Le Prix du sang

Ruslan_360P

Ruslan (Seagal) is a writer and three-cup-monte enthusiast who uses his experiences as a former mobster for his books. While living in L.A., he gets word that his daughter is getting married so he travels to New Jersey. While there, he discovers the family she is marrying into also has Russian mob connections. After some of those baddies put her in the hospital and murder some family members, Ruslan reverts back to his old persona and he goes after the people responsible. Will he get revenge? It's best to go into these newer Seagals not expecting much. It truly is a case of managing your expectations. But Driven To Kill is just dour, bleak and boring. Compare it to the fun of Urban Justice (2007) and you can see the contrast right away. One of the main problems is Ruslan is not a hero, not even an anti-hero, he's just a brutal, amoral, amazingly unlikable monster. You don't root for him to succeed; in fact, you end up rooting for the people he's (usually unnecessarily) viciously murdering. Considering he tortures, kills and impales people with the slightest provocation, Ruslan is more like Jason from the Friday the 13th series than an action hero. But because this movie in general, and Seagal in particular, is so humorless and self-serious, some entertainment can be gleaned from that. Also his voice is funny, as usual - instead of an absurd Cajun accent, now whoever is doing his ADR is trying his hand at an absurd Russian accent. He's (and by He's we mean the anonymous voice actor reading Seagal's lines) is really stretching his acting range. And because his voice is so soft, you need subtitles once again. Looking at Seagal's triangle of Eddie Munster hair, we realized he's just the modern-day equivalent of Jalal Merhi: An unlikable, overweight actor/Martial Artist of limited ability. But Seagal continues to put out product, and Merhi doesn't. That's the only difference really. As for Driven To Kill, you don't really care about the characters, especially Ruslan (unless you feel bad for all the basically innocent people Ruslan has mercilessly slaughtered), and at 97 minutes, it truly stretches your patience. That's a long time to spend with Ruslan, a guy you wouldn't want to spend 3 minutes with in real life. Add to that some CGI gunfights (complete with CGI muzzle flashes, CGI bullet hits and CGI smoke), some knockoff of a Powerman 5000 song, and some filler, and you'll be wishing for the days of Seagal's "Patty Cake" Martial Arts style. As the latter-day, Direct-To-DVD Seagal output goes, certainly some are better than others, but Driven To Kill represents a low point in this phase of the man's career.

This is easily one of Seagal's better DTV efforts. Its on a par with Urban Justice but not as good as Belly of the Beast. To compare it to his earlier movies would be unfair as he makes much smaller budget movies these days. First off if you are a veteran of Seagal films of the last ten or so years you can tell if he cares about the movie or not and he certainly seems to be putting a bit of effort into this one. No body doubles of bad dubbing in this which is good. The story is very generic, a basic revenge movie. Not unlike the movies Charles Bronson made when he was a similar age to Seagal now. The action scenes are well done with some good shoot outs and fist and knife fights. The acting is a little hit and miss although the bad guy who will be familiar to people who seen the awful Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull was very good. So worth a rent on a Friday night but i really wish Hollywood would give Seagal another big budget action movie. Hell lets get another Under Siege movie out before its too late.

After the post-production mess that was Kill Switch, Seagal needed a decent,DTV action movie.And that's what he delivers in this one.A bloody,brutal revenge story and nothing more. Seagal plays Ruslan,ex-Russian mafia who now writes crime novels.When he returns to the US for his daughter's wedding he is treated with a horryfying surprise.His daughter has been attacked and heavily injured while his ex-wife has been brutally murdered.So Ruslan decides to avenge them and kill whoever is responsible for their suffering.You know the usual plot that Seagal has been up to for the last 10 years, but there is a new cool twist, the Russian mafia..That gives the advantage to Ruslan to operate outside the law and he fully takes the opportunity.Seagal's Russian accent is indeed quite heavy, it disappears in a few scenes but it is fairly steady throughout the film, while dubbing's not that often.The fight scenes are the best since Pistol Whipped, brutal with no stunt doubles, and done amazingly by Seagal(highlight is a long knife fight in a strip joint).Seagal even runs and chases a thug,something we haven't seen in a long time.The ending is another high point featuring explosions, gun fights and the usual hand to hand combat with the lead villain.The direction is average, the editing less frantic but you still get a lot of shots of Seagal's face in the middle of the fight scenes.But thankfully this time you can actually SEE the action.The supporting cast is OK, didn't find a terrible performance not an amazing one either.You get the girl from Watchmen(Laura Mennel) and the heavy from Indiana Jones 4.So it's not that bad..For a DTV action flick, Driven To Kill is quite good and Seagal's best in a long time..

I thought that this was an OK film with the usual violence and action which accompanies all Steven Seagal films. In this one Steve is a former Russian Mafia villain who comes back into town after being invited by his ex-wife to see his daughter get married. However, his return into town is not met with approval from the local Russian Mafia boss whose son is in fact the guy who will be marrying Steve's daughter. Steve's ex-wife is then murdered and his daughter is badly hurt which is the cue for our hero to seek revenge. Fist fights, knife fights and shootings are a plenty as Steve rips apart the bad guys. Although Seagal films are not expensive glossy productions action fans should enjoy this one.

