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The Foreigner

The Foreigner

List Price: $14.95
Your Price: $13.46
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What Did I Just Watch?!
Review: THE FOREIGNER is a film telling the story of...uh...um...that is to say the basic plot of THE FOREIGNER involves...um...oh, forget it, I give up! This movie makes no sense at all! It's one of Seagal's all time worst. He super sleepwalks through this one. In THE GODFATHER Marlon Brando stuffed his cheeks with cotton to make his jaw line appear a little different and his voice sound a little rougher. It looks as though Seagal tried the same aproach for THE FOREIGNER, but took it a couple steps too far and shoved entire cones of cotton candy into his mouth. He mumbles horrendously throughout the entire picture making most of his dialogue incomprehensible. This is extremely unfortunate as there's A LOT of the usual Seagal direct-to-video post-production voice-over-style acting in this one with Seagal obviously recording most of his monotonous monologue and
dialogue later on from the comfortable chairs of a sound booth.

For those interested in watching Seagal movies solely for the fights, this is also not the movie for you. He has only one big showdown here which doesn't last long and which can best be described as Steven Seagal plays patt-a-cake below the standards of physical coordination set by toddlers who practice the game.

Stay away unless you're a true diehard fan and simply MUST see everything Seagal does. For others, this is the pits!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: about the movie the foreigner.......
Review: The story is about the package where lots of people are looking for it. Stories of this type will definitely contain actions and if you want a very good story out of it, that's too bad. For action a rating of 4 is given and story base is only a rating of three. This movie is not allowed to be screened or even sold in Singapore as it contains one scene where the prisoner is badly treated by the poland military even though the actions are good.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Majority of bad reviews no suprise...
Review: This movie is well directed, and slickly acted. I gave it five stars based on comparisons with all his other movies, which just flat out suck! A suppose most Americans (which I am) can't appreciate the style of a foreign style movie. It's not the least predictable action movie you will ever see. Nor will it win any academy awards. But its thoughtful and fun, and best of all, not cheesy. PS., I've seen every other movie he's done, beacause I like his "martial arts" based charisma, and this mild departure from the norm is actually refreshing.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: "I have high expectations for this movie"
Review: To the guy above me:
Why would you give 5 stars to a movie you have not seen?

What a career Steven Segal has had. He went from relative unknown to big budget action star in a relatively short amount of time. It's unfortunate that "The Foreigner" will serve as one of the final nails in his coffin, so to speak. This is a huge mess, with a run-of-the mill action storyline, and stereotypical villains... just like every Steven Segal movie since "Under Seige."

Avoid this pile of garbage, unless you can't get enough of bad action movies.

You don't want this movie. It's bad. Really bad. But hey, if you plan on having a "Drunken Movie Night" with your close friends, and need something bad to watch so you can collectively mock it, then this may be worth a rental. Otherwise, save yourself some money here, and treat yourself to something nice. C'mon, you deserve it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Typical but not horrible
Review: Well i will say this movie stunk but i won't say it was all that horrible,much better than the rediculous Out for a Kill,uhh didnt we already have OUT for justice?Anyhow this is the typical package delivery,look out bad guy's,big conspiracy movie.Yes is pretty bad but it could have been a lot better,spice up the plot and instead of Steven using ALL gun's in this movie,let him use his much skilled martial arts talent.This is backwards,take all the fighting from Out for a Kill and put it here and it would be so much better.Oh well can't win them all,and by the way give up the cheesy new age music,and slow motion reverse fighting shots,let the man just fight for god sakes.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Really Bad
Review: What a waste of money. I like S. Seagal, own most of his movies, but this one...I would not call Seagal an actor, but his performance in this movie is below all he has done before. He seems to be in the wrong place. He is getting old, his moves are slow. The story (is there really a story?) so bad and constructed. The co-actors are so faceless, the actionscenes are boring.... really, if you do not watch this movie, you don't miss anything!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: GARDEN VARIETY ACTION
Review: Where should we begin. A big natural belly on Steven Segal, who wears long oversized jackets through out, the man is SO out of shape. A muddle of a plot, nobody trusts anybody, and we soon learn not to care because clearly the script-writers just couldn't have enough of the intended "twists." Location change galore (all across Europe was a bit unnecessary) and one palace blow-up too many. A DUBBED European-movie kind of dialogue, the kind that sounds like a high school play, replete with outbursts of wannabe racy trance music every second minute. And to top it all, that green and sepia light effect in almost every frame of the movie that gives it a super-sleazy look and feel.

But let's be positive...the story was actually...and the actress was quite...wait, let's not be positive. This movie is a frantic exercise in something that is unclear. Was it a film they were gunning for? I had visions of enjoying a root-canal op with my dentist instead of sitting through this tripe.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: See it for mindless action and mindless filmmaking
Review: While Steven Seagal looks better in this film than he does in his later ones ("Out of Reach" made me dub him "the kung-fu Meatloaf") his statuesque features cannot save this movie. Neither can his amazing ability to keep every facial feature above his lower lip stiff. And though his adult diapers and ensure cannot stop the fact that he's not much of an action star any more, Steven has the help of horrible editing and directing to make it look like he's beating a guy up. Yet even this Kurosawa-like filmmaking cannot save this movie. In the end, all you get is a bad action movie.

One problem is that this movie makes it look like Europe is the size of a small village. One minute we're in Warsaw, then Germany, then suddenly everyone's British, then we're in Poland again, then Germany, then Norway, then Atlantis...where the heck are we? Were there wormholes that the characters used?

