Contract to Kill

• Directed by Keoni Waxman
• December 9, 2016

When terrorists and a Mexican drug cartel seek an alliance only one man can stop them. Unfortunately he was busy so they got Steven Seagal instead.

Contract to Kill is a movie. That much is certain, but it is a bad movie made with all the focus and care that a group of inexperienced stoned high schoolers would have. Steven Seagal plays John Harmon who is the best of the best (naturally) and the baddest of the badasses (of course) who is a wetworks man working for the U.S. government and straddles both the CIA and DEA (not sure about their overlapping interests) and possibly the FDA and ASPCA too. We even get told how tough and scary he is by some guy who realized while performing in that scene his dreams of legitimate stardom would never happen. You can see him feeling his dreams die while on camera.

In that scene the phone that purportedly belongs to the character of John rings. I say that because I am convinced it was not intentional and rather than do another take, they just left it in. And that goes to how lazy this movie is. It just never tries at much of anything. I know a $5 million budget is not much but considering they filmed in cheap Romania their dollar should have gone pretty far.

That Harmon straddles the DEA and CIA (and maybe the ADL and WWE) makes me curious if anybody making Contract to Kill has a good idea of how government agencies work. They just link together two agencies that MIGHT be interested in events of the film through ONE character rather than add an ancillary character to logically bring in Seagal. Not sure what consistently overlapping interests would allow for an individual like Harmon to exist but here we are. And the whole purpose is to show how dangerous and feared he is but it makes you curious why this guy that everybody is too afraid to stand against is not used more often.

More importantly how can you be afraid of an overweight man pushing 70 (he was 66 or so at the time of this film) with fake hair and a fake tan that clearly has trouble moving and doing a quarter of what he did in his heyday? He screams “Comfortably retired” or “Late life crisis” and not “Tough.”

There’s an interrogation scene where Harmon asks no questions but engages in some serious exposition. He already knows everything clearly so why do we even have that scene? You could’ve had the guy sitting in there and had all of what occurred summarized more succinctly than what we got here simply by him talking to the characters that actually contributed to the story. Can you say “padding”?

Being irresistible to women, Harmon engages in some gross heavy flirtation with Agent Zara “not Selma” Hayek (Jemma Dallender) who is about half his age yet dropped some serious coin to give him a Rolex after a booty call. That is legit what happened between the characters prior to the story. Does Seagal really believe he has aged well? And it’s gross that a man pushing 70 is hitting on women a third of his age give or take. And it’s not even a casual romantic flirtation. It is more two dogs in heat sniffing each other out.

That is really an excuse to set up a love scene where Seagal keeps his clothes on and looks genuinely excited to be touching young boobies. (I did try to get a good picture of it but failed). I am betting he waited the whole shoot just for that moment. He looked like a kid on Christmas getting just what he wanted.

That doesn’t take into account that just shortly before this he told his drone guy (does his name even matter?) he was going to meet him in two hours. That was either a commentary on how fast he is in the sack or nobody knew where to put Seagal touching boobies.

Seagal is just weird. I’m not sure if it’s the dialogue he’s given or his delivery but it’s just weird the way he acts in this movie. Everybody else is trying to put on a legit performance given the crappy material but Seagal is, well, I’m not sure what he’s doing. He mumbles his lines slightly worse than Vin Diesel but lacks that man’s effort to make it sound legit. It is as if he has his paycheck and is fulfilling contractual obligations or was there just for the boobies.

I’m curious if Seagal even rehearsed the script before he showed up on set. There are points where it looks like he’s either winging it or just struggling to remember what he has to say for the particular scene.

The movie is slow and lumbering. It really stretches things out. And it never feels dangerous despite it involving an alliance between terrorists and a drug cartel. The team that Harmon puts together really doesn’t do much of anything-at least beyond giving Seagal young boobies to touch. He just couldn’t do a whole movie about himself, which based on everything looks like he wanted to be the only character. There is just not enough here to stretch this story out for one character. It has trouble doing it for three.

Contract to Kill is nothing more than an excuse for Seagal to get some money and see/touch young and bare boobies. In execution it is a slow-motion auto accident. You want to see every detail, but on the same hand you feel terrible for doing just that. This is good for hate watching or as a tutorial on how to make a bad movie but nothing else.