Deadly Crossing   Starring: Steven Seagal Optimum Home Entertainment RRP: £19.99 OPTD1892 Certificate: 15 Available 27 December 2010

When a convenience store family are gunned down in cold blood, Elijah Kane suspects that an influx of Russian drugs is to blame. Leading his elite force against the menace he races against time to solve the crime, all the while unknowingly harbouring a killer in his midst...

Deadly Crossing (2010 - 1 hr, 26 min, 33 sec) was originally supposed to be the pilot episode for Steven Seagal’s new show Southern Justice, here presented as a straight to DVD film.

In all the recent films I’ve seen with Seagal there is a definite trend, the forces of good are invariably fighting against Russian drug barons, though why they would bother to relocate to Seattle is never explained, Seagal is usually in the film less than his fans would wish, usually popping up in transitional point in the plot to explain what is happening to the slower members of the audience. Sex is ever present, represented by pole dancers, hookers and the inevitable, if a little creepy scene where he gets in a clinch with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter.

So, if you ignore Seagal’s relatively minor contributions to the action, what we have here are a bunch of relatively unknown actors engaged in a pretty average crime thriller, part procedural and part character exploration. If that sounds a bit dire, the fact that Seagal leaves much of the action to the younger cast actually makes this one of Seagal’s better films.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have its faults, the dialogue is cheesy with a plot that has more holes than substance. The villains play Russians which, to any other director, would have represented unconvincing stereotypes. But who cares? Certainly not Seagal fans, who apparently are happy to watch essentially the same plot being dragged out again and again.

That the film was originally designed for television is obvious, with the director ripping off anything from 24 to CSI to give the film a generic look. The disc has no extras, but the 1.78:1 picture is pretty sharp. you can choose to watch the film ion either 2.0 stereo or 5.1, but the 5.1 is less dynamic than it should be for an action flick.

The outcome is a strange balance. Given his recent output this is one of Seagal’s better films, if only for the fact he isn’t in it much, but overall it’s an average cop thriller that would have struggled to get past the pilot stage.

5

Charles Packer