Today You Die (2005)
I’ve often described Out for Justice as a compendium of all
the reasons that Steven Seagal is awesome, but Today You Die is an equally
comprehensive compendium of all the reasons that Steven Seagal is hilariously
terrible. It’s filled to the brim with all the uniquely Seagallian horseshit
I’ve come to look forward to and dread in equal measure: non-sensical
shoot-outs, obvious body-doubling, an unintelligible plot, awkward banter with
an embarrassed-looking rapper, hilariously bad acting from Seagal, and
hairstyles that exist in defiance of God.
The movie opens with Steven Seagal’s wife having a spooky
nightmare. After, as is wont to happen in movies, she suddenly bolts awake,
sweating and breathing heavily. This happens a few times, and each time, we see
that Steven Seagal is sitting next to her, already wide awake, sitting up,
fully dressed and staring blankly into the distance. This means that either (a)
Seagal’s character is an insomniac, or perhaps a vampire, who, instead of
sleeping, just sits in bed stares at the wall all night, or (b) Steven Seagal’s
contempt for acting now runs so deep that he can’t even be bothered to lie down
and close his eyes when pretending to be asleep.
Or perhaps a combination of the two — maybe Steven Seagal is
a vampire in real life, so when the director asked him to pretend to be asleep,
he had no frame of reference, so he just sat and gazed blankly into the
darkness.
Anyway, after that bizarre opening, and with vampiric
possibilities still in mind, we get to know Seagal’s character, who’s named
Harlan Banks. He’s a Robin Hood of sorts — he steals money from rich drug
dealers and gives it to orphanages and soup kitchens (we the know people he
steals from are drug dealers because when he breaks in, he looks at all the
fancy stuff and says “I see your days of drug dealing have been good to you”).
You might think this makes him a bit of a softie, but he’s playing the most
homicidal variation on Robin Hood ever committed to screen. In his first
robbery, he kills at least 10 people.
Seagal’s wife, however, is uncomfortable with his job, and
wants him to get out of the robbery/killing spree business, even if he does use
the money charitably — “we can’t save everyone,” she pleads, clearly forgetting
that Steven Seagal can do anything. Always the diligent family man, Seagal
agrees to take on more honest work, so they pack up and move to the capital of
legitimate business: Las Vegas. Surely, nothing but regular, safe, salaried
work awaits them in a place called Sin City.
Seagal soon scores a job as the driver of an armored truck.
Not through a rigorous application and screening process though, he just gets
offered it by a friend of his who is quite obviously a criminal. Seagal
reassures his wife that “it’s honest work” which reveals a profound level of
stupidity on the part of his character.
In a development that comes as a surprise to no one but
Seagal, the job goes haywire and he finds himself crashing through the Las
Vegas strip in an armored car loaded with stolen money as the entire LVPD
shoots at him and tries to drive him off the road.
This car chase sequence, which appears to have actually been filmed on Las Vegas Blvd, as opposed to an abandoned road in rural Bulgaria, as we’ve come to expect from Seagal DTV ventures, marks the most impressive spectacle in a Seagal movie since Exit Wounds. Filled with real car crashes, massive explosions and elaborate stunts, it all looks like it’s ripped from another movie... which, in fact, it is! Like Ticker, Today You Die inserts footage from other (probably better) movies to create the illusion of a bigger-budget picture.
This perhaps explains why this big car chase takes place in
Vegas but the rest of the movie takes place in prisons, warehouses, and generic
streets. The filmmakers were at the mercy of the footage they’d bought the
rights to pillage.
After this car chase, Seagal is arrested and goes to jail.
Seagal’s prison fashion has definitely evolved a lot over the last few years.
His unflattering orange jumpsuit in Half Past Dead was upgraded to a snazzy
black outfit in Submerged, and now he struts about the lock-up in a sharp set
of jeans and a stylish knee-length black jacket. The coat, in particular, looks
suspiciously like it comes straight from Seagal’s own wardrobe.
In prison, as is the case with everywhere else in the world, Seagal is immediately and immensely popular. Everyone takes to him quickly and call him things like “O.G.” and “cool motherfucker.” As for those who wanna start shit with Seagal? Well, to quote Steven in this movie: “You know what? I just got one piece of advice for you. Uh, be my motherfucking guest.” I guess that’s supposed to be his version of “go ahead, make my day” but I somehow doubt that comeback is going to make its way into the popular vernacular.
