As has already been said, this is one of his best and it is well written and well acted. The production values are also very good. The movie also avoids stereotypes that happen in a lot of these movies. Also, he made it clear to the guys running the pot field that he had no issue with them so that is an element showing that he was focused on his mission. A good Steven Seagal movie all the way around.A interesting thing other bad guys who make the mistake of taking on Steven Seagal, never start a shootout in storage area full of drums of toxic waste. It never ends well.Granted that this movie was made 20 years ago and I am still after all of these years a fan of Steven Seagal. I hope that he can get himself back in the shape he was in. In his later movies, he seems to be carrying excess weight and seems to not be able to move like he did. Granted that age is a factor but I hope that he understands that his fans love him and only wish the best for him.

A latter-day beat-em-up starring action man Steven Seagal in the midst of his environmentally friendly persona, this is actually better than one might expect and it turns out to be one of Seagal's best movies. Certainly, the direction, supporting cast, action, and script are a lot better than one would expect from the straight-to-video genre and Seagal puts in one of his most commanding performances in recent years, even if he does insist on wearing silly looking clothes. Fine photography of the setting and a foot-tapping bottleneck score add to the experience and I can safely say that I enjoyed every minute of this yarn.If you remove all of the romance, incestuous brother/sister relationships, corrupt businessmen, and porch-building interludes which pad out the story what you're left with is a basic tale of Seagal vs. a large number of bad guys. There's nothing wrong with this in my mind and the action, when it comes, is authentic if a little tricksy with the camera at times. Watching Seagal take out a gang of weapon-wielding thugs within a matter of seconds is always great fun and the violence comes hard and fast, just like Seagal's punches - it's nice to see it hasn't been toned down in what is otherwise almost a family tale, or perhaps western-based fable. Although a shoot-out in a toxic mine is mishandled, each and every other moment of action in the film is cool and worth waiting for.Aside from Seagal, delivering once again a quietly-spoken, impassive, and eco-friendly hardman like in all of his other movies, we have some good actors turning up in the supporting cast. First up is Marg Helgenberger as the fragile love interest who (as always) puts in a decent and commendable performance. New faces like Stephen Lang (AVATAR) and Brad Hunt (a wimpy kid) give interesting turns whilst the heavy stuff is left to Kris Kristofferson. Then there's old-timer Harry Dean Stanton (who sings!) putting in a sympathetic role as, well, an old-timer, and some decent heavies for Seagal to go up again.The action-focused plot moves along quickly and offers up plenty of incident in its running time. There are car chases, an amazing stunt of a tanker crashing over a cliff, shoot-outs, bar-room brawls, and plenty of other cool bits for genre fans to enjoy, all performed stylishly and exciting. Yet, crucially, the story itself would work well without these so they can be enjoyed as added bonuses rather than carrying the film along as in so many of Seagal's lower-budgeted productions. A crime that decent action fare like this is relegated to the straight-to-video market when the bigger-bucks brainlessness of UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: THE RETURN still makes it into the cinemas.

Plot Synopsis: Jack Taggart, an agent working for the EPA, is shocked to discover that his best friend & fellow agent has been killed while investigating reports of people in a rural town in Kentucky getting sick. Posing as a church mission carpenter, he visits the town, uncovering a conspiracy to dump toxic waste in the abandoned coal mines in the nearby mountains by Orin Hanner, a shady businessman whose son runs the town. Faced with a wall of silence in the town & the presence of the dumpers, Jack attempts to expose the dumping & prosecute the people responsible.Film Review: Faced with a dip in popularity during the mid-1990s, the action stars of the 1980s & early 1990s (Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme, Bronson & Norris) tried a variety of ways to continue their careers – Schwarzenegger & Stallone both tried their hands at comedy with varying results; Van Damme's popularity actually going up a notch for a brief time before crashing down so low that he became stuck in DTV land for the next decade; Norris turned to television while Bronson made a trilogy of DTV films before his death. As for Steven Seagal, the real-life aikido master, police officer (I'm serious), blues musician & actor (I was going to include CIA agent in that list of achievements but I'm not exactly sure if Seagal ever worked for the agency for real), he tried to reinvent himself as an environmental activist, making a trilogy of films in the mid-to-late 1990s that were eco-thrillers (ON DEADLY GROUND, Fire Down Below & The Patriot)… at least in basic plot thematics, that is.Excepting On Deadly Ground, these pro-environment films almost killed Seagal's career stone dead, mainly due to being ridiculously heavy-handed – the villains are all very shrill one-dimensional cardboard cutouts & clichés; the scripts are poorly written; & the most serious flaw of all – the action scenes are poorly staged.Fire Down Below starts out in a way that seems to indicate that Seagal is planning to forsake his customary martial arts sequences for some good old fashioned investigative skills. Not counting the short scene where Seagal stumbles onto a cannabis hydroponics farm, there seems to be a lack of anything that even remotely resembles the sort of brutal martial arts fights that Seagal's early films had showcased.But shortly after it starts, the film degenerates into a muddled blend of one-dimensional stereotypes, tepid car chases & poorly-choreographed fight scenes. There are two things I hate while watching films – having my intelligence insulted & being preached to (by that I don't mean social commentaries or satire – I mean films that beat you over the head with messages). Sure enough, Fire Down Below does both. I find it hard to believe that there could be a person (Kris Kristofferson's villain) so cowardly & stupid that he dumps toxic waste in his home town's mountain range. As for the acting, Kristofferson is actually a good actor, but here he has no motivation for his actions. As for the preaching part, the film lays on the let's-look-after-the-environment message with all the subtlety of a kick to the groin.All of Seagal's films (including the dreck that Seagal made during the 2000s) have this concept of White Hat / Black Hat characters (the White Hat is Seagal, while the Black Hat is a really despicable villain). Of course this scripting idea first manifested itself during Seagal's debut film ABOVE THE LAW & continues in this one, with Kris Kristofferson's businessman being an evil coward who spends his working hours in the company of female escorts.The other actors are quite competent in their performances, especially Marg Helgenberger as the love interest (I kind of liked the idea to give her a shady past, but the film indifferently throws this away by making her brother turn out to have committed the deed) & Harry Dean Stanton (Brain from John Carpenter's ultra cool sci-fi classic ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK), who gives a good impression as the hick local who proves to be Seagal's greatest asset.

