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
Universal monsters screenwriter Curt Siodmak monkeyed around on his typewriter to go ape with 
No sooner has the future Perry Mason married the not-bereaving widow when he begins turning into a gorilla, through a series of cheap and unconvincing transformation sequences. Your average killing rampage ensues. My mind was long checked out by then. —Rod Lott
As expected, Jackie Chan is hardly in 
Once they flee on horseback, Black Fox reveals they’ve been recruited to help her infiltrate an evil warlord’s chemical weapons plant. In a booby-trapped forest, they encounter the usual dangers — nets, spikes, sword-wielding skeletons — and are soon captured, but are allowed to go free when they beat their enemies at their own games — namely archery, blindfolded balloon shooting and noodle-eating.
The story (with apologies to the word “story”) has Gooding brokenhearted after his girlfriend (Vivica A. Fox) dumps him when he barfs on her cleavage and proposes marriage. To cheer him up, his ultra-horny janitor pal Sanz convinces him to accompany him on a cruise to engage in lots of promiscuous sex with loose women. But unbeknownst to them, a vengeful travel agent (Will Ferrell, whose cameo is the film’s only saving grace, outside of Victoria Silvstedt’s purple panties) books them on an all-male, all-gay ship. Let the homophobia ensue!
I’ll admit I harbored strong reservations about Beyond; the fact that it was shot in Spain, set in a prison, scripted by a first-timer and had no principals return except Combs combined to portend an idea whose time had long passed. Plus, director Brian Yuzna’s spotty filmography —