I Could Poop Out A Better Story After Eating Alphabet Soup

• The Perfect Weapon
• Directed by Titus Paar
• September 9, 2016 (US)

A hitman working for an authoritarian government reconsiders his allegiances when reunited with a woman he thought dead.

Watching any Steven Seagal movie takes you to a dark place of bad filmmaking that can hollow you out emotionally and spiritually. I have so many thoughts on The Perfect Weapon and none of them are positive. It’s so bad that when I discuss it here I’m concerned about nitpicking. We can all fall into that trap with a film or just anything really. A human response to find EVERYTHING wrong and then some. So with that in mind I will attempt to be judicious with my thoughts and not be propelled by general dislike. 

Watching a newer Seagal movie may demonstrate something wrong with me. It’s been a sickness I’ve been afflicted with ever since watching humorous discussions of the actor (and I clearly you use that term loosely) and his films by the great YouTube channel Space Ice. I couldn’t believe anyone was that bad and still able to make movies. At least someone that had a good run at one point, yet his mockery wasn’t that far from the reality. Anywho…

Calling this an actual Steven Seagal movie would be a bit of a lie. That would be like calling Ant-Man an Anthony Mackie movie because of his cameo. Seagal is listed as a star but he is in all of maybe five minutes with that assessment being generous and his character far from important to the story. Take out his two scenes and things would have proceeded just as they did without his character. His production company produced this festering bucket of bile and maybe he wanted a cut of the action. Who knows…

In his two scenes he is largely sitting or standing (sometimes both at once) in some of the worst split screen you will ever see in this day and age. The one time he walks he noticeably waddles. It’s maybe two or three seconds of him moving but you can’t miss it. When you reach that point in your weight it’s time to go on a diet. You reached a significantly unhealthy point that it’s affecting your movements. I’m not trying to be funny here. He cannot be well.

Despite Seagal’s prominence the real star of the movie is Johnny Messner as a government assassin named Condor. His character is supposed to be cold but Messner is just wooden and robotic. Plank from Ed, Edd, and Eddie was vastly more dynamic than this guy. And that was an inanimate piece of wood in a cartoon! Messner has no charisma or basic talent but clearly has money/connections to produce (though not here) and generally get into movies.

Sasha Jackson plays Condor’s not-so-late love Nina whom he thought was dead but apparently that was a body double or some garbage like that. Maintaining your attention on this is an issue. Jackson as an actress is slightly more capable than Messner but is there more because she is eye candy than anything. The pair have no connection emotionally and that is an important element of the story.

I tuned out pretty easily as this became a convoluted conspiracy theory movie done with absolutely no budget. There are 30-year-old television films with better looking production values and better plots than this has. A lot of what we get appears to be bad CGI or done in front of a greenscreen. The Perfect Weapon is the very definition of no effort. If you ever thought Steven Seagal and his production company were a money laundering effort here’s your proof.

Condor is involved in a plot to overthrow the government by killing The Director (Steven Seagal). I’m not sure how the guy behind it is insinuated in this administration to the point he could simply step in to the role. There’s no explanation on how his position puts him second in line. But then again with a Steven Seagal movie I’m not expecting such minimal depth.

Whatever your fictional world is you either need to understand how things work in the real world or come up with a system on how things function in your fictional world. That just doesn’t happen here. I see no hint at how this government runs other than monitoring people. And it has a leader for life. Edgy…

There are blunt indications of media manipulation and mind control. Early on a character speaks of the surveillance state and how nobody born today will ever truly have a moment of privacy because everything they have can watch them but then that’s all just kind of forgotten and never brought up again. Rather than delve into any of that or use them to make an interesting story this movie stumbles blandly around like a harmless drunk. This all occurs in a world with graphics that make it look like a discount Blade Runner. I wish that was some kind of mockery, but it’s not. Shortly after our hero shoots his pyramid phone and plexiglass TV they pretty much ignore that.

There are attempts at the Paul Verhoeven style gag of a subversive commercial break in between scenes much like what you would find in RoboCop or Starship Troopers. An attempt at it but when everything else surrounding it is so weak it just doesn’t help. It is aping what is done but really does nothing.

The only bright spot in all this is the music. It’s the same couple of bars played over and over again but it’s not bad and rather catchy. Kudos on that but the opening and closing song called “The Perfect Weapon” really doesn’t mesh with the used over and over background music. And in an amazing coinky dink that song is performed by director Titus Paar’s band Army of Primitives. Yeah?

The Perfect Weapon is far from perfect. If you want to waste around 90 minutes of your life and regret it this is certainly a way to do it. Avoid at all costs!