An EPA agent Jack Taggart (Seagal) is sent to go "undercover" in eastern Kentucky to find out who's responsible for dumping toxins in the ground. Of course in a film like this, there's a friend of Taggart's who's dead, so he has to avenge him. The locals, mostly poor are too afraid to make much noise about who's doing it for fear of reprisals. So Taggart strolls into town and starts doing odd jobs for a church fixing up some local's porches, playing the fiddle and then meets the female lead Sarah Kellogg (Helgenberger). It's just as bad as it sounds. I like to the scene where he grabs the rattle snake lighting quick, I guess I'm not the only one who saw "Hard Target". Pretty soon he gets into fights with the local trash and as always dominates and finds out that Orin Hanner Sr. (Kristofferson) is the guy behind the whole operation. Taggart goes after his spineless son Orin Jr. (Hunt) who runs the business locally and eventually takes it to the top and sends Sr. to the big house in an anti climatic ending.This is one of Seagal's worst movies in my opinion. Even in films where the script was bad, Seagal usually would come through with some good fight sequences but even these are fairly lame in this. More often you are waiting for some action to actually happen, but rather you get to see Seagal glad hand the locals, sing, play guitars, square dance, give an environmental speech and do routine maintenance for the poor. Can you say stupid? The movie is boring and Seagal supposedly undercover stands out like sore thumb with those silly jackets. With the few action scenes you get, all are vastly inferior to those of his past greats and what kicks he had are very poor indeed. By this time in his career he was not in great shape and this may have affected the scenes in general. The best action scene in the film actually involves a big rig chasing him in truck like Red Fox's. To add to this, there is very little killing in this, not only does he push the environmental message, but he kills very few people. I mean come on, the staple of a film like this is the showdown at the end and the bad guy bites it. But no Seagal wounds the guy and arrests him. And don't even get me started with the gas station and the flare, didn't want to hurt any bystanders I suppose. WEAK! There are plenty of fine actors in this film, not really sure why, who also come out looking thoroughly awful. Nobody usually expects fine acting from a film like this, but good actors can only do so much with a terrible script and this proves good actors can be totally wasted on poor writing. Harry Dean Stanton is great and he has such a weak hillbilly role in this, along with Helgenberger. And of course Seagal speaks as always painfully low toned and silly, like he's on depressants. If your fan of The Punisher look for Mark Collie playing a hick who can't fight. Also once Seagal started putting into his films too much of an environmental message the movies began to go down hill. Believe me, I'm for the environment, but it has very little place in these films and Seagal looks like a fool doing speeches on the subject, remember On Deadly Ground? This is worse.There very few bright spots, one being the location shots. OK nice, but I came to see action not Kentucky. For country music fans I would imagine this is a gold mine, with lots of music and stars making appearances in the films. Again, didn't come to see that. With a few one liners that are OK, there is nothing much more to say that is good. Surprisingly this was released in theaters and I can see why it was one of his last. Overall a very poor action film, with no nudity to speak of equals 1 out of 10 stars.