From the same creative team that brought you Romeo Must Die and Cradle 2 the Grave comes Exit Wounds, an enjoyable piece of trash that has to be Steven Seagal’s best movie since Under Siege except for that one on the plane where he died in the first 20 minutes.
Now markedly puffy and with out-of-control sideburns, Seagal is a Detroit police officer reassigned to a lesser precinct after saving the life of the U.S. vice president, but embarrassing him in the process. The cops there don’t like him sticking his ever-curious and pudgy nose into their business, especially when he learns they’re dirty and deep into a heroin ring with Internet gazillionaire DMX. Thus begins a barrage of super-slick car chases and gunfights, with lots of requisite slow-motion martial arts and surprising gory violence.
Director Andrzej Bartkowiak certainly has an unapologetically commercial style that’s high on gloss and short on everything else, but there’s something about it I like. Although it’s far from brilliant, it’s also far from incompetent. I’m just not sure why every movie he does has to star DMX and Anthony Anderson (a little of whose ad-libbed shtick goes a long way). Also starring in this outing are Tom Arnold (some of whose scenes with Seagal seem filmed without Seagal even there), Isaiah Washington and, all too briefly, Eva Mendes. —Rod Lott