Sometimes I like to torture myself with a terrible film, but this came close to the limit for me.The premise of the biological warfare data is fairly standard, and who would've expected that the good guy's daughter would be kidnapped. It's all standard bad, but the whole attitude of Segal is terrible.So, someone's kidnapped his daughter, and over the course of the film he has three opportunities to get her back pretty easily, and just wanders away from each one of them without seeming to care much.He's in a high speed car chase trying to get her back. He's knocked out the other cars chasing him, and there is the cab ahead of them. The other agent in the car says 'Let's go to the safe house'. 'OK' he says, and drives off, abandoning the pursuit.Secondly, when he's in the police station, and the woman he knows had kidnapped the kid walks in, he just sits there and lets her walk out. He only overpowers the cops when they tell him they're not going to let him go.Finally, when he finally teams up with the woman (surprise!), they could go collect his daughter from her friend, but instead they go to the safe house again, in the same city, and spend the night there. They could easily have driven to where she was, but nope, safe house.The whole film is about a deadly agent mildly interested in rescuing his daughter.

Shadow Man is a film that is absolute rubbish with its involving story that could put one to sleep, poor action sequences, very poor direction, sloppy fight scenes, and a very overweight and poorly dubbed Steven Seagal who looked very lethargic and lazily plods his way throughout the movie.The big question here is why on earth is Steven Seagal's voice dubbed in this movie. It's obvious to blind Freddy that this was NOT Steven Seagal's voice and I just cannot fathom for the life of me why Steven Seagal's voice was dubbed. Was it because Steven Seagal was lazy put in minimal effort into this movie? Or was it because he doesn't sound like he used to? The movie itself is so forgettable I could not even tell you what the movie was about. I saw most of it by fast forwarding through the movie and then when I watched the laughable yet pathetic action sequences I was shaking my head in disgust at how bad they were.The one time box office champion shows that he has put very little to no effort here and it shows. Despite Steven Seagal's latest insipid and uninspiring effort, as his career limps on it's still amusing that his super sized stomach is now as big as his super sized ego. Seagal still hasn't lost his God complex and he continues to strut around the same way like he did in the prime of his career. Judging by this poor excuse for a movie, I can't see Steven Seagal's career ever being resurrected.Regardless of whether you were a Steven Seagal fan, or whether you still a loyal fan who has stuck by him through thick and thin, avoid this movie.1/10.

The Big Man is what he is.You don't like him?Well,hell,nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to watch his movies....... The plot is nearly always - as here - completely irrelevant;we just want to see Steve get revenge against whoever has p*ssed him off this week.You think they'd know better by now. In "Shadow Man" he takes on most of the Romanian nation,several Brits and the odd rogue yank,a helicopter and a central library,leaving them dead,destroyed and in tatters respectively.Way to go Big Steve. Miss Imelda Staunton keeps an admirably straight face and looks to have enjoyed herself immensely sharing screen time with a true legend. Miss Eva Pope,as unlikely a killer as you could hope to meet,is involved in a half - hearted attempted seduction scene but Steve knows the importance of keeping his vital bodily fluids intact before going into action and merely gives her an avuncular hug. I think Steve should have it written into his contract that only he be allowed to sport a ponytail :to see and the chief villain going mano a mano with ponytails swinging was just a touch de trop. But overall,for a cheap,cheesy movie,"The Shadow Man" is a lot of fun and good value for money.Honest.

I admit it, I am not a Steven Seagal fan or of his films, but I do keep watching them for curiosity. As far as they do, Shadow Man is pretty bad, but it does start off quite promisingly and it for me is not as bad as Out for a Kill, which is a serious contender for Seagal's worst film ever. Plus there are some striking locations. However, the camera-work is very slapdash a vast majority of the time, and the direction is pretty incompetent. The story is messy and predictable, the action is barely risible with some poor doubles, the film is dreadfully scripted and the pacing is sluggish. Sadly the acting doesn't fare much better, fine actress Imelda Staunton especially deserves much better than this but she tries hard with an underwritten role. Seagal is part of the problem, I actually consider him a poor actor overall, and this is no exception. Here, he looks very tired and unkempt and he seems to be going through the motions. Overall, marginally better than I thought, but that is faint praise. 3/10 Bethany Cox