Attack Force (2006)

The back story to "Attack Force" is really depressing, even to Steven Seagal's standards. Apparently he really tried to do something different with this one. It was supposed to be his first stab at a horror/sci-fi movie (originally it was called "Harvester"), featuring a Seagal 2.0 that fought an army of vampires in what must have been some kind of off-brand "Blade" (at times the style is clearly reminiscent). Unfortunately, the executive producers usually get the final cut and they suddenly figured: why take a chance with something new when there's always a buck in generic action movies? A bajillion reshoots, redubs and recuts later we got "Attack Force", which is about 5% action and 95% explaining how the old footage is supposed to fit into the new plot (but seriously, why would an "experimental drug" make you want to lick blood off a window?). Any dialogue scene will usually start with Seagal saying a line from the original movie, then it will cut away from his face and the worst impersonator of all time takes over to give us all kinds of new exposition. Like most recent Seagal movies, this movie also has way too many sets of characters that are mainly there to pad out the running time. We have Seagal's team, and then you have the vampires/drug addicts/whatever, what else do you need? Why is there a French cop following everyone around, why are there extra government guys that are supervised by more extra government guys? Who needs all that crap in a B-movie, get to the fighting. I've got to say though, the fights are quite jumpy but really not that bad. Most of it is done by a stunt double, but it looks fine and pretty stylish. Kinda makes you wonder what "Harvester" would have been like. Unfortunately, we'll probably never know and are stuck with this headache-inducing mess.

This was an average movie made WORSE by post production editing. I stayed up late to watch this but I should have gone to bed !! The "voice" double had the effect of distracting me from some of the other mistakes seen by other reviewers. Like the Stone angel waving in the breeze and the wound on the last baddie changing direction. Sorry Steven must do better. But I do accept that whoever decided to post produce this is mainly to blame. I thought the action was lack lustre as it was mainly gun play. I preferred the earlier films that showed Steven's Akido skills. I would suggest that Steven makes sure that there is provision in his future contracts to veto this type of post production hatchet job. The post production team deserve to be censured for this awful effort. They took a bad film and made it worse.

Plot Synopsis: Three members of an US Special Forces team are killed in their hotel room by a woman they had brought with them for some fun. Their boss, Commander Marshall Lawson, tries to track down the killer, only to find that the woman was infected by CTX, a substance created by a covert arm of the US military in order to turn ordinary people into mindless killers. With government agents after him, Lawson teams up with the scientist who created CTX in order to stop the spread of the substance.The Review: After the modest success of his debut film ABOVE THE LAW, Steven Seagal has spent the early half of the 1990s making action films, his career reaching its zenith with UNDER SIEGE. Like most action heroes of the era, Seagal's popularity dropped down a couple of notches (he tried to regain favour with the public by making a couple of films where he attempted to reinvent himself as a crusader for the environment), resulting in his career becoming stuck in a rut. Aside from a couple of modestly budgeted action flicks, Seagal found himself in the same arena as his arch-nemesis Jean-Claude Van Damme – the DTV market.Starting with THE FOREIGNER in 2002, the third era of Seagal's career began. From The Foreigner right up to FLIGHT OF FURY, Seagal made a whole heap of B-grade action films where he played a government agent (or ex-government mercenary, secret agent or CIA spook) out to avenge a friend's murder, stop terrorists from committing some nefarious scheme or unravel a government conspiracy. In all these films, Seagal goes about dispatching evildoers with brutal aikido moves & / or gunplay (in real life, Seagal is quite a crack shot with a pistol) while wearing a long black leather coat that he never takes off (possibly in a vain attempt to hide the pot belly he gained). Most of these films do not make any attempt to advance Seagal's career or even elevate themselves above the flood of DTV action films that have come out in the early-to-mid 2000s. Of these, Attack Force is the worst.On a technical standpoint, Attack Force is pretty standard stuff as far as these things go. The action set-pieces are competently conducted, although they do tread on absurdity, with people being thrown through brick walls. Seagal does the usual rounds of being a military Special Forces commander with access to a top-secret military operation, something that is only hinted at, slicing his way through baddies with a pair of blades attached to his wrists.Where Attack Force fails is in its scripting department – the story featured here is only the start of the film's woes. Seagal might be a decent action star but when it comes to writing, his characters range from absurdly defined stereotypes to faceless ones. Here the flaw is at its most magnified, with Seagal writing himself into a deep hole by featuring some real half-cocked military conspiracies involving some kind of drug that turns people into mindless killers; some fine examples of 'faceless' intelligence agents out to silence Seagal by sending entire strike teams after him & his men; a central villain who is not seen until the very end & so forth (don't get me started on the film's title, which is ridiculously generic to say the least).While some of Seagal's films also featured banal writing, most particularly The Foreigner, they also had something else to offset these problems (usually plenty of plot twists & some real clever kills on Seagal's behalf, as well as slick direction by the various directors involved). Here none of those things apply – Attack Force is not only stuck with an incompetent writing team & poor direction but reeks of laziness as far as the story goes – not only is the villain's motivation for committing his evil plan ill-defined, the hero's motivation for tracking the villain down is attributed to mere coincidence – Seagal's team is killed by a hooker who has been infected by CTX by Adam Croasdell's villain as part of an experiment. There are also some unnecessary digital effects of victims having their eyes blink sideways, which doesn't make a lick of sense biologically.When it comes to acting, Seagal goes through the motions with the same one-dimensional performance that he has made a career out of, but minus the self-righteousness that he displayed in most of his films. None of the other actors make anything even resembling a performance or even an impression. Speaking of Seagal, I noticed something strange – Seagal has had his voice dubbed over in half the scenes. Rumour has it that the film's plot was changed after shooting had ended. This makes the film quite dishonest.

