* Adam Howe is the dude that won Stephen King's On Writing short story contest. His story Jumper was published in later edition of the book if you're interested. His other short fiction has appeared in places like Nightmare Magazine, Thuglit, Mythic Delirium and The Horror Library. He is the author of two novella collections, Black Cat Mojo and Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet. He's also a Steven Seagal ethusiast who wished to share his passion for Out for Justice with the rest of us. Who am I to oppose? The piece is pretty great too, so it helps. *
This piece is written in part as an
affectionate fuck-you to Jedidiah Ayres, whose dismissal of Out for Justice as little more than a
lesser entry in the filmography of director John Flynn is an unpardonable sin
for a so-called crime genre "scholar."
*
6th degree aikido black belt; first Westerner to open martial
arts dojo in Japan. Ex-CIA operative (allegedly). Executive bodyguard (clients
include the Shah of Iran). Celebrity martial arts instructor (clients include
Sean Connery and James Mason). A-list movie star; later DTV movie star. Samurai
sword master/expert, marksman/attack dog trainer. Environmentalist/Humanitarian/Buddhist lama, multi-lingual, fluent in Japanese
and ebonics. Active Deputy Sheriff. Accomplished white man’s blues musician. UFC guru. Best mates with Vladimir Putin…
You couldn’t make this guy up; he’s the gift that keeps giving.
According to legend, in a real-life reflection of the movie Trading Places, 80s Hollywood uber-agent
Michael Ovitz once bet his friends he could mould even the unlikeliest
candidate into a movie star. StevenSeagal, then Ovitz’s martial arts instructor, became his pet project, Ovitz’s
very own Billy Ray Valentine. Needless
to say Ovitz won the bet. Some might
argue he created a monster. During filming of Seagal vs. Jamaican Posse flick Marked for Death, witnesses were shocked to see the star emerge
from his trailer, wiping tears from his eyes.
“Steven, what’s wrong?” someone asked.
“I’ve just read the greatest script ever written,” replied the Big Man.
“Who wrote it?”
“I did.”
Seagal is not credited as screenwriter on Out for Justice – although trifling matters like screen credit and
writers’ unions have never prevented the star from improving projects with his
adlibs and impromptu script polishes. He was likely referring to his long in-development, never-made conspiracy
thriller Pandora, in which he
intended to blow the lid off the CIA’s complicity in the creation of the AIDS
virus; and what a motion picture that would have been! But I’d like to think – and for the sake of this article, let’s say – it
was the screenplay for Out for Justice
that moved the big guy to tears.
In his early career – before discovering he was the reincarnation of a
Buddhist deity and converting to Buddhism – Seagal was fascinated with mob
movies and La Cosa Nostra culture.
Consorting with reputed underworld figures, dressing all in black,
rarely raising his voice about a Godfather-whisper,
Seagal would often refer to himself as a “man of respect” – in Mafia terms,
effectively ‘making’ himself. This would
end badly for Seagal when the Gambino crime family would later attempt to
extort the star; presumably the wiseguys didn’t realize that by this time
Seagal was languishing in Direct to Video hell, and there was very little money
to extort. But Seagal’s flirtation with the
mob would provide cinephiles with arguably his finest performance, and his
masterwork, Out for Justice.
Originally entitled The Price of
Our Blood – Warner Bros shitcanned this highfalutin title in favor of a
typically Seagalian three-word title – the movie opens with important music,
and a la-di-dah quote from Brooklyn playwright Arthur Miller:
“While to the stranger’s
eye one street was no different from another, we all knew where our
‘neighborhood’ somehow ended. Beyond that, a person was… a stranger.”
After such a highbrow opening, one could be forgiven for expecting an
‘art’ picture, and Out for Justice is
indeed that, albeit punctuated with Seagal’s trademark bone-snapping brutality:
A gritty, urban, chop-socky cops n’ mobsters ‘art’ movie in which legs are
de-limbed via shotgun blast, meat cleavers pin hands to the wall, an
animal-abuser is kicked in the testicles, and William Forsythe is brained with
a frying pan and stabbed in the face with a corkscrew.
