Allegiances shift often, adding further mystery. Some guys seem to die more than once, while in other scenes gunfights end without a clear view of the result, so the audience sees somebody die, but is not sure which one of the gunslingers is headed to boot hill. Many people blow each other's brains out. Many people have mysterious, cryptic conversations. Because he is a self-proclaimed "consummate professional" who has been hired to deliver the package only into the hands of the husband, Seagal at first defies the wife, then later gets involved in protecting her and her daughter from other mysterious guys with unexplained agendas, as well as from her husband. The intended recipient's mysterious wife tries to intercept the package before it can be delivered to her husband. Other really, really mysterious guys do especially mysterious stuff, all of which which was in fact too mysterious for me to figure out. Other highly mysterious guys try to kill the moderately mysterious guys who try to stop him.
Seagal is employed by a mysterious guy to deliver a mysterious package to another mysterious guy. I don't think I understood what was going on at all, except in the very broadest terms. What am I saying? It IS incomprehensible.
Despite the size of their investment, Sony Screen Gems probably made the right move in shelving this movie. According to some reports, the film had a lavish $20 million budget, including location shoots in Warsaw and Paris, and was completed as part of the studio's obligation to a two-picture deal which was negotiated after the relative success of Exit Wounds seemed to indicate that Seagal still had a solid following. 3 out of 10 (and I'm being generous).The Foreigner is a straight-to-video Steven Seagal film that was originally intended to be released as a theatrical feature in March, 2003, an intention which was reportedly reversed when Seagal's prior film (Half Past Dead) tanked at the box office. In a nutshell sub-standard and very typical `straight-to-video' fare and really only recommended for die-hard Seagal enthusiasts.
#THE FOREIGNER 2003 MOVIE#
Hopefully it's a trend will soon die out (that movie `The Matrix' has got a lot to answer for). And then there's that annoying, headache-inducing `fast-motion, slow-motion' camerawork that unfortunately seems to be all the rage with movie-makers right now. Seagal on the other hand has quite clearly gone to seed, allowing himself to balloon (as others have also pointed out here) to almost Brando-esque proportions and quite frankly looked laughable here. For example, Clint Eastwood was older than Seagal is now when he starred as the hard-as-nails Marine gunnery sergeant in `Heartbreak Ridge' in the mid-1980s, but he carried off that role superbly and convincingly because he was lean, mean and obviously very fit. Okay, he's the on dark side of 50 now, but that in itself isn't necessarily a barrier to being able to carry off a tough-guy action role. It tries too hard to be intriguing and mysterious and in the process ends up as a complete mess. The plot of `Ronin' was also a bit convoluted and confusing and required the viewer to pay close attention to what was going on. It borrows a major plot element from the movie `Ronin' from a few years back, namely a mysterious package that various mysterious factions are desperate to get their hands on and will walk over corpses in order to do so, and like that movie this one also has a European setting. As other hacks have pointed out on this page, the plot is messy and incoherent and it's difficult most of the time to even work out who are supposed to be the `good guys' and who are supposed to be the `bad guys'. Steven Seagal has starred in some great action flicks down the years but unfortunately this ain't one of em.
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