Steven Seagal (“Under Siege”, “Urban Justice”) stars in “Mercenary For Justice”, an action film that packs a decent punch but suffers from a variety of other issues. It’s actually quite enjoyable to begin with but as it goes on, more and more problems appear.

“Mercenary For Justice” has a needlessly complicated plot involving covert warfare on an African island controlled by the French, retrieving the body of a fallen comrade, a bank heist and a prison break that both take place in South Africa as well as mother and son taken hostage in America. There’s just way too much going on for us to understand any of it or care.

Seagal takes out many bad guys without ever breaking into a sweat. He shoots, punches and blows up various enemies. One rather amusing scene has him force an enemy into submission without even having to get out of his chair. There are way too many characters in this film and everybody keeps double crossing everybody else and it just becomes a real mess. I just lost interest because I had no idea what was going on because you are just overloaded with way too much information. The film is at its best when all the characters just shut up and starting shooting at each other.

“Mercenary For Justice” opens like a war movie with a massive shootout. It’s a great scene with some explosive action and the prison break sequence later on is quite good too. However, most of the movie is just your average action flick stuff. As I keep emphasising, the plot is just all over the place with a massive surplus of threads. Big fans of Seagal might want to check this one out but most people are going to find it a forgettable picture with a convoluted story that they won’t care to decipher.