Marked for Death (1990)
Above the Law served as an appropriate introduction to all
things Seagal, suggesting that an outpouring of high quality, ethnically
diverse, violence-oriented art was headed our way. Hard to Kill made us
question whether it could really be as good as it seemed. Marked for Death is a
movie just good enough to hold us over, and inspire us to give Seagal another
chance. And with this second chance, he delivered the goods: after this comes
Out for Justice (his masterpiece) and Under Siege (his explosion into the
mainstream).
But let’s just talk about Marked for Death for now. The
movie starts off with a bang, as Seagal chases Danny Trejo (who’s playing, for
a change, a seedy Mexican) through the streets of an un-named Mexican city. Or
maybe it’s a Colombian city. The point is is that it’s not America, yet
Seagal’s street-smarts remain intact. Worldliness is a major part of the Seagal
persona. After catching Trejo and putting him in the trunk of his car, he
proceeds to an undercover drug buy. As you might expect, a shoot-out/punch-out
ensues.
The opening announces a much-welcome departure from the
cartoony, choreographed action of Hard to Kill, and it introduces a new (and
equally welcome) element to the mix: gratuitous nudity. Previous entries into
the Seagal filmography have had a very timid, immature relationship with sex.
Thankfully, Marked for Death has the maturity to occasionally fill the screen
with topless, busty woman with no lines or plot relevance. The opening sequence
even features a naked woman shooting a guy, something which would literally
improve any movie ever made.
In the tradition of James Bond movies, the opening sequence
turns out to have nothing to do with the rest of the movie. It just sets the
tone and satiates any short attention spans that might be out there. It’s
actually never entirely clear which law enforcement agency Seagal works for. He
runs into an “old friend” who’s with the FBI, although the work he does seems
to suggest DEA. Regardless, when he gets back from his mission, he retires. He
tells his priest in confession about all the bad things he’s done, and his
priest advises him to “go home” and “find the nice side of yourself.”
He heads back to his hometown to relax with his family, but
within days, Seagal, as he is wont to do, runs afoul of the local drug gang and
finds himself marked... for death. To get revenge (for something, I don’t
really remember what) the drug gang also attacks his family. Then Seagal says
something that he has said some variation on in all his movies so far: “you
fuck with my family, you die.”
Seagal teams up with an old friend of his (played by Keith
David). His friend’s history is unexplained, but he also has a beef with the
local drug posse. He’s a high-school football coach, and the drug dealers keep
selling drugs to his athletes. In one scene, we see a high-school kid smoking
pot for the first time and saying “wow, this is awesome!” The drug dealer then
says “you tink dat good, try dis! Dis be crack, mon.” It’s probably the most
dramatic portrayal of marijuana’s gateway potential ever filmed. Was The
Partnership for a Drug-Free America the special guest director for that scene?
Also, in case you couldn’t tell from my attempt at capturing the characters’
accent in that quote, the drug dealers in this movie are all Jamaican (and
practicers of voodoo).
In his first two movies, Steven Seagal battled corrupt
politicians, so it’s a refreshing change of pace to see him going head-to-head
with a gang of Jamaican druglords with magical voodoo powers. Now, you may be
thinking: “isn’t voodoo a Haitian religion, not Jamaican?” Yes, it is.
Technically. The villains, in addition to being voodoo doctors, are also
rastafarian (they call each other “rasta” and several of them even have the
rastafarian flag emblazoned on their shirts). I’m guessing cultural accuracy
was a second priority after having bad guys who broadly encompass all
stereotypes American audiences might have about people from the Caribbean. But,
then again, Haiti and Jamaica are pretty close to each other. Jackie Chan knows
both Kung Fu (which is Chinese) and Karate (which is Japanese), so surely it’s
possible that some people are both rastafarian and have magical voodoo powers.
Anyway, lest you think the movie is insensitive, it really
bends over backwards to prove that it isn’t. At one point, someone, looking
over the havoc the Jamaican druglords have inflicted, says “fuckin’ Jamaicans,
man!” to which another character replies “hey, 99% of Jamaican immigrants are
hard-working decent Americans! Don’t judge an entire culture by a few
assholes.” Wise words. Steven Seagal even has a kind Jamaican friend who helps
him out. When Seagal and his pals actually go to Jamaica, that Jamaican friend
teaches them all about what a diverse society and culture they have.
I’m not sure why they feel the need to go to such measures,
though. The villains in this movie are totally awesome. I don’t know how
Jamaicans feel about it, but personally, I’d be perfectly happy to be
stereotyped as a tall, muscular guy with sweet dreadlocks, magic powers and a
giant sword I used to cut off the heads of disrespectin’ bloodclots.
