Steven Seagal (“Under Siege”, “Under Siege 2: Dark Territory”) stars in this underwhelming revenge film. It may have a few decent action scenes but apart from this film really doesn’t deliver any of the goods found in superior police films (“Dirty Harry”, “Beverly Hills Cop”, “Kindergarten Cop” etc…).

In “Hard To Kill”, police officer Mason Storm (Seagal) is just about to break a big case when he’s gunned down along with his wife by a group of masked bad guys. Seven years later he wakes up from his coma and aims to exact revenge on the villains and prove his innocence.

Steven Seagal isn’t an over the top action star such as Arnold Schwarzenegger (“The Terminator”) or Sylvester Stallone (“Rocky”) and suffers from just being bland. Seagal uses a much more realistic style of martial arts than people such as Jet Li (“The Forbidden Kingdom”) and Jackie Chan (“Who Am I?”) and that doesn’t translate well to film. Like any police film there is a hold-up scene but here our police officer allows the cashier to get shot, which just shows what a weak action hero Seagal is. The villains are unmemorable like a lot of police films and the other characters are very poor.

The film is very funny that’s because the acting is incredibly wooden and the script is very weak. Seagal is a lacklustre action star whose films usually only make for a decent chuckle. With so many better police films both before and after this I can’t really praise this one. Some of the action scenes are entertaining but they can hardly compete with those found in superior action flicks. If you’re thinking of getting into Seagal, try “Under Siege” first as that is probably his best one (even that isn’t particularly entertaining). All-round it’s an unsatisfying film.