Attack Force is set somewhere in or near France where two secret US government military agents Commander Marsahll Lawson (Steven Seagal who also co-wrote & produced this monstrosity) & Lieutenant Dwayne Dixon (David Kennedy) are stationed, one night three of their men go out to a strip club & pick a prostitute up who turns out to be a raving psycho on a new drug called CTX which makes any user inexplicably gain super-human strength who brutally kills all three of them. Neither Lawson or Dixon are happy & set out to get to the bottom of the gruesome murders, the trail leads to a Russian bird (Ileana Lazariuc) & an American guy who plan on releasing CTX into the local water supply to turn the entire city into addicts for reasons I am not sure about. With the dual task of revenge & saving the local population Lawson has his work cutout, he leads a team of US soldiers into the enemies base in order to stop their evil plans once & for all...This Romanian, British & American co-production apparently had the working title Harvester & was directed by Michael Keusch & for me is the single worst film Steven Seagal has made to date that I have seen & believe me when I say he has made some seriously rubbish films, I should know better than to even bother with Seagal's straight-to-video/DVD output but I always seem boneheaded enough to spend my time watching them in the hope that one might just be alright but generally speaking I am disappointed more often than not. Right, lets start with the positives of Attack Force. Well, there's a really hot blonde woman in it named Lisa Lovbrand (who co-writer Seagal cheekily writes his & her character's a kissing scene) who is a joy to look at & there's one minor surprise towards the end as one character has a very unexpected fate which goes against cliché which was nice but apart from those two minor positive aspects Attack Force is a really, really awful film. The script is almost incomprehensible, Attack Force is one of the most poorly scripted & downright confusing films you are ever likely to see. There's lots of scenes of men in suits trying to act sinister to try & make this large conspiracy seem threatening & interesting but the film never really introduces anyone properly & I don't mind admitting there were parts of the film where I didn't have a clue who anyone was or what relevance to the overall plot certain scenes had. The dialogue is terrible, the plot makes no sense & has some of the worst narrative ever & there's not even that much action in it either to compensate. The whole plot about the CTX drug being released into the water is never resolved & there's no explanation or reason as to why this drug makes people super strong & able to to throw people through concrete walls or why their eyes flash. For my money Attack Force is one of the worst written films I have ever seen & the worst film Seagal has made (or likely to make) which is saying something.Besides being conceptually awful Attack Force has production values to match, you will simply not believe the dubbing in Attack Force it's so bad. Every so often Seagal's voice changes completely as he is overdubbed for no apparent reason, couldn't Seagal have done it himself? The guy who dubs Seagal sounds literally nothing like him. It's very odd watching a familiar Seagal on screen but hearing a completely different voice come out of his mouth & sometimes during the same scene to make things even more laughable. The action scenes are awful, there's some really lame hand to hand combat stuff that is so poorly shot & edited it's just a complete mess to watch. There's no car chases or explosions or big stunts & apart from a few forgettable shoot-outs there's little here to even suggest it's an action film. The makers decided to set the final showdown in a run down château for some reason, it's actually quite an atmospheric location but Attack force is meant to be a high octane action film not a horror film. The film has very low colour levels the picture seemed far too dark to me.Apparently the budget for this was $12,000,000 which I simply can't believe, there's no way this cost twelve big ones & if it did where did all the money go? Filmed in Bucharest in Romania. The acting here is atrocious too, apart from the already mentioned Lisa Lovbrand who is a complete hottie no-one is worth mentioning & Seagal is just terrible as usual as he is so fat & out of shape he doesn't convince as an action star anymore.Attack Force is an absolutely terrible film on every level, this just doesn't have any redeeming features at all as far as I am concerned. Not to be confused with the Mel Gibson action film Attack force Z (1982).