i want you to hit me as hard as you can i'm gonna take you to the bank the blood bank
man some guys have all the luck in 1988 aikido instructor steven seagal looked into becoming
a movie star with above the law working as the martial arts instructor for uber agent
michael ovitz the head of caa and one of the most powerful men in hollywood seagal aced
a screen test for warner brothers and the rest is action movie history seagal not only starred
but produced and got a story credit in his big screen debut again some guys have all the luck
won't find many stories like that anymore here's the funny thing about the law was only a modest
success at the box office it grossed 18 million dollars 2 million less than another wb action
flick and real action favorite action jackson but where's our slew of carl weather's action flicks
where above the law must have really fared well was on home video and seagal overnight
was suddenly in high demand thus warner brothers decided to put him into another action flick right
away but first seagal needed a bit of a movie star makeover and above the law seagal's hair is
well it's a bit weird and that it's barely there up top the guy was going bald but hard
to kill he's got a jet black helmet of hair including for the first time ever
his signature ponytail hard to kill would also feature a less convoluted plot than above the law
this meant the movie no longer had to do with shady cia black ops in vietnam nope instead
this was a simple cop seeks vengeance movie that was easy to distill into a 90-minute movie
in this one seagal plays mason storm an honest cop who discovers a politician named vernon trent
played by the great william sadler is in bed with the mob before he can expose him
seagal and his family are attacked by assassins his wife is killed and storm is left for dead
slipping into a coma that he wasn't expected to wake up from his old partner frederick coffin's
lieutenant o'malley hides storm in a hospital as a john doe and raises his kid as his own seven
years later storm wakes up from his coma looking like a hippie jesus thanks in no small part to the
sexy nurse who lusts over his comatose bod what was that about segal having a hand and crafting
his own story atrophy be damned storm wakes up from his coma and immediately had to fight off
assassins with his nurse in tow he takes off to the countryside to rebuild his body along
the way him and the hot nurse get it on despite his wife's corpse being a pretty fresh memory
at this point the hot nurse is played by weird science woman and red dream girl kelly lebrock
who was mrs steven seagal at the time talk about a b-list power couple or well they could have been
as far as seagal's early output goes hard to kill is a fun one it runs a mere 90 minutes
and it goes down pretty easy it was directed by bruce malmouth who had worked with another
on-screen action legend and the inspiration for this video series sylvester stallone
in 1981's nighthawks apparently malmouth and seagal didn't get along with seagal reportedly
being tough to work with what you're kidding with him saying in an interview at the time
that quote i think it's a miracle that this guy can put one foot in front of the other
as we talked about during our earlier marked for death video part of segal's appeal at the
time came from the mystique he built upon about himself his past was shrouded in mystery with his
history in japan giving him a lot of cred segal also used to make illusions about having possibly
worked with the cia in some capacity as us action fans back then just ate it up he also had a very
distinct look with him tall and initially anyways pretty lean he wore designer clothes and usually
dressed all in black didn't have much in the way of muscles but he moved really well his aikido
skills were brutal and the fight scenes in his movies were unlike any weed scene in martial
arts movies before a perfect example of this is the first extended fight scene in a supermarket
where he foils a robbery well okay he doesn't actually foil it he pretty much just lets it
happen but when the owner pulls out a bat and gets killed seagal goes to work there's no extended
balletic fight scenes in a cigar fight rather it's a series of brutal bloody quick moves yet as in a
lot of his fights there's also a bit of sadism and cruelty and he toys with the main bad guy
who's armed with the knife but against seagal in this era he's hopelessly outmatched having killed
a bunch of dudes in the supermarket doesn't seem to bother him too much though as he jumps into his
car afterwards cranking the chuck mangione i'm not going to say seagal's treatment of bad guys
in his movies was a precursor to his steven seagal lawman attitude but i'm not not saying it either
come on what are you doing no please no no
the supporting cast and hard to kill is pretty solid with william sadler an appropriately
slimy villain that said it suffers from the same problem as most cigar movies
no one seems like they're a good physical match for him
seagal doesn't just beat people up or kill them he humiliates and demolishes them
i'm impressed
it's for my wife
the female role in this one is better than usual with lebron the love interest she certainly looks
great but given how their marriage collapsed pretty badly in the years following this
the chemistry just seems off hard to kill wound up grossing 47.4 million dollars in north america
more than double what above the law made this was indeed the movie that established the
seagal formula three word titles ponytail ultra violence it would be closely followed by marked
for death later that year and in 1991 seagal would release out for justice however at this point his
ego would start to get the better of him he would disastrously host saturday night live
in an episode so bad that it's never been rerun and seagal would earn himself a lifetime ban
he would also make a controversial appearance on the arsenal hall show where he'd call out
john claude van damme he comes off like a major dick in the interview that said his next movie
under siege would be his biggest and most critically well received he truly seemed on
the cusp of super stardom at this point but then he went to the three-word titles with
the movie he would direct himself on deadly ground and his career never really recovered
as it is hard to kill a cigar at his most energetic and arguably ranks as
one of his best vehicles hard to kill gets 7 out of 10 stallones
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