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.
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.