Best movie of this year hands down!

A Disappointing Continuation

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Although the film was shot in Poland, which should make me happy ( i live here) but it did not.The only shot of Warsaw is a meaningful , ugly shot of one of the bridges.Max Ryan is an interesting actor but forcing him to appear with the lit cigarette in all scenes , even when he kills is ridiculous.Also , the film was shot in 2002 and i do believe the action takes place the same year. So why all the phones in Poland have an ancient dial and those in Berlin the keys ? I had key phone at late 70' in Poland , the hotels probably a little later.I write this in the middle of watching (commercial break), but i don't expect a positive change... Anyway, i haven't seen Steven in a good film for a long time ... Is it all about the money?

Seagal looks grossly overweight and arthritic to boot. The direction is comically choppy, inept, and clichéd. The script is a semi-coherent agglomeration of clichés.Even the sound editing is incompetently done. In one scene Seagal's knife manages to make a locked-open clicking sound while it's still only about half open.In short, it's difficult to find ANYTHING that's properly done in this movie.My two star rating is strictly a tribute to the entertainment afforded by the campy ineptitude of this movie, not any merit one might attribute to a movie in the conventional sense.

Jonathan Cold (Seagal)...is a guy named Jonathan Cold. He's also a former "deep cover operative" (whatever that means) and at the moment is living in Paris. Because he's American, perhaps that makes him "the foreigner"(?) but now he has been entrusted to deliver a certain very valuable package from France to Germany. He doesn't know what's in the package, but he does know that a man named Dunoir (Ryan) has been tasked to assist him, and the person he's delivering it to is wealthy industrialist Jerome Van Aken (Harry Van Gorkum...or is it Jerome Van Aken as Harry Van Gorkum...not really sure). Along the way, Cold finds out that a lot of baddies and goons want to try to stop him from delivering the package, including Mimms (Augustus). So Cold deals with them the only way he knows how, i.e., coldly. Just slightly more aggressive than giving them the cold shoulder. When Dunoir turns out to not be all that he says he is, Cold turns to his brother Sean Cold (Pierce) for help, but not before going to the funeral of their deceased father Jackson Cold. Will the package be revealed? Will it get into the right hands? It truly becomes a "Cold War" as Jonathan attempts to complete his mission. Will he succeed? What's good about The Foreigner is that it looks more professional than a lot of Segal's other DTV work of late. Maybe that's because there was talk of this going to the movie theater. Regardless, there is more style to this outing than usual. And the fact that it was actually shot in Germany and Poland, as opposed to Bulgaria, really does make a difference and helps to convey a classier look. But, to be realistic, this movie is basically a poor man's The Transporter (2002). Not to be cruel, but if you've ever thought that watching Jason Statham is a bit too exhausting because he's so active and in shape, we think we've found the movie for you.It hurts to overly criticize this particular Seagal romp. Because you can tell they were at least trying this time around to imbue the film with some sort of style and quality. Director Oblowitz also made Out For A Kill that same year, 2003, with Seagal. Maybe he couldn't get enough of his winning charm. But then again, they haven't worked together since. Oblowitz includes some things that fans have seen before, such as an all-important "disc" (which seems to pop up a lot), and plenty of 90's-style techno music on the soundtrack. But, believe it or not, the plot is actually overly convoluted and even slow at times. Had the movie only been shorter in length, and, please forgive the pun, had some of the fat trimmed from it, The Foreigner could have ranked pretty darn high in the Seagal standings. But once you see the silly quick-cutting effects during the fight scenes, that kind of dooms the movie.Not that there aren't some worthwhile moments: The age difference between the supposed "brothers" Jon and Sean Cold is amusing - Jonathan could be Sean's father. The movie overall could have used more Sean Cold (or "Seanathan", as we called him) - the actor who played him, Jeffrey Pierce, was engaging, and the plot thread connecting the brothers wasn't really expounded upon too much. Maybe Seagal worried about being upstaged. Plus there is dialogue such as Van Aken saying "Eliminate Cold", and Seagal talking about his old buddy Delbert, which we think he also did in Fire Down Below (1997), but can't quite remember.There are certainly worse Seagals out there - at this point in his career he'd yet to sink to the utter depths of the execrable Kill Switch (2008) - but it all depends on your tolerance for his output. He sure has a "love him or hate him"-style fanbase, and we try to take him movie by movie, but we feel we know him almost, we've been following his career for so long. A Seagal action movie is just that, a Seagal action movie. This one in particular is largely kept afloat by the cinematography. It's by far the best part of the film. If you try to imagine these same proceedings, but not shot as well, the results are not great. So in the end, it's kind of mid-range Seagal, aspiring for better, but probably will only appeal to his fans.

An hour into "The Foreigner",Mr S.Seagal decides to open the package he is transporting to Germany,the package that has cost dozens (maybe scores - I lost count) of lives,and at that moment it suddenly came to me that I had absolutely no idea what the movie was about.Like a great conjurer,the director - by artful prestidigitation - had kept me completely unaware of what was really going on.All the smoke and mirrors in his armoury had been employed to conceal from me the patently obvious borrowings from "Kiss Me Deadly","Repo Man" and other "Pandora's Box" movies.With a few deft strokes of his knife Mr Seagal reveals the secret to be a Flight Deck Recorder which totally confounded my expectations and fiendishly set off almost endless plot possibilities.It was a great moment in a criminally under rated film. Almost universally canned,"The Foreigner" is a brave attempt to challenge the received wisdom that a Seagal picture must be comprehensible to the average hormonal,attention deficient 14 year old boy that comprises his core audience.Here, Mr Seagal,often shot in Extreme Close Up,is playing a weary,embittered "burnt out case",not unlike Richard Burton in "The spy who came in from the cold",although the look of the movie is more "Ipcress File",with its grainy hand - held appearance.He doesn't really know who he is working for and treachery is clearly afoot.He is obviously getting too old for the physical stuff and has learned that in order to survive in his murky world you must shoot first and not ask questions.He is a wily and experienced operator rather than an all - action gung - ho hero.He is not - de facto - a "Steven Seagal" character,and I think that is what has upset a lot of his erstwhile admirers. I believe "The Foreigner" to be gravely misunderstood.Here we have a director and a star attempting to move a franchise up a gear and out of the Video Bins and their reward is to be cast even further into the "Rent two - get one free" oblivion purely because their reach has exceeded their audience's grasp.Unjust indeed.