I only wish there was a rating below 1 for this turkey. What can I say: bad editing (oh and you don't have to be an expert to catch this), terrible acting and dialogue, ridiculous fight scenes, stupid character development and on and on.
Seagal must have been short on alimony payments or something to put this mess together and lay it our for viewers. Most action heroes get better with experience but Seagal'S earliest works are so superior to this.
Instead of being a semi-plausible character like a Navy Seal or CIA operative or cop, he plays an archaeologist who dresses like he's auditioning to be Neo in the Matrix or John Shaft. Looks completely ridiculous on a dig in the wilderness of China. They try to explain in hindsight where this professor got his superior kung-fu fighting skills, but it works as badly as their attempt to explain how a convict gets a doctorate in archaeology while in prison (without any field work of course).
Then there's the simple technical aspects of the film like being in Bulgaria, but all the signs are in English and the people are either Chinese or American. Even some of the Chinese dialogue is subtitled in English completely wrong.
Then there's the acting. First the movie contains some of the worst Steven Seagal pseudo Feng-Shui/Asian/mysticism/philosophical babblings that one could ever imagine. Stupid metaphors that apparently only make sense to him. Chooi King-Beh as Wong Dai is definitely the "Wrong Guy" as he desperately tries to deliver each line as some sinister comic book villain rather than the Chinese businessman that he is. Cory Johnson is equally as stupid as a FBI agent who has no role other than to wander through scenes and deliver lines that insult Catholics, Chinese and the French. What I didn't understand is how him and his partner seem to be able to walk around steps behind Seagal invisible to him and the Tong until almost the very end.
This is not even a good action film for those who enjoyed Seagal as Casey Ryback. The fight scenes are either prolonged patty-cake slapping with dubbed bone cracking to the height of dumb with the monkey style kung-fu in the barbershop complete with all the ridiculous gravity defying stunts of Crouching Tiger.
I cannot conceive of any audience other than reviewers for the worst film of 2003 that this movie would appeal to.
Seagal must have been short on alimony payments or something to put this mess together and lay it our for viewers. Most action heroes get better with experience but Seagal'S earliest works are so superior to this.
Instead of being a semi-plausible character like a Navy Seal or CIA operative or cop, he plays an archaeologist who dresses like he's auditioning to be Neo in the Matrix or John Shaft. Looks completely ridiculous on a dig in the wilderness of China. They try to explain in hindsight where this professor got his superior kung-fu fighting skills, but it works as badly as their attempt to explain how a convict gets a doctorate in archaeology while in prison (without any field work of course).
Then there's the simple technical aspects of the film like being in Bulgaria, but all the signs are in English and the people are either Chinese or American. Even some of the Chinese dialogue is subtitled in English completely wrong.
Then there's the acting. First the movie contains some of the worst Steven Seagal pseudo Feng-Shui/Asian/mysticism/philosophical babblings that one could ever imagine. Stupid metaphors that apparently only make sense to him. Chooi King-Beh as Wong Dai is definitely the "Wrong Guy" as he desperately tries to deliver each line as some sinister comic book villain rather than the Chinese businessman that he is. Cory Johnson is equally as stupid as a FBI agent who has no role other than to wander through scenes and deliver lines that insult Catholics, Chinese and the French. What I didn't understand is how him and his partner seem to be able to walk around steps behind Seagal invisible to him and the Tong until almost the very end.
This is not even a good action film for those who enjoyed Seagal as Casey Ryback. The fight scenes are either prolonged patty-cake slapping with dubbed bone cracking to the height of dumb with the monkey style kung-fu in the barbershop complete with all the ridiculous gravity defying stunts of Crouching Tiger.
I cannot conceive of any audience other than reviewers for the worst film of 2003 that this movie would appeal to.