The once glorious (well I'm sure some still believe that to be the case) Steven Seagal might be lingering in direct-to-DVD haven, but these enterprises sometimes provide the goods, that's if you're not expecting much. But then again there are some just plain and dull outings and for me this European stint "Born to Raise Hell" fell in to this group. Seagal feels like nothing more than a bit player and a bored one too. Spending more time sitting about, pondering, having a heartfelt chats or if he has to - walking from 'a to b' to shoot someone or casually crack some bones. So when it comes to the explosive bursts, they do lack any sort of punch or adrenaline despite the seedy scene. Here he plays a streetwise American Interpol agent assigned to a drug / weapon trafficking task force in Eastern Europe. This is one rather generic action drama, which thinks it's tough, but comes across as violently spiteful and sluggishly paced with a bogged down script. The director keeps it rather kinetic with the filming techniques, being slickly dressed up with sped up visuals, slow motion and titled camera angles. The performances are nothing to write home about, but the cast do acquit themselves well enough. Not terrible, but a very ho-hum Seagal vehicle."I like your style".

People who are going out of their way to say how bad this movie is, or making sarcastic posts about Seagal being extremely overweight, are missing the point. Yes, Seagal is making a straight to video movie in 2010, it's going to be objectively bad. However, 1: The movie must be judged in the context of his recent output, not compared to a super high-budget picture like Under Siege while Seagal was probably the #2 action star in the world, and 2: the only people who are likely to see this are committed Seagal fans anyway.Contrary to lazy stereotypes, Seagal's recent output (excluding Machete, post-2002's Half Past Dead, which I believe was his last in theater release) has been mixed, leaning towards bad and really bad. Still, there were some standouts in that context (I'm thinking of 2007's Pistol Whipped, but I haven't watched most of his movies since 2002), and to be blunt, a lot of his movies before that weren't really much good either (Glimmer Man in particular was godawful and objectively worse than Born to Raise Hell). Also worth noting is that according to IMDb, this film cost about $10 million while Half Past Dead had a budget of only $13 million, which considering it was filmed in California, as opposed to Romania, is surely not that much more. I'm all for gratuitous ridicule of Seagal, but if you're even considering watching this movie you bear some responsibility for his output.BTRH was actually better than I expected. The "avid fart" camera-work mentioned by an earlier reviewer is in full effect and somewhat annoying but you get used to it pretty quickly. The film quality itself is surprisingly high for a recent Seagal film, it's not overly dark and the visuals are crisp. Seagal is given credit for writing the script and his girlfriend is young enough to be his granddaughter (don't worry, Seagal doesn't take off his shirt), and there are a few cringe-inducing lines praising himself that are showing off Steven Seagal's personal insecurities. Even so, the dialogue is generally not bad (except with his girlfriend, where it's off the charts unbelievably bad). There's even one character who's intentionally funny. The acting in general is also of a quality one would expect from a decent movie, although as an earlier reviewer pointed out, Seagal is hardly acting at all. Indeed, he's the single weakest link in the whole movie; not because he's a terrible actor but because his character was basically unnecessary in the first place. He could have been replaced with anyone or no one. Without spoiling anything, the ending, and Seagal's role in it, is also jaw-droppingly terrible, although since the plot is very uneven throughout this doesn't affect the film as much as it should.All this leads up to an interesting conclusion: Seagal is not making the same movie over and over again, not really. What he (accidentally?) wrote was a movie that could potentially have raised a lot of interesting questions about a visceral response to torture, stereotypes of a Gypsy criminal in Romania (the worst criminal is a Gypsy), and the US's international drug war. Instead he's tried to fit this film, complete by itself, into the straitjacket of a Seagal beatdown film and it's disappointing (to the film's credit, Seagal is not constantly on screen and this allows other characters to develop, though I suspect this was more the result of poor pacing on the writer's part than good writing). What this movie needed most was an editor for the script.As far as Seagal's actual beatdowns, they're fairly good, if a little overly one-sided even for Seagal. Stunt doubles are employed for a lot of neck-down shots of Seagal fight scenes, but that's all the more disappointing because despite Seagal's weight and age, he is also shown to be personally capable of credible aikido moves. Seagal is definitely overweight but not the walking corpse he was in some recent films, so there's that.Finally, there's the matter of language. The film is virtually entirely in English. I have never been to Romania but I'm pretty sure Romanians don't speak English to each other in their own homes. Considering every actor portraying a Romanian was Romanian with one exception, it would have made sense, and added to the believability, if they just spoke Romanian to each other and used subtitles. Seagal (who's spending so much time in that country anyway he might as well learn the language himself) could just have the good fortune of only encountering people who also speak English.BTRH is not a good film, but neither is it a complete crapfest. If you're a fan of Seagal, don't miss it.

Seagal in Born to Raise Hell seems almost identical to Seagal as himself in his reality series. In some ways this might be a good thing. It means that the film acknowledges that there is no point in asking him to play act stereotypes anymore, like he did in his last film A Dangerous Man. Here he's just being himself. Something else which makes that a positive is the simple fact that the movie isn't really about him. It's more about a drug war between cops and Eastern European mafia. Seagal is just one cop out of a handful. As a screenwriter, Seagal chooses to write him self out rather than in, and subsequently we spend more time with the mafia.The fight scenes come with a crunchy sound mix, and they allow us to see more Seagal than Stunt man, but they reek of bad editing. the people who direct movies like Born to Raise Hell are not qualified for anything except music videos. this movie implements a very miscalculated Goddardian style of cutting, and a severe overuse of slow motion. We don't need to see a guy ripping a bedroom apart for jewels at five frames per second. The last scene is kind of touching (at least for a Seagal movie). It was around that part when I realized that the movie is not really about Seagal. That and the fact that we only here his name about five times. I don't wanna mislead anyone however. Born to Raise Hell will probably do the job for whatever fan base the old man has left. He's done better, but he's also done way worse.

This movie is the last Seagal movie I will ever see. I realized somewhere after coming out of my nap, 20 or 30 minutes into the movie that I have not seen a decent, entertaining Seagal movie since Under Siege. And I guess I never will. Seagal doesn't even do any real fight scenes any more. I am guessing his age is not a factor, no it's more likely the extra 90 pounds he's been carrying around for the last 10 years. Makes him a little sloppy looking, so all his fight scenes are confined to extreme closeups and edited more than a more minced than a modern seizure-inducing music video. It's sad really because the guy used to be kind of a poster child for how cool Aikido is. But now he goes around calling men bitches. I don't think O Sensei would be proud of that. I recommend that you avoid this movie. I also suggest you consider joining me in never wasting good sleep on a bad Seagal movie. And what's with this guy's phony southern accent? He fell in love with Louisana and now he talks like he wasn't born an raised in Michigan? Poser.