{"id":2169,"date":"2024-08-08T03:43:13","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T03:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2169"},"modified":"2024-10-14T14:35:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T18:35:38","slug":"exit-wounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/08\/exit-wounds\/","title":{"rendered":"Exit Wounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Exit Wounds <\/strong>(2001)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (pervasive strong language and violence, drugs, nudity)\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ed Horowitz and Richard D’Ovidio\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Damon \u201cGrease\u201d Blackman and Jeff Rona\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Cinematography: Rick Pagano\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 16, 2001 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Steven Seagal, DMX, Isaiah Washington, Anthony Anderson, Michael Jai White, Bill Duke, Jill Hennesy, Tom Arnold, Bruce McGill, David Vadim, Eva Mendes, Matthew G. Taylor, Paolo Mastropietro, Shane Daly, Drag-On, Jennifer Irwin, Christopher Lawford.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $51.7M (US)\/$79.9M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Shall we start by addressing the elephant in the room? No, this isn\u2019t a fat joke about Steven Seagal, but it\u2019s hard not to notice that he\u2019s put on weight since his heyday in the 90s. The makers of Exit Wounds<\/strong> do their best to hide it by shooting him mainly from the waist up and with tricky editing during the fight scenes. Unfortunately, they can\u2019t hide how much he\u2019s slowed down since the days of Hard to Kill and Under Siege. One thing hasn\u2019t changed though. He still can\u2019t act worth a damn. He still has the emotional range of a marble statue. It\u2019s more noticeable now that he can\u2019t depend on his physical skills to carry him through his movies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In its defense, Exit Wounds<\/strong> is the last decent Steven Seagal movie. After following it up a year later with the lame Half Past Dead (a PG-13 Seagal movie?!), all of his starring vehicles went straight-to-DVD. Oh, here I go getting ahead of myself and off-topic again. I\u2019m supposed to be talking about Exit Wounds<\/strong>, a Detroit-set\/Toronto-shot cop movie stylishly directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak (Romeo Must Die). It\u2019s good, in general. It delivers plenty of action and violence. It has a better plot than most of his other movies. It doesn\u2019t get weighed down by the star\u2019s environmental concerns or his massive ego. Although there\u2019s never any doubt on anybody\u2019s part that Seagal is the star of the picture, he doesn\u2019t monopolize the whole movie this time. His co-star rapper DMX gets equal billing and screen time. I\u2019m actually surprised at how good it is.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Based on the same-titled novel by John Westermann, Exit Wounds <\/strong>has a ponytail-less Seagal playing Orin Boyd, a reckless street cop who doesn\u2019t play by anybody\u2019s rules. His reward for saving the life of the Vice President (Lawford, Blankman) from an attack by right-wing militants in the opening sequence is a transfer to the worst precinct in Detroit, the 15th<\/sup>. He\u2019s told by his new CO Mulcahy (Hennesy, Law & Order) that his lone wolf tactics will not be tolerated under her watch. He gets himself into hot water almost immediately when he unknowingly ruins an undercover operation to bust reputed drug dealer Latrell Walker (DMX).<\/p>\n

\u00a0After a mercifully brief stint in traffic, Boyd is assigned to investigate the theft of $5 million in herion from an evidence storage facility. He\u2019s partnered with George Clark (Washington, True Crime), a young cop who admires Boyd\u2019s reputation very much. They focus their efforts on Walker and his fast-talking sidekick T.K. (Anderson, Me, Myself & Irene) who are doing business with a ring of dirty cops that includes Montini (Vadim, G.I. Jane), the cop running the undercover operation to bust Walker. Boyd begins to suspect there\u2019s more going on than meets the eye, especially when he can\u2019t turn up any background information on Walker.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s more shooting than hand-to-hand combat in Exit Wounds<\/strong>. That\u2019s not to say we don\u2019t get to see Seagal fight. There\u2019s a decent early scene where he makes short work of a gang trying to steal his ride. The scene where he fights a bunch of bad guys in the back of a speeding van is cool too. At the end, he gets into a \u201csword fight\u201d with one of the main villains. Although exciting, they suffer a bit from the overediting.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ultimately, Exit Wounds<\/strong> is one of Seagal’s better movies because the plot takes a less predictable route. Unlike a lot of action flicks, you don\u2019t know where it\u2019s going from frame one. Take Walker. On the surface, he may seem like just another urban drug dealer. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a spoiler to tell you he\u2019s not. There\u2019s a higher purpose for his criminal actions and behavior. On the other hand, it\u2019s easy to pick out which of Boyd\u2019s colleagues are mixed up with the bad guys. Even the surprise twist in the climax isn\u2019t all that surprising.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For the most part, Seagal sticks to what he knows in terms of performance. He stands with his arms folded and says menacing things in his customary monotone before beating the hell out of every scumbag in close proximity. Only this time, there\u2019s a self-deprecating quality to it. A lot of the time, he wears a smirk that tells us he\u2019s privy to the jokes about his \u201cacting\u201d and doesn\u2019t give a s***. DMX does the work as a character that may or may not be a bad guy. He has some cool martial arts moves too making him a worthy adversary for the star.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Exit Wounds<\/strong> has a sense of humor uncommon to Seagal actioner. Tom Arnold (True Lies) provides great comic relief as a talk show host Boyd meets in a mandatory anger management class. He has a penchant for getting into fights, on and off his program. Anderson is also funny as T.K., the loud-mouthed sidekick to DMX\u2019s straight man. Michael Jai White (Universal Soldier: The Return) does good work as a fellow cop who appears to have Boyd\u2019s back. Hennesy is very good as the tough, flinty commander who refuses to take Boyd\u2019s crap. It\u2019s great to see veteran actors like Bruce McGill (The Last Boy Scout) and Bill Duke (Predator) in small roles.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I originally planned to star my review of Exit Wounds<\/strong> by asking this question: After dealing with Axel Foley, RoboCop and Action Jackson in the 80s, hasn\u2019t Detroit suffered at the hands of wild, destruction-prone cops enough? Then it hit me that it wouldn\u2019t be applicable since it was actually (and noticeably) filmed in Toronto. Either way, Boyd certainly leaves quite a path of destruction in his wake. What I\u2019m getting at is this. Exit Wounds<\/strong> is a good cop movie. It\u2019s slick, stylish and fast-moving. It\u2019s a good choice for a Saturday night action flick.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exit Wounds (2001)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (pervasive strong language and violence, drugs, nudity)\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ed Horowitz and Richard D’Ovidio\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Damon \u201cGrease\u201d Blackman and Jeff Rona\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Cinematography: Rick Pagano\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 16, 2001 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Steven Seagal, DMX, Isaiah Washington, Anthony Anderson, Michael Jai White, Bill Duke, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kick-ass-actioners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Exit-Wounds-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2169"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3049,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions\/3049"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}