Shadow Man starts as ex CIA agent Jack Foster (Steven Seagal) arrives at a Romanian airport with his 8 year old daughter Amanda (Skye Bennett) in readiness for a holiday, however the holiday doesn't last long as a car bomb goes off & Amanda is kidnapped by a woman in a taxi. At the airport Jack meets up with one of his former CIA colleagues Harry (Vincent Riotta) & gives chase to the taxi but they lose it, Jack is angry about someone kidnapping his daughter & Harry fills him in. It seems that Jack's father-in-law George (Michael Elwyn) has smuggled out the formula for a bio-warfare chemical that is wanted by the CIA, the Romanian mafia & the Romanian cops all for differing reasons & that everyone suspects that George has used either Jack or Amanda to smuggle it into the country. Jack is now angrier than ever & kills lots of people as he searches for his daughter...
This American, English & Romanian was directed by Michael Keusch & is yet another pretty bad straight-to-DVD low budget action film shot in Eastern Europe with Steven Seagal as some sort of CIA agent, soldier or other military or crime fighting Government official, his career now consists solely of this sort of production & he is still too fat. Do you know the thing that really bothers me about these recent conveyor belt production line of poor straight-to-DVD Seagal action flicks? It's not so much that they are bad but the fact that despite Seagal not making a decent film in over a decade I will always be bone headed enough to sit down & watch them! The script by Steven Collins, Joe Halpin & Seagal himself takes itself very seriously & there really isn't much to it, certainly nothing we haven't seen before. There's the usual cheaply staged fights & shoot-outs along with the now obligatory twists which are far too predictable. The film actually lasts for quite a long time & I must admit I was getting really bored with it, your never quite sure who the main bad guy is meant to be as there are various people after Jack & the formula but none are that menacing, given much motivation or screen time. So basically it's a disjointed plot that stumbles from one fight to another until Seagal finally gets his daughter back, was there any doubt?
Director Keusch uses the annoying modern style of quick cut editing & shaky camera moves which gives Shadow Man an irritating look about it. The action scenes are strictly average, there are some fights & a couple of shoot-outs but very little else of interest. The one time the makers try to do something vaguely exciting with a car chase it looks pretty poor & very stilted. As does the whole film generally speaking, it's just not very good although competent I suppose. Seagal again uses long baggy coats to try & hide his weight but he does look out of shape & that's a fact. Then there's the CGI computer effects, Shadow Man contains an awful looking exploding helicopter that would embarrass a Playstation game. I'm not happy about the end either, I mean after causing lots of damage including destroying a public library, shooting & killing lots of people including innocent Romanian police officers are we really expected to believe Jack & Anya would be allowed to simply leave scott free? I'm sorry but you can't be arrested, taken to a police station, beat the hell out of two officers & just walk out. The other cops in the station would have blown Jack away without even thinking about it.
Technically the film is alright although I didn't like the look or feel of it with it's MTV style editing & cinematography. Shot in Bucharest in Romania. One other gripe I have with Shadow Man is that quite a lot of the dialogue is spoke in Romanian with English subtitles but the subtitles are very small & only stay on screen for a few seconds & would often disappear before I manged to read them. The acting isn't great, Seagal mumbles his way through his lines as usual while Eva Pope will probably be better known to UK viewers as barmaid Tanya Pooley from over 100 episodes of TV soap opera Coronation Street.
Shadow Man is yet another generic, dull & somewhat forgettable Seagal straight-to-DVD action flick. I didn't think that much of it & doubt many will, there are better action films out there.
This American, English & Romanian was directed by Michael Keusch & is yet another pretty bad straight-to-DVD low budget action film shot in Eastern Europe with Steven Seagal as some sort of CIA agent, soldier or other military or crime fighting Government official, his career now consists solely of this sort of production & he is still too fat. Do you know the thing that really bothers me about these recent conveyor belt production line of poor straight-to-DVD Seagal action flicks? It's not so much that they are bad but the fact that despite Seagal not making a decent film in over a decade I will always be bone headed enough to sit down & watch them! The script by Steven Collins, Joe Halpin & Seagal himself takes itself very seriously & there really isn't much to it, certainly nothing we haven't seen before. There's the usual cheaply staged fights & shoot-outs along with the now obligatory twists which are far too predictable. The film actually lasts for quite a long time & I must admit I was getting really bored with it, your never quite sure who the main bad guy is meant to be as there are various people after Jack & the formula but none are that menacing, given much motivation or screen time. So basically it's a disjointed plot that stumbles from one fight to another until Seagal finally gets his daughter back, was there any doubt?
Director Keusch uses the annoying modern style of quick cut editing & shaky camera moves which gives Shadow Man an irritating look about it. The action scenes are strictly average, there are some fights & a couple of shoot-outs but very little else of interest. The one time the makers try to do something vaguely exciting with a car chase it looks pretty poor & very stilted. As does the whole film generally speaking, it's just not very good although competent I suppose. Seagal again uses long baggy coats to try & hide his weight but he does look out of shape & that's a fact. Then there's the CGI computer effects, Shadow Man contains an awful looking exploding helicopter that would embarrass a Playstation game. I'm not happy about the end either, I mean after causing lots of damage including destroying a public library, shooting & killing lots of people including innocent Romanian police officers are we really expected to believe Jack & Anya would be allowed to simply leave scott free? I'm sorry but you can't be arrested, taken to a police station, beat the hell out of two officers & just walk out. The other cops in the station would have blown Jack away without even thinking about it.
Technically the film is alright although I didn't like the look or feel of it with it's MTV style editing & cinematography. Shot in Bucharest in Romania. One other gripe I have with Shadow Man is that quite a lot of the dialogue is spoke in Romanian with English subtitles but the subtitles are very small & only stay on screen for a few seconds & would often disappear before I manged to read them. The acting isn't great, Seagal mumbles his way through his lines as usual while Eva Pope will probably be better known to UK viewers as barmaid Tanya Pooley from over 100 episodes of TV soap opera Coronation Street.
Shadow Man is yet another generic, dull & somewhat forgettable Seagal straight-to-DVD action flick. I didn't think that much of it & doubt many will, there are better action films out there.