In perhaps the greatest establishing scene of all time, we are
introduced to badass Brooklyn cop Gino Felino (Seagal), who blows a
million-dollar drugs bust to hurl a ho-beating pimp through a car windshield;
the movie freezes frame on an image of Seagal glaring through the shattered
glass at the pimp, allowing the audience time to compose themselves, and
perhaps to contemplate that Arthur Miller quote. This juxtaposition of highbrow literature and
Seagalian brute violence is pure Peckinpah poetry.
The plot therein is simplicity itself: When crackhead mobster Richie Madano
(William Forsythe) guns down a cop in front of his wife and kids, the slain
cop’s partner – Gino – swears revenge, turning over every rock in Brooklyn in
his quest to find and kill Richie before the cops and the Mafia. Complicating matters is Gino’s loyalty to his
childhood friends Richie, his dead partner Bobby, and Mafia capo Frank; his
strained relationship with his estranged wife and young son; and an abandoned
German Shepherd puppy Gino adopts while in the midst of his rip-roaring rampage
of revenge. This last sub-plot is
satisfyingly resolved when Gino groins the guy who abandoned the puppy (aka
Fuck-Nuts) and allows the pooch to piss on his head as Fuck-Nuts gasps: “My
balls!”
The movie is filled with familiar wiseguy character actors, fresh from Goodfellas, or who would later appear in
The Sopranos – including Junior
Soprano himself (Dominic Chianese).
Gifted the role of a lifetime opposite Seagal, Chianese plays Richie’s
Italian immigrant father with all the subtlety of a spaghetti sauce commercial
wop; it’s no coincidence that after working with and learning from Seagal, Chianese would later develop a fully rounded
character in Junior Soprano. Other
familiar faces include Jerry "Law and Order" Orbach as Gino’s police captain/handler, who sanctions Gino’s
vendetta by giving him “an unmarked and a shotgun” and turning him loose; Bruce
Lee student Dan Inosanto as martial arts pool shark, Sticks; a pre-Showgirls Gina Gershon, given lines like
“I can still get it wet”; and Julianna Margulies in her screen debut. Future Golden Globe-winner Margulies would
later thanklessly complain about Seagal’s grabby hands; being sexually harassed
by Steven Seagal seems a small price to pay in return for a meaty role like
Richie’s Puerto Rican whore girlfriend.
*
“I am hoping I can be known as a
great actor and writer some day, rather than a sex symbol.”
— Steven Seagal
This is, of course, a plainly ridiculous statement; with his swarthy
good looks and sculpted physique, the brooding intensity of a young Brando, and
greasy ponytail, Seagal’s sex appeal will always be his cross to bear.
The scene in which Gino prays over the body of his slain partner, and
swears revenge, Seagal brushes a single tear from his eye; a tour de force of
dramatic restraint that was criminally overlooked by the Academy at the ’91
Oscars.
By contrast, William Forsythe as Richie, in a rare display of
overacting, chews scenery like he’s starving for it, most notably the scene in
which he drags a female motorist from her car and shoots her in the head. (It’s a little known fact that North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is a huge William Forsythe fan, and has modeled his appearance on
the actor’s role in Out for Justice. Like the Roman emperors of old, the Supreme
Leader is also rumored to recreate Out for Justice’s climactic fight scene between Gino and Richie, with Richie
emerging victorious.) Many of Forsythe’s
showier moments would later be cut from the movie, at Seagal’s behest, to avoid
distracting from the star’s subtler, more nuanced work – such as the
heart-wrenching monologue in which Gino remembers his street vendor father. “Those bells were the loneliest sound I ever heard.”
*
Now let us consider Seagal’s accent – aka The Accent.
While working as a celebrity martial arts instructor, Seagal mentored
Sean Connery. The relationship soured after
Seagal broke Connery’s wrist while choreographing fight scenes for Bond flick Never Say Never Again. But despite this, Seagal remained an
influential figure for Connery. The bar
fight in Connery’s The Presidio, in
which the Scot beats up a bunch of thugs using only his left thumb – the right
is far too powerful – surely owes a debt to Seagal. And Connery clearly modeled his Medicine Man toupee on Seagal’s
trademark ponytailed Eddie Munster ‘do.