Seagal forms one particularly meaningful friendship while in
the pen — the head honcho of the prison’s most powerful gang and a man with an
escape plan who goes by the name of Ice Kool.
Ice Kool is played by Anthony Criss, aka Treach, of the legendary hip-hop group Naughty By Nature. Mr. Treach is the man who once famously, and repeatedly, inquired as to your stance on the divisive issue of O.P.P. While Treach may not be a household name, there is nary an under-40 individual in this country who wouldn’t enthusiastically shout “yeah you know me!” if posed Treach’s famous query, which I think makes him technically a bigger celebrity than Seagal. Plus, he was also once married to Sandra ‘Pepa’ Denton of Salt-N-Pepa, who, no offense, is way hotter than Kelly LeBrock.
Say what you will about Steven Seagal, but if you put together a concert featuring only people who have co-starred in movies with him, you’d have a hell of a show — Nas, Ja Rule, DMX, Ice-T, Chili (of TLC), Kurupt, Kris Kristofferson, Randy Travis, Zigaboo Modeliste, Beatles keyboard player Billy Preston, Travis Tritt, Levon Helm (of The Band) and now Naughty by Nature. And then to MC the event, you’d have your pick of Mo’Nique, John Leguizamo, Anthony Anderson, or maybe Tom Arnold.
Anyway, Treach has a plan to escape prison and he’s nice enough to bring Seagal along with him. They do this by staging a jailbreak — releasing all the prisoners and unleashing mayhem. This segment, like the Las Vegas car chase, is elaborate and exciting, because, surprise surprise, it too is taken from another movie (in this case, 2002 Walter Hill/Wesley Snipes movieUndisputed)
Treach and Seagal fly off in a stolen helicopter and land in a desert. How do we know it’s the desert? Because a tumbleweed rolls around back-and-forth self-consciously in the background. The tumbleweed is sort of like an extra who dreams of being a star, mugging and drawing attention to itself when it should just be blending in. It actually winds up as one of the most engaging characters.
Once Treach and Seagal hook up, the movie goes from being generically bad to almost unbelievably terrible. They spend the rest of the movie engaging in horrifically awkward banter that made me long for the days of the scintillating chemistry of Steven Seagal and Ja Rule.
“Well Treach, that is a complicated question with no simple answer.”
Take, for example, the witty, hard-boiled dialogue they engage in prior to taking out one of their first targets:
Seagal: “He walks a little funny. You think he did some prison time?”
Treach: “Maybe. Might be out there doing a little homo promo.”
Seagal: “Because it seems to me, like, you know, the way he’s walking... he might be one of those guys we called punk. Or somebody’s bitch.”
Treach: “You know what? If he really is a punk, he gonna give that money up quick.”
Seagal: “We have to get the money.”
Treach: “Fo’ sho’.”
Seagal: “Well, here I go.”
Treach: “Let’s do it. Show him how many languages you know. If he don’t understand I can get out and teach him some gun-fu.”
Feel the chemistry! As the movie was progressing, I couldn’t stop picturing a 37-year-old white guy typing these lines into his Macbook in a douchey L.A. coffee shop, reading them over, patting himself on the back for another job well done, then walking back to Hyundai, crossing the street to avoid a scary looking group of black kids.
So, anyway, Harlan Banks and Ice Kool are now searching for the stolen money Seagal has hidden somewhere in Vegas. But first, Seagal has to take revenge against the gangsters and corrupt cops who set him up to go to jail. In other words, he has to go kill a bunch of people. Treach goes along for the ride, just for fun, I guess.
Along the way Treach also introduces Seagal to his cool black friends, and we get one of the all-time great “What They Say About Seagal"-isms. A Ving Rhames-like mob boss by the name of Dinky-D says, upon first seeing Seagal, “he walks like a black man and breathes like a killer.” Strangely, this is also what my resume says under “About Me.” In Seagal’s case, I’m not sure about the walking like a black man thing, but if James Gandolfini’s wheezy heaving inThe Sopranos was representative of how killers breathe, then yes, Steven Seagal breathes like a killer.
One of the funniest things about this movie is how brazenly misanthropic it is. Treach and Seagal kill a lot of people, many of whom barely qualify as bad guys — like a bunch of cops and prison guards who were really just doing their job. They also go about their killing with giddy enthusiasm. Seagal thinks it’s hilarious to reassure a guy that he won’t kill him but then turn around and light him on fire. In the beginning of the movie, it really bends over backwards trying to make Seagal seem like a saint, but by the end it’s clear that he’s actually one of the biggest assholes ever.
