Maybe it’s time we lift our collective feet off of the neck of one Steven Seagal, what do you say?  Yes, I know he’s made like fifteen movies in the past three years, and there is no way that anybody could do that large amount of work in that short a period of time and have ANY of it turn out to be decent.  Yes, I know he’s gained an inordinate amount of weight in the last few years, but who of us hasn’t let something or another go to wayside as time has progressed?  I know I have.  We all know that he’s NEVER played a real character, but it’s not that easy just playing yourself you know.  Watch any athlete who makes a cameo in a sitcom or something and watch him struggle with the two or three lines they were given.  My point in all of this is who is Seagal really hurting by releasing godawful movie after godawful movie?  I’m sure these movies are good for the economy of Bulgaria, or wherever they shoot these things and it provides steady work for the Michael Keutch’s and Don E. Fauntleroy’s of the world.  And it is keeping Steven off the street, preventing him from releasing another musical album (Songs from the Crystal Cave is now available by the way).  So Steve, put down that gatdamn Sitar and put that cotton back in your mouth to recite these lines and push out these movies my friend. We got your back.

This weeks Seagal masterpiece is ‘Submerged’, which you might think is the title because it takes place in a submarine.  Well there are a couple of scenes in a sub, but there were also a couple scenes in an opera, but they didn’t call it ‘Tales from the Balcony’.  There were a couple of scenes in a laboratory but they didn’t call it ‘Test Tube Destroyah’ either.  Regardless, all hell has broken loose in the world and the gubment has to release one Chris Cody from prison to save it.  I think this is like the tenth Seagal film that he has had to be released from prison to save the world, but the real question is how did they manage to get this super badass in prison in the first

place?  It seems there’s an evil man named Dr. Adrian Lehder (Nick Brimble) who has a new technology which allows him to control minds and he is using this new tech to kill high ranking gubment officials.  Seagal rounds up his crew out of prison which also includes near super badass Vinnie Jones.

The submerged part of ‘Submerged’ occurs when Seagal and company hijack a submarine to transfer these prisoners back to The Man.  These prisoners, who used to work for the good guys, have been brainwashed and are now roaming the sub taking out the team which leads to a showdown between Seagal and J.V. badass Gary Daniels.  As if.  If I’m Gary Daniels I’m demanding that I at least get to land a punch on the dude.  There’s so much more to happen in this thing that it’s almost dizzying, but in the end, Steve is going to kick somebody’s ass.  For real.

‘Submerged’ isn’t the worst Seagal movie I’ve seen as that mantle is held, and will always be held by ‘Attack Force’, but it’s probably the messiest.  The story was literally all over the place, darting from one insane plot point to next and doing it so incoherently that even attempting to try to follow along was an exercise in futility.  They had thrown in so many characters and so many branching story lines that even the filmmakers forgot who was supposed to be dirty and who supposed to be clean so ultimately they figured they would just kill them all.  Problem solved.  Director Anthony Hickox, who last movie I saw was the abysmal ‘Blast’ doesn’t do a great job keeping him narrative together in this thing, but he does know to film shit blowing up real good.  So much stuff exploded in this flick that it could have been the tagline.  ‘Submerged:  Watch it BLOW!’ (Totally unoriginal on my part).   There was also the unsettling matter of the dubbing of Seagal’s voice in certain scenes.  ADR or Additional Dialog Recording, is a post production technique using the actors in a recording studio after filming is completed to sweeten, add or change original dialog.  Note to future filmmakers using Steven Seagal.  He is too busy cutting albums and shooting three movies at the same time to show up for these sessions so plan on not needing them, otherwise you will be forced to use an actor that sounds NOTHING like the man, as in ‘Submerged’, to do the ADR for him and it will make your suck ass film suck even harder.

One thing that ‘Submerged’ did have in its favor was women possessing extreme hotness.  Not just lead females Christine Adams and Alison King who were plenty toasty as it was, but even women just passing by or standing off to the side were hot as hell.  Not enough to recommend that one rush out and rent this film, but it is something.

As I look at the filmography of this master thespian it shows that I am about six movies short of being a complete Seagalolgist so I have some work to do.  So other than destroying the artistic culture of an artistically floundering planet, what harm is Seagal really doing?  Let’s just leave him be.