This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (May 2015)

edit

I won't take the time to look up to find out how to get the credentials for making the remark with the colorful logo that warns the reader that the editor is not pleased. I will say that this plot description, as of 18:28 Greenwich Mean Time, 7 June 2015, does justice to Mr. Seagal's cinematic philosophy for a reader who has not seen this movie (such as me), for example, "Simon starts killing more gangsters...", "After killing all of Tucker's men and all of Shaw's men, Simon...". I watched him on some tv talk show a few years ago where he'd brought along an assistant about half his size whom he proceeded to throw all over the stage in (staged?) martial arts throws that had the host, even, mocking him. Apparently some people go for that sort of thing: the hero who never bends.

As soon as the editor assumes responsibility for enforcing the party line, I mean, community standards, detached from devotion to clear exposition, plentiful detail, and societal relevance, to restate Mortimer Adler's definition of an argument, she has ceased being an editor and become a writer: so let her edit her own stuff. If this credentialed critic's beef is that the plot description is too violent, the description itself shows whom to blame for that.

But let us preserve the learning/teachable moment. Concise plot synthesis: Seagal kills [x number of, presumably quite a few dozens] persons extrajudicially, miraculously identifies the gun that was used to kill his son, and is ironically dubbed king of the gangsters by the (prior) king of the gangsters, thus proving that violence is good if your skin is extremely light-colored, your lips are pretty thin, and your nose is not too wide--but where does that leave Shaw, the corrupt policeman? What was his sin? He killed Seagal's son. Ah, tribal vengeance.

I think the description as it stands now does Seagal more justice. Not having seen this particular movie. But having watched him throw the little sidekick all over the tv talk show set (and seen a bunch of his movies). If an oriental-looking person had done the identical thing on the talk show set--making bodies fly as if by magic--nobody who's anybody would have mocked. And certainly nobody questions the right of white people who can participate in major motion pictures to kill on an industrial scale in the name of tribal vengeance. Seagal dignifies the practice by inhabiting the role personally, as if Clint Eastwood had played the sniper in the sniper movie. Does that suggestion make your skin crawl a bit? Aside from the age issue, which we can fix with computer-generated imagery (CGI)? "This is what a mass-murderer who went to Dartmouth with your daughter looks like," as it were. Chrisrushlau (talk) 18:23, 7 June 2015 (UTC)Chrisrushlau (talk) 18:25, 7 June 2015 (UTC)Chrisrushlau (talk) 18:38, 7 June 2015 (UTC)Reply