Furthering his dickishness is Seagal’s tendency to insult everyone all the time, for no particular reason. After being given the job of armored car driver, he thanks his friend for the generosity, but then, on his way out, loudly mutters “that’s some trailer trash right there.” Which, first of all, is a total asshole move, and second of all, doesn’t even make sense, as his friends were all quite well-dressed and hanging out in an expensive hotel room in Vegas.
He is, however, uncharacteristically familial. He’s married to the same woman in the beginning of the movie as he is in the end, and doesn’t have a single sexy interlude with an underage temptress. He actually seems to be a pretty good husband, all things considered. He agrees to get a real job when she starts to get scared for their safety and he comforts her whenever she has a nightmare (although he was just sitting there wide awake anyway, so I guess he might as well).
All in all, surprisingly grown-up from the now 53-year-old Seagal. Although, he does end up introducing his wife to Treach so their marriage is doomed to fail due to infidelity, given Treach’s reputation as an enthusiastic coveter of Other People’s five-letter-word-that-also-means-cat.
The movie ends with Seagal, Treach and Seagal’s wife supposedly living happily ever after, an ending that requires overlooking a few glaring details. For example, Seagal and Treach broke out of prison by orchestrating a deadly jailbreak and flying off in a stolen helicopter, and I don’t know about Treach, but Seagal was in jail for stealing an armored car and killing a bunch of cops in the process. I’d imagine that would put them pretty high on the list of America’s most wanted fugitives, which would certainly put a damper on their future plans, or at least make the orphanage Seagal donates all his money to at the end of the movie think twice about accepting his generous offer.
It reminded me a little bit of On Deadly Ground, which was essentially one prolonged, uninhibited murder and destruction extravaganza, but topped off with a speech about electric cars so we can see what a great guy Seagal is.
Oh, and in case you’re curious about the movie’s title, it does indeed get shouted at a bad guy before he gets shot, but Seagal virtuously defers the honor of saying it to Treach. One of the bad guys shoots at Treach, who then spoils the guy’s plans to die some time other than that particular day.
Today You Die is filled with all the hilarious goofs who’ve come to expect from Seagal. Many of his body doubles look nothing like him, but still get a lot of face-time. Through some combination of poor editing, poor direction and the mixing and matching of footage from different movies, there are lots of jarring changes of scenery, angles, and people. Seagal will be fighting some guy in a warehouse, for example, then it will show someone in a completely different outfit getting thrown out of an apartment building.
So, would I recommend Today You Die? Not to a sane grown-up. But if you’re still reading this blog at this point, you’re in no danger of falling into that category.
Steven Seagalstics
- Weapons: shotgun, handgun, armored car, table, broken glass, grenade.
- What They Say About Seagal:
- “We hear you’re the best there is.”
- “Got love for you, O.G.”
- “Youse a cool motherfucker”
- “Your handwork is handsome.”
- And, of course, “he walks like a black man, and breathes like a killer.”
- Seagal Comebacks:
- “Think of us as a charity”
“I kinda like that, ‘cause I’m in the mood to give!”
[shoots him] - “Who else was there?”
“Fuck you!”
“I don’t remember seeing ‘Fuck You’!”
- “Think of us as a charity”
- Steven Seagal Weight Watch: Seagal mostly sticks to large coats which all seem to be a little tighter than usual.
- Steven Seagal Hair Status: Steve’s sporting one of his worst haircuts. It’s sort of like a mullet, except it sticks straight out in the back; like a powerful fan was blowing directly in his face and then his hair just froze like that.
- But What does IMDb Think? A lowly 3.9/10
Fun Facts
- UFC fighter and Expendables star Randy Couture has a brief (and uncredited) appearance as a bad guy who is swiftly beaten down by Seagal.
- This is the first Seagal movie since Half Past Dead (2002) to be set entirely in the United States. It is also the first movie since Ticker (2001) to film in the United States at all.
- Chloë Grace Moretz — aka Hitgirl from Kick-Ass and the title character in the upcomingCarrie remake — has a small part as a sick young girl who breaks Seagal’s tender heart.
- Nick Mancuso, who played the head of the CIA in both Under Siege movies, is a cop in this one.
- The film’s director — Don E. FauntLeRoy — was the cinematographer on Into the Sunearlier in 2005.
- The story comes from Danny Lerner, who also provided the story for Out for a Kill. Perhaps not coincidentally, neither of those two movies really have anything you could call a ‘story.’
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