Recently, I was reading a review of another Steven Seagal movie, and in it the reviewer commented to the effect that it was just the same as his other movies. Watching "Driven To Kill", I got the same feeling. Oh sure, there are a few minor changes, like making Seagal a Russian (which leads to some unintentional hilarity, hearing Seagal's wheezy and pause-filled whisper doing a bogus accent.) But with the rest of the movie, you will see nothing new. Seagal is still fat, and he continues to wear heavy coats to mask his weight, and is mostly filmed from the chest up. (There is a very funny moment when we see him run for several seconds - he can barely do it.) It should probably come as no surprise that there aren't that many martial arts moments here compared to his early films, and they are rapidly edited and filled with shots of what appear to be doubles doing his work. The gun battle scenes are also equally hard to make out as well. The general production values (cinematography, set decoration, etc.) are passable, and that's about all that's positive I can say about this.

Not been able to see a preview before I saw this made me a little worried, but I thought, what the hell? Seagal rules. I was pleasantly surprised with this movie. The only flaw was that at times I couldn't understand Seagal. It also appeared as if he did most/all of his fighting and that was nice. It was a pretty good story. It's was your standard revenge flick. It's nice to see Seagal go after bad guys that messed with his family. It was like Urban Justice in a way. I was glad it wasn't that European package crap or conspiracy from the early 90's or 2000's. This was way better than Kill Switch and of course that vampire crap. But not as good as Pistol Whipped.

He breaks arms, fights with knives, finds interesting ways to send shrapnel into people, and now he comes with his very own accent! If you're looking for a good action movie, look somewhere else. If you just wanna see Seagal hurt some mobsters, queue this one on your netflix. I spent the first 20 minutes trying to figure out what accent he was going for. and since the rest of the actors have varying accents, you have to follow the (and I use this term very loosely) story to figure out it's supposed to be Russian. After you finally start breaking through the horrid accents to figure out they're speaking English, you still have to ignore the awful music that seemed to be composed entirely by an accordion. The story itself wasn't terrible, but the whole revenge plot seems a bit over done. The little tweaks it got to add flavor just seemed weird. For instance: a frag grenade which he uses toward the end is made to kill with shrapnel which is made when it explodes and bursts the casing. But the writer felt the need to have him add more metal objects on top of the grenade to send them into the victim. I also didn't see why he would waste a grenade when he has a ton of guns, unlimited ammo (as usual) and the guy's attention was on the tape recorder so he could have used a knife. And what police dept doesn't check fingerprints? He dropped the M-4 in the hallway of the apartment building where they killed the first thug. It might not have been enough for a conviction, but they would have mentioned it. When it's all added up, I don't see me recommending this to anyone ever for any reason. There are just too many other movies out there that are less bad than this one.

"Driven to Kill" (originally, and more appropriately, titled "Ruslan") is one of the best Steven Seagal flicks in a long time. Now, after total crap like "Kill Switch" and "Against the Dark," almost anything in focus would seem good. But D2K actually has a lot to recommend it--it has a strong, engaged bada$$ performance by Seagal, one with no obvious body/stunt doubles or voice dubbing, a straightforward story, and the kind of action you'd expect. The direction, while not splashy, is competent (a rarity for recent Seagal flicks). Now, to be honest, it would take a few more million dollars, a lot of retakes, some recasting of supporting roles, and a car chase or two to make this into a theatrical action-exploitation flick along the lines of "Taken." But for a DTV movie Driven to Kill is actually quite exceptional. And for a Seagal DTV this is up there near the top of the heap with Urban Justice and better than Pistol Whipped. It reminds me of a Charles Bronson low budget mid-80s movie like Murphy's Law. However, the shortcomings that affect all direct to video movies with their short shooting schedules and low budgets also brings D2K down a bit as well. The biggest problem is that about half of the supporting performances are embarrassingly lame--the female police officer and the oily lawyer in particular. And there were also some really strange choices made for the film's score. Upbeat Russian folk music during dramatic and violent beatdowns? Seems odd to me. In fact, sometimes the music behind the action is so ill-fitting that it seems like we're listening to a placeholder score that the filmmakers intended to replace. They might as well have said "hey, get that old polka album--we'll use that music for the part where Ruslan cracks the guy's neck!" But, despite these flaws, I really enjoyed D2K. It has a small scale old school action vibe that I could get into and little to none of the unintentionally comedic incompetence we have come to expect from Seagal's output over the past decade.

I haven't seen the film yet but I have to say the trailer looks pretty damn good - -Seagal appears to have (finally) lost some weight -He actually seems to be doing his own fight scenes -He actually seems to be using aikido rather than the bizarre kung-fu wire-work nonsense of the last 10 years -The plot? Yes it's exactly the same as his old movies but who cares? That's why we watch them! Looks very similar in content to Glimmer Man which was (I think) his last watchable film. All he needs now is a new film with a charismatic side-kick and he may be back in business? Looking forward to this one...