“A Good Man” Japanese Theatrical Poster
Was director Keoni Waxman trying to tell us something through the production titles he helmed with Steven Seagal? A kind of DTV version of “blink twice if you need help”? When they first worked together in 2009 it seemed Waxman thought Seagal was A Dangerous Man, however 5 years in he’d changed his mind, indicating in 2014 that Seagal was in fact A Good Man, only for things to turn sour just a couple of year later, signalling in 2016 that he’d reached the End of a Gun. I guess we can only speculate, but in any case, after making Force of Execution together in 2013, the following year they’d reunite for a prequel in the form of the aforementioned A Good Man. That means the deep south accent is back, as is the special ops background, and we even get repeats of lines spoken in Force of Execution, with Seagal reminding us that he’s a “regular man who does bad things to bad people.”
How do we know it’s a prequel? I’m not really sure, other than Seagal is back in his old 2000’s DTV era stomping ground of Romania (remember when every DTV action flick seemed to be shot in Eastern Europe?), and he’s decked out in his mid-2000’s Urban Justice/Into the Sun period black leather jacket. Much like in Force of Execution, we also get an opening scene narration from Seagal, and as a bonus this time it’s even intelligible, calmly espousing how “there is no darkness without light, and yet, there is light without darkness. I have both within me.” Who would have thought I preferred it when it was impossible to make out his mumblings?
As is standard for much of Seagal’s 2005 – 2015 run, A Good Man opens with a flashback scene that sees him sauntering around during his special op’s days. He’s after an Asian arms dealer via a group of Islamic terrorists, but thing go awry and the arms dealer escapes, leaving a little girl dead when the compound is bombed by an unmanned aerial vehicle (which gives us the rare sight of Seagal in one of those ‘blown into the air by the force of the blast’ scenes, or at least his double). Skip forward 2 years and Seagal is settled in Romania where gangland figures are showing up dead – each one found with a bunch of joss sticks next to them, and the Chinese character for Gwailo written nearby. Hmmm, wonder who could be behind them? When Seagal isn’t doing his white ghost shenanigans, he’s passing himself off as a handyman, and you better believe that his attractive Romanian next-door neighbour has locked herself out of her apartment.
Played by Iulia Verdes (Queen Maria of Romania), she lives with her younger sister and works in a strip joint (obligatory topless pole dance scene – check!) owned by the Russian mafia, the result of her father being heavily indebted to them. Is this one of the last times for a Seagal flick to feature Russians as the bad guys? Probably, considering just 2 years later he’d be given Russian citizenship. The casting for Force of Execution and A Good Man ploughed the talent pool of daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives, as while the former offered up a scene stealing turn for Bren Foster, here its Victor Webster (The Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power) who gets his time to shine. Playing the brother of Verdes, who’s reluctantly taken on the role of mafia enforcer for the same reasons, Webster’s blackbelts in taekwondo and jujitsu are put to good use, clearly showing a knack for screen fighting that he gets several opportunities to show off.
Of course the Russian mafia in question don’t take too kindly to Seagal screwing a fresh knob into Verdes’ front door, or showing up at the bar she works at to ask her why she’s working in a place run by “bad people” (and we know what he does to bad people!). All of this leads to her young sister being kidnapped, which makes Seagal very unhappy, essentially turning A Good Man into The Seagal from Nowhere. I mean, who doesn’t want to see Seagal riff on Won Bin? Unfortunately there’s no bare-chested self-haircut scene in front of the mirror, but we can’t have everything.
On paper it sounds more convoluted than it is, but essentially the Russian mafia end up having ties to the arms dealer Seagal was looking to apprehend in the opening scene, played by Tzi Ma (Believer 2), who occasionally wears an expression of wonderment at how he ended up in a movie such as this. The Russian mafia owe Ma a sizable amount of money, so their plan behind kidnapping the sister is to give her to Ma, who can then sell her to a buyer with a taste for underage girls. Nasty stuff, but of course Seagal isn’t going to have any of that nonsense, and once he convinces Webster that he’s on his side (or at least, hopes that by rescuing the younger sister he’ll be in with a chance of some action with the older one), the pair team up to rescue her.
I confess I like the combination of mixing Seagal’s minimalist brutality (eg. stand almost motionless while aggressively smashing people’s heads through the nearest wall) with a performer who’s far more athletic and flashier in their action style. At this point in his career Seagal seemed to have emerged from his 2000’s era of ranting about how he was the reincarnation of a Buddhist lama, and so no longer believed in partaking in any violence (yes, believe it or not this was the excuse attributed to much of the doubling Seagal used in the 2000’s during his fight scenes). Towards the end of the 00’s his willingness to throw people into/through inanimate objects returned, and regardless of your opinion towards Seagal, the fact remains nobody has been able to make aikido look as brutal and effective onscreen as he has.
In A Good Man its Ron Balicki on fight choreography duty, who first worked on a Seagal production with 1996’s The Glimmer Man as a stuntman, and would reunite with him in the 2010’s, working on such classics like Absolution, Contract to Kill, and General Commander. As per most of Seagal’s DTV input, the similarity of his fight scenes gives away the fact that he likely had a heavy input (pun intended) into how they play out, leaving Balicki’s work with Webster as the real indicator of what he can do. To that end Webster proves to be an unexpected highlight, showing off some flashy kicks, and we even get a gratuitous flying knee thrown into the mix (think Tony Jaa’s action entrance in Tom Yum Goong). Balicki understandably gives himself a fight scene with Seagal, facing off against his “devils butcher knife” (actually just a short sword), which of course plays out exactly as you’d expect.
I can’t be certain, but I think A Good Man is one of the first productions to reveal Seagal as a master of any language that gets thrown at him, as when he does eventually face off against Ma (after revealing he “killed all of his men triad style”), they start busting out random Cantonese at each other. Perhaps a throwback to his Buddhist lama days, it makes a marked difference to the opening scenes, where he muses about the terrorist he’s about to take out, pondering out loud “I wonder how much pussy he get? You think he get more than like, uh, Osama Bin Laden got?” In fact Seagal’s language is pretty uncouth throughout, occasionally striking gold by being genuinely funny, but it’d be a spoiler to give any of them away here.
The most absurd aspect of A Good Man though must surely be the closing scene, which consists of Seagal about to get it on with Iulia Verdes, shot in that classic post-2010 Seagal sex scene way of having him sit there and be straddled, while sporting an expression that’s practically impossible to tell what he’s thinking. Does that make it the only entry in his vast oeuvre to finish with a sex scene!? I’m not sure I want to put in the effort to find out. Those going into a slice of mid-2010’s DTV Seagal are probably already aware of what they’re letting themselves in for, and based on their own distinctly unique criteria, A Good Man offers up 100 minutes of passable entertainment.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10
