Entertainment

Steven Seagal’s Insane, R-Rated Sci-Fi Thriller Will Make You Wish The Bad Guys Win

By Robert Scucci
| Published 1 hour ago

I love watching Steven Seagal movies. Under Siege (1992) is Die Hard on a boat, and it’s actually a great watch thanks to the supporting cast involved, especially Tommy Lee Jones. Hard to Kill (1990) is amazing because the most badass thing Seagal says in the entire film happens when he’s alone in his bedroom, muttering about taking the evil senator on his TV to the blood bank. And how could we talk about Steven Seagal without mentioning On Deadly Ground (1994), a cautionary tale about corporations destroying the environment that somehow involves Seagal, the good guy, blowing up half of Alaska?

At face value, these movies are tremendously entertaining, but not for the reasons you’d think. Most of the entertainment value comes from Seagal believing he’s a living, breathing legend, even though most of the fight scenes involve him talking tough, running awkwardly, and wiggling his hands around. But if you really want a Steven Seagal punisher that could double as a drinking game, it has to be 2006’s Attack Force.

And what would that drinking game be, you ask? Every time Seagal opens his mouth and it sounds like a Martin Sheen impersonator is dubbing over the dialogue, you take a sip of whatever you’ve got. Be warned: you’ll probably need your stomach pumped if you actually commit to this bit.

I Don’t Even Know What This Movie’s About

As of this writing, I’ve written 1,945 articles for this site, most of them movie reviews. Usually, I’ll knock out a quick summary, talk about the themes, break down intention versus execution, and figure out who the movie is actually for. Attack Force finally broke me. This movie isn’t about anything or for anyone, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh my face off the entire time I watched it.

To the best of my understanding, Attack Force follows Steven Seagal’s Commander Marshall Lawson, who, as expected, suffers from a terminal case of “Damn, he’s good” syndrome. On this mission, however, a commander is only as good as his team, and his squad gets wiped out almost immediately by a stripper named Reina (Evelyne Armela O’Bami). Marshall, with help from his girlfriend Tia (Lisa Lovbrand), discovers that Reina murdered his team while high on a new party drug called CTX, which Tia co-developed alongside corrupt nightclub owner Aroon (Adam Croasdell).

Though Tia helped create CTX, she wants nothing to do with Aroon’s comically evil plan to taint Paris’ water supply with the drug because it turns anybody who takes it into a bloodthirsty maniac with an insatiable appetite for flesh, or something close to that. There’s a lot of dialogue about animal instincts and violent mammalian impulses, but none of it really clarifies anything. There are also reports that earlier versions of the film involved aliens, so who the hell knows what happened here?

Long story short, Steven Seagal wears these weird talon gloves that let him punch and slash people at the same time, a bunch of people die, and then the movie abruptly ends with zero explanation or closure. I’m trying to make it make sense, but I’m a writer, not a miracle worker.

It Gets Worse

The most insane thing about Attack Force is the sloppy overdubbing. Legend has it that there were so many rewrites after production wrapped that entire chunks of dialogue had to be replaced in post. The problem is nobody was available for reshoots, so a healthy percentage of Seagal’s lines were redubbed by a guy who sounds more like Martin Sheen than the actor he’s supposed to be portraying. We’re not talking about little touch-ups either. There are scenes where Seagal switches between two completely different voices within the same conversation. He’ll start speaking normally, the next few sentences are dubbed over, and then the exchange suddenly snaps back to his real voice like nothing happened.

To add insult to injury, the hand-to-hand combat sequences in this movie are ridiculous. Most of Seagal’s fighting at this point in his career involves him glaring intensely, waving his hands around like he’s performing interpretive dance, and relying on frantic camerawork to disguise the fact that a past-his-prime action star is basically doing the Macarena while people fling themselves across the room after running into him. I wish I was exaggerating, but if you watch Attack Force for any reason, I hope it’s to study these production disasters for the love of the game because the movie has absolutely nothing else going for it.

Attack Force may genuinely be the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I say this as somebody who once gave Buttcrack (1998) a five-star review. At least Buttcrack knows exactly what it is. It’s a bunch of people trying to make the dumbest movie imaginable and somehow landing a distribution deal in the process. I can respect that, and I do respect that. Attack Force, by all appearances, was a legitimate attempt at a sci-fi action thriller, but there’s barely any sci-fi, no thrills whatsoever, and action scenes that feel like they’re on life support waiting for somebody to pull the plug. I respect none of this.