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Kill Switch
Detective Jacob King (Steven Seagal) is a homicide cop with a penchant
for tough justice on the mean streets of Memphis, Tennessee. He is
directly involved in tracking down two serial killers with the help of
his loyal partner Detective Storm Anderson and by the book FBI agent
Frankie Miller. His involvement leads to dire consequences for his
personal life as he seeks to end the terror of the murderous Lazerus
(Michael Filipowich) by any means necessary.
Jacob King is shown as a child witnessing his twin brother’s murder by a
deranged knife wielding maniac. These memories still haunt him and
perhaps explain his current profession as a homicide detective working
serial killers cases. He saves a woman wired to explosives by known
madman Billy Joe Hill, and then proceeds to pummel him and throw him out
a window. Hill later gets out on a technicality and continues his
rampage by killing Jacob’s policewoman girlfriend Celine. Jacob
confronts “hillbilly” Joe and slices him up with a knife. Jacob is also
hot on the trail of “the Grifter”,
a zodiac freak who bludgeons his victims to death and leaves cryptic
messages behind to taunt police. Jacob discovers a clue that leads him
to a loner named Lazerus, he tussles with him but he escapes. Lazerus
then attempts to set up Jacob by applying skin fragments from his
fingernails belonging to Jacob on his next female victim. FBI agent
Miller falls for the deception and attempts to convince Jacob’s partner
Storm to bring him in. Jacob predicts the location of Lazerus next
slaying and defeats him with the aid of a hammer, breaking nearly every
bone in the killer’s body. Lazerus confesses and Jacob leaves the
police force vindicated to pursue happier events with a pretty young
blonde and what appear to be his two children.
Ah
what to say about the divine ponytail, Steve Seagal. He wrote this
movie, which suffers from some dreadful editing, a woeful Southern drawl
accent from Seagal and some hilarious action scenes. What was great
about Seagal movies in the past was the Aikido master showed realistic
moves to disable opponents, here we have guys getting punched 20-30
times and they keep getting up for more, a guy getting thrown out a
window which is replayed ad nausea and what looks like a stunt double or
two doing most of 57 year old Steve’s moves. Steve and the bad guys
shoot more caps at each other than was used in the entire Gulf War yet
still manage to hit nothing. The child flashbacks are never really
explained or elaborated upon and the ending has to be seen to be
believed, it’s like it was cut and pasted from another movie. The two
villains are very clichéd, and lack any real menace despite their body
counts. Look for Isaac Hayes as a friendly coroner, even South Park’s
chef can’t save this. There is a bizarre scene featuring a cannibal
eating a clown with the best quote from the film “Does this taste funny
to you?” Is it as bad as Attack Force? Not quite, but in fairness both
these features suffer from some terrible post production editing and
obvious storyline changes. It almost works as an unintentional comedy.
I’ve read the original Seagal script was changed and it would have been
a much richer and interesting feature if this is true. Alas we have
Kill Switch, a title that seems to have little reference to the
story.
Picture quality is average shot in 1:85:1 with a running time of 92
minutes. Dolby Digital 5.1 is reasonable with the typical gunshots and
explosions. Extras are light on this review disc with only a trailer of
the main feature.
A
Seagal movie for curious fans only. I like Steve Seagal, but this is
proof that a bad movie is a bad movie. That Memphis accent he presents
is still haunting me, the ending is still baffling me, the acting is
well Seagal like from the whole cast and I will never see clowns the
same way again. It is truly terrible as an action movie, but almost
works as in it’s so bad it’s funny. Excuse me I’m going to watch Under
Siege
again to see how to make a proper Seagal action flick. |
