Out For Justice (1991) – Review

The brief conquest of Hollywood by arch bullshitter and all round lunatic, Steven Seagal, had to peak somewhere, and popular opinion commonly regards Under Siege as his finest hour as he squared off against Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones on a warship with only Erika Eleniak’s breasts for company. Personally, however, I’ve always found that Aikido’s favourite son really found his groove in the bizarrely satisfying Out For Justice, the last of his quartet of low budget actioners that included fellow three word titles, Above The Law, Hard To Kill and Marked For Death.
Like a lot of action superstars who are climbing up the ranks, sometimes a solid supporting cast is instrumental to not only help sell the plot (which, to be fair, are usually garbage), but also guide the lead into seeming like a more accomplished actor than they really are – I mean, it worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator, so why wouldn’t it work here? However, if Seagal is resistant to anything, it’s conventional thought and so, alongside some truly savage action sequences, Out For Justice contains possibly the most magical acting of the man’s entire career.
I mean…. it’s not exactly good acting, but….

Welcome to Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, a place that’s rough as it sounds and has the Mob virtually crawling all over it due to the large amounts of criminal opportunities that comes with a place where everyone seemingly grew up with everybody else. In this hard edged world we meet Gino Felino, a tough, scowl-faced cop who is so threatening he can wear a natty, police beret in full view of a dozen, broken-nosed wiseguys, and nobody questions his sexuality.
However, after a day of good natured pimp slapping, Gino is stunned when his childhood friend, the mobbed up, mad dog, cracked  Richie Madano, steps up one day and fills his cop partner, Bobby Lupo, with a cheerful of hot lead in front of his screaming wife and child before heading off to start a city wide rampage.
Gino, obviously, wants payback in the worst way, but as he searches for the deranged Richie while pausing to occasionally whup the collected asses of the odd gang of thugs, or randomly adopt a puppy (?), he has to tread carefully as the Mob gets first dibs on whacking their errant soldier and won’t tolerate Gino beating them to it. However, Gino’s one of those guys who seemingly gets on with everybody and has no problem staring a Mob boss square in the eye and telling them straight; so as he goes on a rampage of his own that sees him put pressure on Richie’s family, he realises that his vengence is pushing him too far.
Of course, this doesn’t stop him from utterly brutalising anyone aligned with Richie who comes at him with murder in their eyes and a pool cue in their hands.
So the race is on, but who will get their mits on the animalistic Richie – a man so far gone, he’ll happily shoot a woman in the head for minor traffic violation – first?

So, I’ll come clean – if I had to pick a favourite Steven Seagal movie, Out For Justice is an easy first place for a great many number of reasons, but the main one is him that for all his flaws, I still maintain that this is the best showcase for the whispery hands thrower that’s ever been made. At this point in his career, the actor was not only in his physical prime (not exactly hard when you see him now, I’ll admit), but he has probably gotten the best he was ever going to get when it came to this whole acting lark, which brings me nicely to one of my absolute favourite parts of the movie: Segal’s frankly astounding performance.
I’m not entirely sure if Seagal had an acting coach for this movie, but if he did, they would no doubt turn up in the end credits as “Numerous rewatches of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas” as he forges ahead with an Italian/American Brooklyn accent so heavy handed, he could pass as one of Fat Tony’s henchmen on The Simpsons. Seriously, he’s going full De Niro here, cocking his head at any given opportunity, gesturing wildly with his hands, burrowing his brow as if he’s confused at the world in general and ending every other sentence with a pointed delivery of “ovah here“. “Who’s this one ovah here?”, “Look about you ovah here!”, the guy literally can’t stop saying it and I suspect it may have been a verbal crutch to help him keep that cartoon accent spilling out of that impassive face – but whatever it is, it’s fucking hilarious.

Of course, what with Seagal having delusions of acting grandeur ovah here, the rest of the cast have to try and create a gritty world where the existence of Gino Felino makes logical sense, and while director John Flynn gets down to the business of crafting the exact type of down and dirty action thriller that typified the early 90s, the cast – which just so happen to feature early performances from the likes of Gina Gershon and Julia Margulies – attempt to make their lead look halfway believable. But guess what? It fucking works and while Out For Justice admittedly has it’s fair share of flaws, it’s also a tooth-breaking, wrist-snapping parade of cinematic viciousness as you’re ever likely to see.
Seagal’s on-screen fighting style has always been more up-close and spiteful than Jean Claude Van Damme’s photogenic, slo-mo spin kicks, but even by Big Steve’s standards, the violence is just plain nasty. This is aided greatly by Out For Justice’s secret weapon – an absolutely frenzied bad guy performance by William Forsythe that’s so fucking good, I still have trouble believing it’s an act even though I’d already seen Raising Arizona. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, if you’d told me back in the day that they’d hired an actual drugged-out psychopath and let Seagal kill him for real, part of me wouldn’t have totally disbelieve it – that’s how off the fucking chain the performance is and it works so well that you are positively aching for this guy to get his.
But back to those action scenes, and the set ups, scenarios and inevitable beat downs are all worthy of a chef’s kiss through bloodied lips and broken fingers. An opening scene that freeze frames a proud Gino admiring his handiwork after lawn darting an abusive pimp through a windshield is magnificent and I genuinely believe that the scene that sees our faintly ludicrous hero out-macho a bar of thugs as he rearranges the shapes of their skulls with pool balls and cues is the best of the many on-screen brawls the actor has ever been involved in.

Some may understandably sneer at my reverence for a film that’s had its negative seemingly soaked in raw, uncut testosterone (the tough-guy dialogue alone is fucking in-sane) but in those glory days when an up and coming Seagal didn’t resemble Dr. Roboknik in the Matrix, watching him utterly obliterate every thug who looks at him funny was a glorious thing to behold.
Even with that accent.

🌟🌟🌟🌟