The Gall

I was watching the Steven Seagal movie "Fire Down Below" yesterday evening- you know, as a kind of a nightcap. I'm not quite sure why I went with that, except that I think I'd only seen parts of it on TV, and I'm interested in seeing more of his work to contrast with Chuck Norris. It's not the worst as Seagal films go. He certainly got worse in the years to come, even if he'd been better before. It's really not that bad. It's perfectly watchable.

Two notable things are the music (which is very Kentucky, as far as I can tell) and the heavy use of sepia tone pictures in the opening and closing credits. I've got to believe that there's more to the Appalachian region than the one kind of music and a very backwards-looking perspective. It seems very reductive and insulting, the way Fire Down Below depicts things. Nobody seems to have televisions or radios, let alone computers or anything truly modern.

Seagal kicks a lot of ass. He's there to investigate possibly illegal dumping of chemicals (which, when they are seen, turn out to be bright green Ninja Turtles-style goo). He's also there to avenge some fallen colleague, I think, and to whisper a lot. He gets all of that done in spades along with some light romancing of the local figure of tragedy, a hot blonde woman who keeps bees and sells honey. You'd expect that in any small Appalachian town.

Seagal, wearing increasingly garish and situationally inappropriate jackets, saves the townfolk (except for the ones who die at his hands or because he fails to protect them) from evil businessman Kris Kristofferson, his son and their thugs. As good of news as that is, the even better news is that we're spared a lengthy lecture on the environment, as is often Seagal's wont. The sum total of all these points is that if you have to watch a Seagal, this one's fine.