Given that Seagal would later go on to kill his career with a succession
of eco-thrillers like Medicine Man,
most notably his extraordinary directorial debut On Deadly Ground, one wonders if Connery stole the role from
Seagal, perhaps as a fuck-you for that broken wrist.
As we know, Connery has never troubled himself with accents – be it his
Oscar-winning role as a Scots-Irish flatfoot in The Untouchables, or his Scots-Russian nuclear submarine commander
in The Hunt for Red October. But Seagal is not a lazy performer like
Connery; in Out for Justice, he
delivers an accent masterclass.
In one scene, Gino mocks a Jersey thug for his accent. “You couldn’t be frawm Brooklyn, caws we
don’t tawk like that ‘round heah.” Only
an actor with extreme confidence in his accent would dare to flaunt a line like
that. Needless to say, Seagal’s accent
is flawless, Brooklyn born and bred. A
lesser actor might include a shrug, a crotch-grab, and an “Ayyy.” A seasoned performer like Seagal knows when to
draw the line and pull back. His
constantly bobbling head, and copious genuflecting, amply conveys Gino’s
Italian-Americanism.
Seagal’s commitment to the role cannot be denied. But the Out for Justice costume department deserves props for what they add to the
character. Unless of course Seagal, in
his capacity as producer, chose his own wardrobe. As these images demonstrate, Seagal’s singular sartorial style is second to none. Speaking as someone who once bought a fringed suede jacket in emulation
of Forrest "On Deadly Ground" Taft, it
amazes me the man never released his own fashion line.
In Gino’s defense, it’s his day off when he receives word Richie has
murdered his partner. He’s planning
nothing more strenuous than an afternoon playing catch with his kid. This outfit, I’m sure you’ll agree, is a
perfectly acceptable ensemble for father-son time. But if only more law enforcement officers
adopted as their uniform Gino’s black vest, beret, badge-on-a-neckchain combo,
like a badass guardian angel, the War on Crime would be as good as won.
*
Even
Seagal’s fiercest detractors – Van Damme fans – will be forced to admit that Out for Justice contains arguably the
greatest bar fight ever committed to celluloid.
In the “Anybody seen Richie?” scene, Gino raids the seedy bar owned by
Richie’s feckless brother, and proceeds to bully and beat the living shit out
of every man in the room – using his fists, feet, pool cues, a pool ball
wrapped in a hanky, a telephone booth, even a hot dog.
(Trivia fans: the ex-boxer barman Gino shoves clear the length of the
bar is the city hitter Chuck Bronson fights at the end of Walter Hill’s Hard Times.)
As well as being totally fucking awesome, this scene is subject to a
scurrilous rumor which, unlike Seagal’s CIA past, the actor has always
strenuously denied.
Among the stuntmen in the scene was Gene LeBell, legendary tough guy and
ex- judo champ. When Seagal boasted that
due to his martial arts training he was impervious to chokeholds, LeBell
promptly choked the actor out, causing Seagal to defecate himself as he lay
unconscious on the floor.
Again, I should stress, this persistent rumor is untrue.
*
At the 2016 Academy Awards, Leonardo Di Caprio won his long overdue Best
Actor Oscar, and delivered an environmental speech that was eerily familiar to
viewers of Seagal’s 1994 directorial debut, On Deadly Ground.
At the height of his fame, Seagal ended his eco-thriller (Seagal vs. Big
Oil via terrorism) with an impassioned five-minute lecture warning of the dangers
of environmental pollution and lambasting big business. Unlike Di Caprio, who was applauded for his
humanitarianism, Seagal, always a man before his time, was ridiculed and
laughed out of Hollywood. On Deadly Ground marked the beginning of
the end for the star’s A-list career, and was the catalyst for his
comfort-eating and subsequent weight gain.
How times change…
With the likes of Leonard Di Caprio proudly flying the green flag and
keeping Seagal’s message alive, free from the fear and discrimination of 1994,
is it finally time to reassess, not just Out for Justice, but this remarkable man himself?
