Exit Wounds

Bomb Rating: 

When this fact was actually "revealed" in the theater, a comatose grandmother in the front row momentarily came to life and screamed, "No shit!"

Okay, look, I realize Steven Seagal isn't exactly Stanislowski's idea of the quintessential actor, but how about we start with the basics and teach the guy to walk like a normal human being? Watching him, I'd guess that he bought his jeans two sizes too small and the crotch stitching is starting to pierce the casing on one of his testicles. Or perhaps a small rodent in there has mistaken his balls for nuts and is desperately trying to bury them somewhere? Seagal can't figure out which pose to strike: incredibly hip '70s black man, or Frankenstein.

Seagal plays Orin Boyd, a rogue Detroit cop who pisses his superiors off one too many times and gets transferred to the feared 15th precinct where the cops are so tough, they taser each other to see how much voltage they can take. Which brings up a story: A friend of mine who's into guns and tasers and that sort of thing was browsing tasers and asked the clerk, "How can I be sure the taser works?" to which the clerk replied, "You can shoot my boss with it, but I'll get fired. Rest assured, it works." As the clerk turned his back, my friend (I'm using the term "friend" loosely) shot himself in the thigh with the taser to verify its operating condition. To make a long story short, every muscle in his body, but most painfully his thigh, seized up and he fell to the ground and stayed that way for two weeks. The clerk put a sign on him that said, "This is what happens when you test the taser on yourself."

I don't care how tough Steven Seagal thinks he is -- when you put 100,000 volts into your body, you go down. You don't stand there and go "ugh" and take it like some guy is slugging you in the stomach. You fall down and cry like a little girl. If you're Steven Seagal, you probably suck your thumb too. And drop a load in your pants, which could explain the way you walk. Anyway, this is sort of representative of the role logic plays in "Exit Wounds." Summary: none. Boyd investigates police corruption in the precinct and gets hot on the trail of DMX, who is so obviously not a villain that when this fact was actually "revealed" in the theater, a comatose grandmother in the front row momentarily came to life and screamed, "No shit!"

Seagal and DMX team up to bring down the corrupt cops. In an apparent effort to find a foil bad enough to make him look good by comparison, Seagal plays some scenes opposite Tom Arnold, whose character is a TV talk show host attending anger management classes along with Steven. Arnold proves to be an even worse actor than Seagal, so imagine the pain induced by watching them interact with each other -- it's like watching a boxing match between two guys with no arms. Ironically, I'm pretty sure those same two guys wrote the script.

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