Hard to Kill (1990) Warner Bros./Action RT: 96 minutes Rated R (language, strong violence, brief nudity, sensuality) Director: Bruce Malmuth Screenplay: Steven McKay Music: David Michael Frank Cinematography: Matthew F. Leonetti Release date: February 9, 1990 (US) Cast: Steven Seagal, Kelly LeBrock, William Sadler, Frederick Coffin, Bonnie Burroughs, Andrew Bloch, Branscombe Richmond, Charles Boswell, Zachary Rosencrantz, Lou Beatty Jr., Nick DeMauro, Nick Corello, Justin De Rosa, Stanley Brock, Evan James. Box Office: $47.4M (US)
Rating: ***
Hard to Kill is one of the dumbest action movies I’ve ever seen. To say it requires suspension of disbelief would be both obvious and a vast understatement. I’ve seen some dopey premises in my life, but this one takes the proverbial cake. This thing has more plot holes than the Chicago garage where the infamous 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre took place has bullet holes. They’re big enough for Capone and his entire mob to fit through too. They should have called it Hard to Swallow.
That master of ass-kicking Steven Seagal stars as Mason Storm, an L.A. cop who uncovers a conspiracy involving the Mob and up-and-coming politician Vernon Trent (Sadler, Die Hard 2). He’s spotted while videotaping a clandestine meeting. Storm gets away, but corrupt cops show up at his house later that night and shoot him and his family. He miraculously survives after initially being pronounced dead, but is left in a coma. To keep him safe, his commanding officer O’Malley (Coffin, Wayne’s World) orders hospital staff to keep it quiet. He’s admitted to a coma center as a John Doe. Nobody but O’Malley knows he’s still alive.
Seven years later, Storm wakes up and tries to tell his nurse Andy (LeBrock, The Woman in Red) he’s in grave danger if he doesn’t get out of there now. She doesn’t listen, of course. Instead, she inadvertently informs one of the dirty cops that Storm is still alive. They send somebody to finish him off. Naturally, he gets away with some help from Andy who hides him from the bad guys while he recuperates enough to go get his revenge.
In one of the movie’s hardest to swallow plot points, it takes Storm only days to fully recover from seven years in a coma, a feat he accomplishes with acupuncture, Chinese medicine and homegrown physical therapy- i.e. punching a board until it breaks. YEAH, RIGHT! There’s a lot in Hard to Kill that’s hard to swallow. For example, how could a man as powerful as Trent NOT know of O’Malley’s deception? He must have eyes everywhere. Surely, somebody at the hospital or coma center would have leaked the information for a price. Now answer me this. Why does it take so long for EVERYBODY to realize Trent is the voice on the tape? He utters the same phrase he uses for a campaign slogan. I can’t believe not a single person put it together in all that time. And just how is Storm able to maneuver himself around the corridor with a mop mere moments after waking up from his coma? His muscles would be too atrophied to move a finger much less his whole upper body. One last thing, is EVERY cop in the LAPD dirty? If you go by this movie, YES! I counted three clean cops and one ends up dead inside the first 15 minutes.
Okay, so Hard to Kill isn’t a great movie. It isn’t even a particularly good one. It’s as idiotic as action movies come. It seems to me it was made to appeal to the low IQ demographic. At least director Bruce Malmuth, of the 1983 3D spy comedy The Man Who Wasn’t There, keeps things moving along at a decent pace. That is, once Seagal’s character fully recovers his physical abilities and learns a startling piece of news from O’Malley. Once it kicks into action mode with Seagal beating the stuffing out of every bad guy in sight, it’s fairly entertaining.
In his second movie, Seagal shows us what to expect from him as an actor. A typical performance basically consists of him stand there with folded arms and inscrutable facial expression reciting dopey dialogue like, “I’m gonna take you to the bank, Senator Trent. To the blood bank!” When provoked, he will commence to beating down bad guys in a most painful way. His best kill in Hard to Kill is when he rams a broken pool stick in a goon’s neck with the parting words “F*** you and die!”
In these scenes, Seagal shows signs of life which is more than can be said for his female co-star. LeBrock is beautiful, no question, but she can’t act to save her life. She used to do commercials for Pantene shampoo where she asked us not to hate her because she’s beautiful. Fine, is it okay to hate her because she can’t act? She and Seagal have zero chemistry onscreen which is confounding given that they were real-life husband and wife at the time. Sadler does good work as the weaselly villain.
I realize that silly action movies like Hard to Kill aren’t made to stand up to close scrutiny. You can’t always apply logic or ask the questions I posed earlier. However, you’d think writer Steven McKay would try and close some of the more gaping holes. To be fair, it’s not all his fault. The studio demanded a shorter cut prior to release. It was heavily recut and re-edited which may explain a few of the narrative issues. Either way, it contains a lot of scenes of Seagal beating up bad guys. That’s what everybody came to see.
I suppose it would be accurate to label Hard to Kill a bad movie, but it’s a good bad movie. It’s laughable when its hero isn’t pulverizing bad guys including one played by awesome character actor Branscombe Richmond, veteran of several B-level actioners- e.g. Firewalker, The Hidden, Action Jackson, Cage and The Taking of Beverly Hills. Stupid but fun, Hard to Kill isn’t too hard to take.