The leader of the Jamaican gang is a man with the
intimidating name of Screwface. Screwface is played by an actor with a
decidedly less intimidating name — Basil Wallace. Wallace (who’s mostly a TV
journeyman) turns in an enjoyably over-the-top performance with a Jamaican
accent that ranges from incomprehensibly dense to conspicuously absent. He has
piercing blue eyes and a crazy look that makes it seem like he could crack at
any moment. In his big introduction, he’s wearing skin-tight denim cut-offs and
a leather jacket. He seems like another disappointing villain at first, but
then he starts talking crazy voodoo shit, and while he’s addressing his
Colombian druglord rival, he disappears and re-appears across the room. It was
actually a fairly chilling moment in an otherwise ridiculous movie.
Speaking of tight jeans, Steven Seagal, as he did in Hard to
Kill, demonstrates great enthusiasm for the tight jeans/puffy jacket
combination. In fact, it’s pretty much all he wears. Most people couldn’t pull
off that look, but most people don’t have puffy jackets as cool as Steven
Seagal’s. The best one he has features shimmery Chinese symbols on the front
and a ferocious tiger on the back.
But back to Screwface. Screwface supposedly has powerful magic,
but mostly, his only power is the ability to never kill people in time. Instead
of just stabbing them in the face, he ties them to a big table, lights some
candles and does a bunch of voodoo stuff. Every single time, they manage to
escape alive before he’s finished his elaborate, theatrical rituals.
Screwface’s other power is the ability to tell when other
people are doing voodoo against him. At one point, a sexy woman tries to
out-voodoo him, performing a ritual intended to kill him. Her ritual consists
of the following: getting naked; sitting in a bath tub; sensuously pouring
bath-water over herself; drinking some Bacardi; spitting Bacardi onto a
chicken; blowing smoke out of a cigar onto a picture of Screwface; killing the
Bacardi-soaked chicken and dripping its blood over Screwface’s picture.
Screwface is able to sense her magic, and he ends up killing
her. I was sad about that, as she was very attractive, and I was hoping she
would perform more naked voodoo magic rituals. The one thing Screwface seemed
to be able to do that was genuinely awesome was disappear and re-appear,
although in the end of the movie it’s revealed that he just has an identical
twin brother. He also has the ability to sense when Steven Seagal is
approaching, but I think that Seagal’s aura is so strong, we all have that
ability, if we look deep enough within ourselves.
All in all, the full potential of the film’s voodoo aspect
is left tragically unrealized. If I ever make my own action movie, I’m also
going to have a magic voodoo rasta as the villain, but he’ll have way better
magic powers. He’ll be able to fly and shoot lightning out of his hands and see
into your soul. The hero will only be able to defeat him by learning a
different, more powerful mystic religion... like Kabbalah.
The rest of the movie is better at delivering what it
promises. This movie contains Seagal’s first car chase, and it’s a good one.
Maybe not one for the ages, but it does feature dueling vehicles driving
towards each other on the sidewalk before they crash into a Tiffany’s-like
jewelry store and wreak havoc on the yuppies inside.
Once in the store, Steven Seagal demonstrates
uncharacteristic contempt for collateral damage. He’s similarly indifferent to
potential property damage charges — he systematically smashes one guy’s head
through every glass jewelry case in the store. He also breaks two guys’ arms by
bending them backwards until there’s a loud “snap” and their bones poke through
their skin. Something I’ve started to notice is that Steven Seagal does this a
lot. Between this movie and Hard to Kill, I think he’s broken about a dozen
legs and arms.
Near the end, as I mentioned, Seagal and his two friends
(the high school coach and his Jamaican informant) travel to Jamaica to track
down Screwface, who has retreated back to his homeland. Seagal once again
demonstrates his worldliness and sex appeal by seducing a sexy Jamaican woman
in a nightclub — a woman who knows where Screwface is. Realistically, she sees
Steven Seagal across the dance floor and is instantly overwhelmed with sexual
desire. Jamaica, I guess, is a land devoid of attractive men, so the site of a
tall white guy with a ponytail and puffy leather jacket (combined, obviously,
with some tight jeans) is just too much for her to handle. Sensing his watching
eyes, she does a sexy dance for him, and saunters over to chat.
Steven Seagal typically speaks in a variety of foreign
languages, demonstrating his worldliness (we’ve so far heard him speak
Japanese, Chinese and Spanish). Disappointingly, he does not demonstrate his
mastery of Jamaican culture by speaking to any locals in patois. Although, he
does so in this song, which he contributes to the soundtrack (Seagal sings the
opening):
The sexy woman mentioned above reveals to Seagal the
location of Screwface’s lair — a large, heavily guarded, fenced-off headquarters.
This sets the stage for one of my favorite types of action set-pieces — an
undermanned group skillfully penetrating a seemingly impossible-to-breach
compound. See Rambo III (or even Ocean’s Eleven) for the awesomeness potential
of such a set-up. Marked for Death more or less delivers the goods in this
regard, although it starts off a little awkwardly. It shows Seagal “sneaking
in,” but he’s basically just walking around in the open hoping no one looks at
him.
