Movies & TV / Columns
The Man Movie Encyclopedia – Urban Justice
Greetings, all.
I hope you cats are doing well. Really though, how could you not be, with my latest book, Only A Ninja Can Review A Ninja, readily available?! To those who’ve bought it already, I can’t thank you cats enough. To anyone who buys it, if you leave a review on amazon, any action movie you pick I’ll review for the next week’s article. So, if there’s one you’d like to see that I haven’t done, there ya go.
Alright, let’s hit the hood and hang with Seagal, in…
We open up with a cop named Max heading out for his day, when he sees two other cops shaking down some drug dealers, before taking their stash and handing it off. He snaps a few pics, and takes off. Later that night he gets a call to meet someone, some where. We don’t get the details. Once there, he’s immediately shot dead. After the funeral, his dad, Simon [Seagal] rents a run-down room in the hood and begins his investigation. He meets with a the detective that’s lead on the investigation, and has a feeling he knows more than he’s letting on. He then meets a snitch that worked with Max, who tells Simon he’s willing to help anyway he can.
Later, Simon heads to an area run by some gangsters, and ends up having a tussle with 4 of them. Naturally, he whoops on’em, and even kills one just for the hell of it by snapping his neck with the Camel Clutch, it’s fucking awesome. Seagal even whips out a hood accent, calling everyone “muthafucka” and talking about “doin tha fuckin’ around here”. I couldn’t be happier.
He gets a lead, a cat who owns a club and runs the Hyde Park gang, Cheevo. It’s said he might have had something to do with it. However, when Simon meets up with him, the great Danny Trejo, says that he liked Max and had nothing to do with his killing. However, the leader of the East Side Gangsters, Armond, he probably knows a thing or two. Before Simon can get that face to face, a couple gangsters try to pull a drive-by, that ends up in a car chase. Naturally, they end up crashing, with Simon leaving one of them alive. The one left alive heads back to his boss, Armond, who is, less than pleased with this news.
Later, Simon’s snitch is chased down by some Neo-Nazis, one of which is played by Derek Mears, the man who played Jason in the 2009 remake. Before anything too bad can happen, Simon rolls up and puts’em all down. He gets Gary in his car, and they talk for a minute. Simon asks about his brother, Armond, and asks if his brother killed his son. Gary doesn’t have anything to say to that. However, it turns out that Simon put a tracker on him, which leads him to Armond, which leads him to a drug deal between two gangs, in which Armond is working with the cops. They take about 2 million in cash, and 3 mill in coke. They set it at their agreed mutal spot. Simon seees all of this, thanks to his tracking of the cars, before heading back to his place.
Once there, the East Side gang shows up, and are quickly gunned down. Armond actually manages to hit him, however he gets fixed up via a friend’s cousin who’s a med student. Afterward, he hits up Gary, the snitch, he hits up his house, looking for his brother, whom he assumes killed his son. He confronts them all, whoops a little ass, and finally gets the truth from Gary. The detective who works with Armond, Shaw, he’s the one that shot Max. Basically, he was on track to take down Shaw and his operation with Armond, so he had to go.
Meanwhile, Armond & Shaw are meeting up with a big time gangster from New York, to sell some of that coke they stole. However, when the big-wig tests it, he finds it’s baking soda. Apparently Simon had switched it out after they left the other night. This results in a shoot-out, just as Simon appears. He then starts cutting down everyone, including a guy who takes like, 7 straight on kicks to the balls. It’s absolutely incredible. The dude acts like it’s a minor discomfort. I take 7, straight up kicks to the balls
and I’m suing life. Which doesn’t even make sense. But I’m doing it. This dude takes a few more, before presumably dying.
Finally, Simon gets his show-down with Shaw, and proceeds to beat him from room to room, before snapping his neck. He then runs into Armond, and decides to not kill him, because he had one job, and it’s done. With that, he walks out, and all is well..
MAN MOVIE TALLY:
1-Liners: 0
Guys Beat Up: 11
Guys Killed: 32
Swear Words: 198
Boobies: 0
Explosions: 2
Foot Chase: 1
Car Chase: 1
Broken Bones: 1
Fight/Shoot-Out At Motel?: No
Guy Get Girl? No
Guy Smoke?: No
MAN FACTS:
Screen Gems was actually considering this for a theatrical release.
To date, this film features the most swear words in Man Movie Encyclopedia history.
C’MON BENNETT, LET’S PARTY!:
After Seagal’s last theatrical release, Half Past Dead, it was nothing but DTV for Seagal, which unfortunately meant heaping piles of crap. So, to discover that he actually made a pretty damn decent movie is awesome. Often times in these films, Seagal has a lot of obvious stunt-doubles, and the action is terrible. This time though, Seagal doesn’t half-ass things nearly as bad. We get some damn good fight scenes, decent characters, and more than tolerable acting. Urban Justice is a damn good movie for DTV, and polished up with a big budget and big budget actors, I could see this being successful in the theaters. Regardless, it’s nice to have one last Seagal flick for us fans to hang our hats on.
***3/4 Head-Butts Out Of 5.
Any questions, comments, drunk-ramblings, feel free to send them my way, I always dig hearing from you, the beautiful people.
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