With great action and something a little mystical, Marked For Death is still a great action film to watch. SEE ALSO: Die Hard with Stallone, Seagal and Van Damme It’s the fact you buy into the possibility he might have something superhuman within. It’s also what gives Wallace something a little more unique as a villain in comparison to straight up drug kingpins, rogue politicians or unstable gangsters. Basil Wallace is great as Screwface and there’s a certainly eerie quality about how he plays up to the villains almost mythical image (before Seagal strips away the facade). Action films are often only as good as the villains, and the films certainly delivered on that front. Henry Silva in Above The Law, William Sadler in Hard to Kill, William Forsythe in Out for Justice and the double hit of Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones in Under Siege. Seagal’s early career gave him the benefit of some great villains to play against too. As one of Hatcher’s old buddies, who has become despondent at the state of their old neighbourhood because of drugs and gang violence, he offers a great presence for Seagal to play against. Keith David is always a welcome presence in anything. There’s an early role for Danny Trejo at the beginning, the first of several co-credits with Seagal over the years. The film benefits from a good supporting cast too. Again this change of locale offers something a bit different too, and the entire finale is great. The action is taken from Chicago to Jamaica after Screwface returns home. One sequence where he evades capture and then takes on three men attacking simultaneously in an enclosed space is amazing in its efficiency (it was choreography that didn’t feel choreographed). Marked For Death had that all, and includes some of his best sequences. Seagal had, and of course perpetuated, an air of being untouchable. He’d plant their face in a glass cabinet, or stick them to a wall with the blade they’d just tried to stick him with. ![]() He’d use weapons or objects around him too. His response was always ruthlessly efficient. Opponents of Seagal were too busy charging him with blunt objects or blades. An opponent had to wait for Jean-Claude to jump, spin 360 degrees in the air, split his legs and kick them square in the jaw. Seagal’s fights did and were often shot wide, allowing us to see the action. Van Damme as an antithesis looked great on film and his fight sequences had a definite showmanship and pizzazz, but they didn’t feel like something you might see if someone skilled in the arts took on opponents in a bar, or intervening in a store robbery. ![]() Seagal makes for an imposing hero, at the peak of his powers. In many regards in fact, Marked For Death isn’t lauded in the action genre as much as it should be. SEE ALSO: The Film Feud of the 90’s: Steven Seagal vs Jean-Claude Van Damme It was still part of an iconic opening run of five films that pushed him right up alongside Stallone et al. It might sound like it almost borders on comic book, like a lost Punisher comic, but Marked For Death just added a dash here and there of being a little different, and more exotic than the other early films of Seagal’s canon. Hatcher remains grounded throughout, never really buying into the voodoo, but having been targeted (And his family) sets about ending Screwface’s reign of terror for good. ![]() In the end of course, Screwface isn’t quite as mystically inclined, nor immortal as he’d made believe (think the ‘twist’ in The Prestige). Soon he’s targeted by a villain called Screwface, a practitioner of black magic who seems to invoke fear throughout the Jamaican community. Back in his home town, seemingly rife with drugs, Hatcher finds himself intervening during a gang shootout, and kills a couple of Jamaican criminals. After a Colombian drugs bust leaves his partner dead, John Hatcher returns home and calls it a day, retiring from the DEA. Seagal made it three for three playing a lawman (the following film, Out For Justice would make that four). Marked For Death came and offered something just a little different. In some ways Hard to Kill was a spiritual sequel, and whilst effective in its delivery (with action fans again enjoying the trademark gritty and brutally violent action) it felt like a stay on formula. As a righteous lawman he’d already uncovered corruption in his previous film for those seemingly above the law. Left for dead, in a coma, he eventually recovers and sets about exposing the criminals and getting some good old fashioned revenge. Hard to Kill played up a revenge angle as Seagal, investigating corruption gets a little too close to uncovering the criminal ties of a Senator. ![]() It would take a couple of years waiting until the next one, but 1990 saw two Seagal pictures released. Tom Jolliffe looks back at one of Steven Seagal’s early works, as Marked For Death turns 30…Īfter breaking out with Above The Law, a lot was expected among action fans for what would follow from Steven Seagal.
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