Mercenary for Justice

• Directed and Shot by Don E. FauntLeRoy
• April 18, 2006

A mercenary gets involved in a mission where he must break into the most secure prison in Eastern Europe to free the son of the most notorious drug lord in the world. Not sure how that connects to the opener.

Seagal films are more about action scenes than making sense or clearly communicating the story to the audience. Mercenary for Justice opens in some war-torn country/place whose name is only communicated in extraneous material where a commando mission is taking place. I have no idea beyond that.

John Seeger (Seagal) appears to be a mercenary but also has authority over a unit that may or may not be mercenaries themselves. Realism is not necessary since action films are a bit of wish fulfillment but an idea of the whats and wheres is important so the audience can start caring about the story.

Questionable physical fitness standards aside, I am no arms expert, but I have seen enough real guns fired to know that the way Seagal holds them is not realistic. Recoil alone on some of these things would cause the weapon to fly around it unless you’re bracing it. Such breaks done occasionally for dramatic purposes work but consistently become silly.

Steven Seagal was too heavy to be an action hero. If he remained in a suit for Justice, I think I would have bought him a little bit better than I can when he’s trying to be in military garb. With a tie he does look kind of like an evil villain’s henchman or just a general sort of tough guy. In gear he looks like several fat adults I knew growing up that thought they were on par with Rambo. 

Action is poorly staged. People stand up and wait to die in this movie. All you need is to remove a second or two to make it look like they just stood up and editor Robert A. Ferretti could not or would not do that. There are explosions going off and bullets flying and you just stand out in the open to make yourself a target? Yeah…

Director Don E. FauntLeRoy does his best to make it look like he has multiple vehicles like tanks in scenes when they are being used but it’s clear he had access to two at the most. Ever watch Battle for the Planet of the Apes? It’s obvious in that film much like here that the resources were very limited and FauntLeRoy was trying to stretch it as far as he could. It is almost insulting to believe the viewer will not notice it.

Of course, there is a tragic death in the opening battle scene, but I honestly have trouble connecting it with the scene where Seeger goes to talk to the widow. Mostly because I just think the character and their death is an afterthought. Justice feels like it was filmed on the fly as costs or difficulty in accessing locations or whatever caused changes. The secure prison used for the action climax looks like it is from the 19^th century and lacks the appearance of guards or a staff in the images from the briefing. No stock footage available of another place? Worse it looks so poorly maintained that a Volkswagen Bug could damage the walls!

We never get the corpse’s name and as a character he did nothing to begin a connection that could be built upon from what other characters said and explain the bank heist or prison scene. Mentions of him stop after the scene in Florida until we get his image overlayed on a flag in a breeze.

If you take your eyes off this for a moment, you’ll have absolutely no idea why Justice becomes a bit of a heist film or why Seeger is motivated to do anything like break sonny boy out of prison. It’s a series of scenes that are poorly connected but are definitely connected possibly based on the lingering ghost of what the script once was.

I watched this twice so far: once for my own enjoyment and now for this blog and I still have no more idea what happened in this movie now more than I did the first time. The one guy’s family plays a part, but is this about avenging him or stopping the drug dealer/arms dealer or whatever the guy deals? Is it about both? Is it about Seeger screwing over a guy who is just a jerk and does bad things? I don’t think anybody knew!

During the 80s, it wasn’t uncommon to see your lower-brow action movies to toss around American agency authority like nations had to bow to an order or agency just because it came from the US. It added a bit of cheese, turning many movies into guilty pleasures. Writer Steve Collins (Seagal?) thought that concept still worked as a narrative device. It happens a few times here.

It’s a Sunday drive and not a kinetic thrill ride. Things just move along without picking up pace or danger or excitement. Mix that with a poorly told story and you’ll just get bored. Now that I think about it, because this is boring maybe that is why I don’t know what’s going on here. I tuned out!

Mercenary for Justice is a silly movie title for a bad movie. It’s a poorly told story with uninteresting action. It’s so bad it borders on a cure for insomnia, so unless you have that don’t watch.