Even more awkwardly, Steven Seagal shuts down the power and
starts walking around with night-vision goggles, and even though he’s in the
same room with dozens of people, no one can see him. In my apartment, even if
the lights were turned off and it was at night, I’m pretty sure I’d be able to
tell if Steven Seagal was standing five feet away from me.
But eventually, the explosives that Seagal has “sneakily”
planted around the compound start going off and his two friends jump out of the
bushes with machine guns and sniper rifles and all hell breaks loose. Hard to
Kill also featured a lot of machine-gunnery, but this time it’s a little less
ridiculous. The good guys seem to move around and stay hidden, believably
out-witting the enemies, as opposed to running around in the open knowing that
the screenplay won’t let them die such un-dramatic deaths.
Elsewhere, Steven Seagal breaks a few more arms and chops
off Screwface’s head. He brings the head back with him to America, in order to
show it to Screwface’s gang and scare them straight. There are a few unanswered
questions, though. When carrying back the severed head, did Steven Seagal put
it in his checked baggage, or did he carry it on? Did he get asked about it
when going through customs? If you were in Jamaica with a freshly severed head
and needed to get it back home, what would you do? And if you’re thinking,
“he’s a DEA agent, he’s allowed to bring back severed heads from wherever he
wants” remember that he retired in the beginning of the movie and turned in his
badge. Although maybe severed head transportation privileges are granted to
both former and current DEA agents.
Actually, it turns out that he didn’t chop off Screwface’s
head, he chopped off Screwface’s identical twin brother’s head. So we get a
second showdown between Seagal and Screwface, this time back in America in
Screwface’s nightclub. This showdown takes the form of a sword-fight.
Eventually Seagal wins, and Screwface ends up impaled by a spike at the bottom
of an elevator shaft. As a nice little detail that defuses, once and for all,
any suspicions that this movie is ethnically ignorant, Scewface’s nightclub is
shown to be well-stocked with Red Stripe.
Marked for Death is a bit of a departure for Steven Seagal.
His first two movies went to great lengths to explain Steven Seagal’s Asian
influences, and they were also filled with subtle, left-wing propaganda. This
movie contains neither — excepting Seagal’s Asian symbol jacket and insistence
that immigrants be treated with respect.
I said that Hard to Kill was neither bad nor good enough —
Marked for Death is both better and worse. It’s more exciting, more
action-packed, and more ridiculous. It’s a far better film, and one that serves
as an appropriate warm-up for Out for Justice, the greatest movie ever made.
Steven Seagalstics
·
Weapons:
normal sword, magic voodoo sword, hand gun, sniper rifle, machine gun, C4
explosives, sand (he kicks it in a bad guy’s eyes), combat knife.
· What
people say about Seagal:
o
DEA Boss:
“I got the President going on TV, promising results. This isn’t the time for
you to walk away... I need you!”
o
“I know you, mon. You loves killing. But you’s
empty inside.”
o
Cop:
“He’s retired.”
Sexy lady: [looks
him up and down] “He looks functional to me.”
·
Seagal
comebacks:
o
“Hey mon, ya want some blow?”
“Yeah, I want some blow. I’m wanna BLOW your head off!”
o
“Hey, I’m a made man!”
“God made men!”
[shoots him]
o
[after shooting a guy and throwing another out a
window]
“One guy thought he was invincible, and another guy thought he could
fly.”
“So?”
“They were both wrong.”
o
[after killing Screwface and his twin brother]
“I hope they weren’t triplets”
·
Critical
Bile:
o
The Washington Post obviously missed out on the
film’s subtlety and implied that the movie is racist: “it’s not going to do
much for the image of Jamaicans ... Many movies tend to accent either racial or
ethnic stereotypes — Marked for Death does both.”
o
Variety: “Dim-witted revenge yarn”
o
New York Times: “Lacks much visual interest or
suspense. Mr. Seagal is not even as striking a figure here as he has been in
the past, since the camera angles often make him look jowly”
·
Hair
status: The ponytail returns, but this time it is much fuller and fluffier.
The DVD cover (see the top of the page) features an outline of him, explicity
demonstrating the shape of his ponytail. The New York Times review of this
movie points out that “Mr. Seagal’s trademark ponytail is also longer than it
used to be, so it bounces when he runs.”
·
Fun Facts
·
The song I linked to above (this one) features
contributions from Jimmy Cliff. Cliff also appears in the film as himself.
·
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it yet, but Steven
Seagal’s character’s name is John Hatcher. A definite let-down from past
character names such as Mason Storm and Nico Toscani.
·
The film was directed by Dwight H. Little, who
you may know as the director of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers or
perhaps Free Willy 2: Adventure Home.
·
The film’s writers (Mark Victor, Michael Grais)
are a little more prestigious. They also wrote The Poltergeist and Cool World.
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