Steven Seagal (“Under Siege”, “On Deadly Ground”) stars in the rather average “Mercenary: Absolution” (or just “Absolution” as it is also known), which is so formulaic that you’ll feel as though you’ve seen everything in the film about a dozen times.

In “Mercenary: Absolution”, Seagal plays a contract killer by the name of John, who is doing a routine hit in Ukraine with his partner (Byron Mann). He crosses paths with a young girl fleeing a group of thugs and decides to protect her. John then decides to set himself the task of killing the ‘Boss’ (Vinnie Jones “Snatch”), who beat her and killed her sister, in order to absolve himself of his years of killing for cash.

Seagal may want to absolve himself of the years of mediocre action pictures but here, he merely adds to his list of sins. Seagal’s performance is somewhat amusing in that he looks incredibly bored in nearly every single scene as if he even acknowledges that this film isn’t all that great. Thankfully he seems to have dropped the sappy environmental themes that plagued some of his earlier pictures such as “Fire Down Below”. Vinnie Jones is also amusing in a role that requires him to be a crime boss that is sick enough to torture girls but dumb enough to record himself doing it (his videos sort of reminded me of “Videodrome”).

“Mercenary: Absolution” is a moderately entertaining action film with some okay action sequences. There isn’t anything bad about the movie, it’s just none of it is better than average. I think the movie’s low budget is symbolic of its ambitions, it aims to deliver shootouts and explosions but nothing fancy enough for you to remember any of it. Fans of Seagal will probably enjoy this movie and those that don’t care for his work almost certainly will not be impressed.