On Deadly Ground is the stupidest movie ever

Written by Al Barger
Published January 16, 2004

Steven Seagal's On Deadly Ground may be the stupidest goddam movie ever made, and by that I do not mean stupid fresh. After having been subject to a few minutes of this movie, I was mesmerized by the continuing torrent of offenses against reason and geometry. By the end, I was in full sputtering Ignatius J Reilly mode, throwing Milk Dud boxes and popcorn at the offending television images.

How insulting to common sense is it? Let's start with this "Plot Outline" from IMDB: "Mystical martial artist/environmental agent takes on a ruthless oil corporation."

Oh My God.

So apparently, the big problem is that this Evil Oil Company (run by greedy Rich White Men, specifically Michael Caine) have drilled a well in Alaska so they can import as much of as many kinds of poisons as they can get from the whole world over so they can pump ALL them down this oil well to kill all the cute little Eskimos and baby seals. Mwa-ha-ha! Naturally, they make a point to senselessly murder the wise old visionary elder Eskimo for no discernable reason.

Now, this doesn't sound like it could be right, and my people ARE admittedly from Kentucky, so I may have missed some nuance in that story line. But I'm not making it up. I swear to Rand that appeared to be the plot they were going with.

Among the atrocious and asinine pre-fab plot lines, he's Dances With Wolves- the ONE good white man who is down with the plight of the poor, innocent perfect indigenous victims. Seagal even gets to have a dream journey and hear about the fate that has been written for him.

But no- the movie's only getting ready to START getting ignorant. Naturally, the only way to stop Whitey's evil scheme is to murder dozens of people, and utterly destroy a big honkin' oil refinery or some such. I'd call Seagal's character an "ecoterrorist" but I'm afraid that would make this sound more interesting than it is.

I don't know quite how to express how specifically STUPID this ranks as an environmental consideration. I see- the only to protect the environment is to burn down and blow up a HUGE oil refinery. Riiiight. That'll help out the baby seals and such. Crikey, this looked like it was purposely bringing on about a dozen simultaneous Exxon Valdez incidents.

He's like the oh-so-reluctant Billy Jack- only Billy Jack was several rungs up the scale from this, intellectually. Anyway, Seagal plays out the Billy Jack schtick of being forced by Evil White Men into combat to defend the vulnerable women and children.

In short, this Steven Seagal action movie appears to be the retarded butt baby of Dances with Wolves and Billy Jack.

Then he caps this nonsense off with a big formal lecture on how Whitey is destroying the Earth by the conspiracy to repress post-oil energy technology, and by not talking a lot of fake spiritual Eskimo/Indian new age pinko nonsense like he should, and how we've got to have this compulsory New World Order to save the environment from the Evil White Men. It's like, on top of being Kevin Costner and Billy Jack, he wants to be Noam Chomsky as well.

Holy flippin' retard, Batman- this Seagal guy seems to think he's actually making some kind of intellectual/spiritual STATEMENT.

Come quickly: he must be put to the lash immediately before my valve closes down in protest!

Unreformed hawkish Hoosier hillbilly and sometimes candidate Al Barger runs the still squeezin' down the psychodelic Kentucky moonshine at MoreThings.com, what with the paranoid religious visions and the Pentacostal music and visions of God and anarchy running amok and such. Somebody oughta call the cops to report his out of control freedom of conscience. Till they come to take him away somewhere where he can't hurt anyone else, you can check out his weekly column of NEW ALBUM RELEASES.
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On Deadly Ground is the stupidest movie ever
Published: January 16, 2004
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Section: Video
Filed Under: Video: Action, Video: Drama
Writer: Al Barger
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