While plotholes abound and storyline is almost nonexistant, the writers have filled in the gaps with explosions and dead bodies. And lots of the latter. I counted three destroyed buildings, but lost count on the bodies. I do know, however, that the Department of Water Management funded this movie, because many characters die falling into a river or stream that happens to be nearby. This is true in the (second) attack Seagal makes on the industrial tycoon's headquarters. Almost every villain shot happens to fall backward, toppling into water. Perhaps it was to drown them, because Seagal seemed to like shooting the guards in the shoulders (unless Europeans have a vital organ in the shoulder I don't know about). The important thing about these deaths is that they give us emotions because we CARE about the characters! Like the black guy who dies since he's the black guy, or the spare black guy that dies because...well, he's the black guy.

There is one character I especially liked, the hitman that turns on Seagal. He had an actual name, but eventually my roommate and I dubbed him "Killer McDeath" because he kills everyone he comes across. I also couldn't help but noticed he killed off all the hot girls in the movie too: the cute maid at the mansion (shot), the young secretary at a business (shot), and the beautiful receptionist at the hotel (stabbed with a banana - oh no wait, he shot her). It got to the point where any time a cute girl appeared my roommate and I would say, "Uh oh, she's not gonna last long." I also have to say he was a tough guy - he's shot, blown out a window, shot again, hit by shrapnel, cut on the face, and smokes, but our friend Killer McDeath just shakes it off and keeps on tickin'. The sad thing is that in the end Steven Seagal kills him by a simple [...]-slap of doom. Surely the great Killer McDeath deserved a more suitable demise! Ah well, Killer McDeath will live on forever in "The Foreigner 2: Back to America."

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Dr. Vidiot prescribes "The Foreigner" for chronic insomnia.
Review: Written by Darren Campbell and again co-produced by Seagal and Andrew Stevens,this abominable effort from fallen action movie megastar Steven Seagal still manages to make history, of sorts: Here is a movie even duller than ON DEADLY GROUND, which offers the gratuitous violence of Seagal's early "classics" HARD TO KILL and MARKED FOR DEATH, coupled with a practically non-existant "plot" in which John Cold (Seagal) is assigned the task of delivering a?MYSTERIOUS? package (Ahhh!! MYSTERY!) which is ?MYSTERIOUS? because the authorities are too wussy to open it for fear of what it may contain (Oooo!! INTRIGUE!). So who better to transport it from Poland to France but Steve?
But of course the ?MYSTERIOUS? item is something dangerous that bad guys want to kill our hero to get. Is it a secret that must be covered up at all costs? A deadly weapon? A lost script of THE FOREIGNER with the movie's plot fleshed out to actually make some sense? No wonder this went straight to DVD.

Naturally there's a high body count and the hilarious sight of Seagal at his most vacant and soft spoken. THE FOREIGNER is a "movie" that is inarguably, (as I noted earlier) Seagal's worst since his sleep-inducing directorial "effort" ON DEADLY GROUND. But you'll find no actors of Michael Caine's caliber here. Sir Maurice Mickelwhite must've learned his lesson after his role in that lumbering pile of egotistical eco-twaddle.
To put it bluntly, THE FOREIGNER is direct to DVD junk of interest only to those who love wallowing in senseless violence- but are willing to endure the incoherant plot and utter drabness which holds the bloodletting together. Even Steve's most hardcore fans may be unforgiving of this. Avoid this one like the plague, unless you're angry at the Academy for snubbing ON DEADLY GROUND at the 1994 Oscars ceremony. Damn you Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Death Rattles
Review: You can hear the nail being driven into the coffin that now houses Steven Seagal's career. Resurrected for box office dollars in 2001 with Exit Wounds, Seagal has managed to send it all crashing down again.

This film was supposed to be a theatrical release, but that was contingent on how well Half Past Dead (the other half of a two-picture deal) did at the box office. Yeah, it did that badly, and The Foreigner and Steven Seagal got thrown into the chasm of 'straight to DVD' flicks. Seagal has been there before, his nadir being The Patriot a few years back. It's unlikely that he'll be able to rise again, and perhaps it's just as well.

This movie is not supposed to be good, per se. Like so many direct to DVD genre flicks, The Foreigner takes familiar elements of good movies and weaves in a weak story to showcase the star, in this case, the expanding Steven Seagal.

The decline of Seagal's career can be directly tied to his girth. Tall and lean in Above the Law, he now resembles a porky Buddha with a lot of makeup and an receding hairline. This film is filled with full-screen closeups of Seagal's heavily bronzed face. He can no longer do fight scenes with any credibility. Since the mid-90s directors have had to resort to jump cuts, fast motion, and other photographic trickery to make up Seagal's shortcomings.

The story of the film is appropriately ridiculous. The plot makes no sense, as Seagal plays Jon Cold, some kind of secret professional government agent for hire who has to deliver a package. To who? I don't remember, and neither will you. It doesn't matter.

The film is fun for a few reasons. One, to see how shameless Seagal can be. And two, there's a tongue-in-cheek tone to the procedings that make the slow-motion, cheesily stylized action sequences silly, violent, and mildly entertaining. The director must hail from music videos and commercials as he uses pointless stylings like speeding up random shots of people walking, or ultra slow motion action to show a low budget stunt. The movie resembles a music video by a band that has been reduced to self parody.

It's better than Half Past Dead, a movie too easy to put down here. If you love Seagal, then you know you'll inexplicably have to watch this film. Otherwise, you may want to invest 2 hours in something more life affirming.


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