bad guy's without getting hit or shot himself, arms are broken, necks are stabbed, guns are shoved into people's eyes & there's a fair amount of violence & blood on show. There's a also a scene set inside a strip club as Seagal gets a private lap dance so there's a bit of female nudity here as well. Although competently made nothing stands out that much, the colours are dull & the action a bit static at times.With a supposed budget of about $10,000,000 this was filmed in British Columbia in Canada. One major problem about Driven to Kill is Seagal's Russian accent which is terrible & seems to come & go at regular intervals, Seagal is also still far too fat & looks out of shape. In fact a lot of the thick Russian accents are awful & it's sometimes hard to understand what's being said.Driven to Kill is strictly average Seagal, it's poorly written, unimaginative action thriller fare with his usual sadistic violence thrown in. Not Seagal's worst but far from his best.

This time Steven Seagal stars as Ruslin, a Russian novelist, with a criminal past, whose district attorney daughter, Lania(Laura Mennell), is getting married. Lania is to wed Stephan(Dmitry Chepovetsky), the son of a Russian gangster, Mikhail(Igor Jijikine), whose mob has a history with Ruslin. When hired thugs, masquerading as a catering service, kill Ruslin's ex-wife, Catherine(Inna Korobkina), and leave his daughter badly wounded, it is discovered that Mikhail had arranged the hit, worried for his well being considering he's a crime kingpin and all. Ruslin, also discovering that Catherine's new creep lawyer husband, Terry(Robert Wisden) was part of the despicable operation, will vow to get revenge on Mikhail and all those responsible for the pain and suffering caused. Another dud directed by Jeff King, frustrating in how the action scenes are filmed as if the camera man had epilepsy, with madman as an editor. This technique where the camera speed increases to move images forward faster, and how Seagal must be shot in an awkward fashion so that the stunt work will not be exposed really are starting to irritate me. While I enjoy seeing how fast Seagal's hands can move, it is aggravating trying to decipher what is going on during his many fight scenes because of how they are shot in such a mess of images, becoming a blur of movements without seeing hand to hand combat in a respectable form we can appreciate. I like to see, as an action fan, two combatants actually engaging in fisticuffs without the interruption of annoying camera angles either too close to those involved or having them so out of focus we can not make out heads or tails what exactly is going on. King's Kill Switch, also starring Seagal, is even worse than this one. Seagal toils with a Russian accent, but is all business as his Ruslin dedicates himself towards finding those who made the serious mistake of crossing him by attacking those he loves. Like Kill Switch, this is another exercise in guns firing rounds and rounds of ammunition with no one seemingly able to hit their targets, plenty of walls and other objects blasted apart instead. I will say that there are times where we actually see Seagal in frame working over scumbags, but King's style proves too difficult to even appreciate these moments in Driven to Kill. The climactic shootout takes place in a hospital, simply blown apart as Mikhail and his gun-toting goons exchange unfriendly fire with Ruslin, trying to find where Lania is stashed, while Stephan guards Terry who is chained to her bed.

Driven to Kill(aka Ruslan) is the latest Steven Seagal film.Like all his other films for the past 7 years, this is once again a straight to DVD feature.Now by hearing this, you would not expect much after seeing that the majority of the newer Seagal films suck.However there are a few exceptions such as "Urban Justice", "Pistol Whipped" and this film, which in my opinion is not only his best straight to DVD film, but it ranks up there with his classics from the 90's.The acting is not all that great, and I did not find Seagal to be that bad of an actor back in his "Under Siege" days.Here, he sports a semi-Russian accent which is not very convincing.The acting from the others, especially the Russian mobster is fairly good though.The film is about a retired Russian mobster, who is now a novelist.After his wife is killed and his daughter is injured in an assassination of sorts, Seagal reverts back to his old ways and tries to find out who did this.The plot may not be the best but the most important thing about Seagal films is the action! In this category, it does not disappoint.I'm actually surprised it was Rated 14A in Canada because this is easily one of Seagal's bloodiest films.We also see Seagal use aikido again, as in we see him breaking people bones! Any fan of Seagal should check this movie out!