Product: Hard to Kill [VHS] (1990)
Rating: 4.0
Out of all of Steven Seagal's filmography...
...this is Steven Seagal at his Steven Seagaliest. What do I mean by that? It's perhaps the silliest of his early films plot-wise (apart from his directorial debut abomination On Deadly Ground, anyway), it shows him at his most invincible (getting away from multiple bad guys while on a hospital gurney), it's got some of his best lines ("This is for my wife. *beep* you and die!") and he's at his most over-the-top I-can-do-everything-I'm-Steven-freaking-Seagal throughout.Basically he's an undercover cop whose family gets blown away early on after he discovers a deep mob connection involving a Senator (William Sadler, kind of wasted here). And Seagal (as "Mason Storm", one of his best names) is blown away too - except he lives, in a coma, somehow hidden completely away from public knowledge despite being in a regular hospital, for 7 years. Then he comes to in the presence of uber-babe Kelly LeBrock (Mrs. Steven Seagal in real life for several years) and starts trying to escape the baddies, find his old friends who can help him get the dirt on the Senator out in public, etc etc. Along the way he finds time to show off his knowledge of languages, a Seagal trademark (Chinese here), demonstrate lots of martial arts, show his Buddhist teachings (promptly to be ignored when it's time to do some killin'), and generally do plenty of bad acting and ass-kicking.It's not really a "good" movie, even by low-budget action movie standards it's hardly great, but if you're a Seagal fan (and what conscious human isn't?) it is one of the must-sees; onlyOut for Justiceis more fun overall I think, and that one actually IS a (pretty) good movie, with Seagal's acting being pretty close to competent, a great villain, and good New York location work.DVD NOTE: Seagal's movies have been endlessly repackaged in 2fers, 4-packs and the like; obviously there's no reason to spend boucoup bucks on just this one alone. It's most often been put together with SS' previous (and first) film ABOVE THE LAW, as in this package:Steven Seagal Collection: Above the Law/Hard to Killwhich seems like it might be your best bet at the moment I'm writing this (April 2011).