Steven Segal returns to the big screen in Exit Wounds. He again plays a cop that beats up people, like he has in most of his other movies. Does anybody else have trouble telling his movies apart? One was on tv not to long ago, and when I saw the title, I had no idea which one it was. I didn't pick this movie out to rent, but since it was here I watched it. I didn't have very high expectations for this movie. In fact, my expectations were pretty low. I actually found this movie to be mildly entertaining. It is a mindless action movie, and as long as you remember that, and don't expect too much from it, it can be entertaining. If you like action movie that is.

CAST

There were a lot of characters in this movie. Some were in a lot of the scenes and other were just in a scene here and there. I had trouble keeping track of who was who, and I still don't know what the names of a few characters were.

Steven Segal - Orin Boyd
Tom Arnold - Henry Wayne
Jill Hennessy - Commander Annette Mulcahey
DMX - Latrell Walker
Isaiah Washington - George Clark
Michael Jai White - Strutt
Bill Duke - Hinges
David Vadim - Officer Montini
Anthony Anderson - T.K.

Director - Andrezej Bartkowiak
Producted by - Joel Silver and Dan Crachioto
Based on the book by John Watermann - he is a former cop
Screenplay by - Ed Horowitz and Richard D'Ovidio

This movie is rated R for violence, graphic language, and brief nudity. This movie is not appropriate for children of any age.

PLOT

The movie begins with the Vice President giving a speech. When he leaves, he has a police and Secret Service escort. When the cars reach a bridge, it is shown that some of the cops aren't really cops. They start shooting the real cops with machine guns. A helicopter flies over and a man shoots the cars that try to get onto the bridge. One car gets past the shooter on the helicopter. That car was driven by Orin Boyd. He charges into the middle of the mess, and with only a handgun, takes out all the bad guys and the helicopter. He manages to do this without reloading his gun too. He saves the Vice President by throwing him off the side of the bridge and into the river. Orin gets in trouble for what he did. He embarrassed the Secret Service. He is then sent to the worst precinct in Detroit.

When Orin arrives at his new precinct, he sticks his foot in his mouth with the Commander there, Annette Mulcahey. She isn't going to put up with any of his crap. She makes him go to anger management class. This is where Orin meets Henry Wayne, the host of a morning tv show. It was rather funny to see Orin in anger management class. When he leaves the class, he finds a group of men trying to steal his truck. Or course he beats them all up. Orin later screws up again, and is demoted to crossing guard. That was really funny to see. He was not a good crossing guard.

Latrell is a young man. Near the beginning of the movie, he goes to visit someone in prison. A little later, he and his friend, T.K., go to a very expensive car dealership. Latrell buys a very expensive car - I think it was a Lambogini - and pays for it in cash. A little later in the movie it is shown that Latrell is a drug dealer.

Orin eventually gets off crossing guard duty, and is walking a beat with a partner, George. Orin starts to suspect that there are dirty cops in the precinct. He begins to gather evidence. He doesn't know who to trust anymore. Several people are not what they seem. There is more fighting and shooting in the movie. I was surprised by a few things that happened in the movie, but for the most part, it was pretty predictable.

Exit Wounds is full of fighting, shooting, and explosions. The action starts just minutes after the movie begins, with the scene on the bridge. It seems like there is a fight or shoot out in almost every scene of the movie. The movie is loaded with action for people who like that kind of movie.

I'm going to discuss something that bugged me a bit in Exit Wounds. It starts with something in the beginning of the movie, but it happened other times too. When the movie begins, the bad guys have taken out the cops and Secret Service that were escorting the Vice President. They are preventing other cars from getting on the bridge to get to the Vice President. But somehow, Orin drives through all the men on the bridge with their machine guns, and gets by the shooter on the helicopter, again with a machine gun. The men with machine guns are shooting like crazy, but no bullets get near Orin. Then Orin singlehandedly takes out all the men on the bridge , and takes down the helicopter with his ONE handgun. And he never had to reload his gun. How many bullets does a handgun hold anyway? Through the whole movie, I only saw him reload his gun once. Well, actually I saw him dump the empty clip, but it didn't show him putting in a new one. After he dumped the clip, the scene showed the bad guy for a second, then when it was back on Orin, he was shooting up a storm again. I think he must have had some kind of special bullets that reproduce themselves in the clip. Otherwise he would've run out of bullets in a hurry. That was just so ridiculous. Yes I know it is a movie, but they could have tried to make it a little more believable. Orin was firing more bullets than the guys with machine guns. That was just one think that made me start giggling when I saw this movie.

By the way, has anyone else noticed that in a lot of action movies, the bad guys will have all kinds of automatic weapons, spraying bullets every which way, hitting everyone around except the hero. Then the hero will take out all the bad guys with his handgun. And a lot of time the hero is right out in the open, not even taking cover behind anything while the bullets are flying, but they are never hit. That is just stupid. No one is invincible to bullets, and movies shouldn't make it look like they are. Ok, back the movie now.

I'm going to mention something else that I found a bit funny, that I'm sure wasn't meant to be. At one point in the movie, Orin in the passenger in a car that is being chased by the bad guys. Annette is driving. The car chase starts in a parking garage. Yes, another speeding car chase in a parking garage. The exit was blocked by the bad guys. There were a few car loads. So Annette goes back up onto the second level. There was a glass wall there instead of the concrete wall. She drives through it, and the car ends up on the road and off they go. Ok. I have no problem with that. The thing that struck me as funny was when the car hit the road, the passenger door just fell off. It was closed, and it just fell off. It wasn't like it had been hanging open and was hit against a light pole or something. And it was the only door that decided to fall off. That just struck me as stupid, and funny. A few minutes later we see why that door had to be gone when something else happens.

The several fight scenes that were in Exit Wounds were very well choreographed. Wire were used in some of the fight scenes. I just knew there had to be wires used in a few of them, but I didn't realize it in others. Orin is constantly beating someone up. In one scene, he just walked up to T.K. and kicked him in the face. Now before that happened, there was an incident involving the two men, and the grill of Orin's new truck. So Orin was a bit irritated about that. He tracks T.K. down at the nightclub he owns, walked up to in, with people all around, and then just kicked him in the face. Well, it may not have been right in the face, it may have been in the neck. I can't remember for sure now. Orin must not have heard of police brutality before. And obviously, his anger management class isn't helping. Also, Orin seemed to forget that he is supposed to get a search warrant before doing a search.

The acting in Exit Wounds isn't the worst I have ever seen, but I think it is safe to say that no one from this movie will be taking Oscar home next spring. Segal has never been a great actor, and this movie is no exception. He is either fighting or shooting in most of the movie. When he isn't doing one of those things, he just seems to be reading his lines. There is no emotion in his voice. He just seems to say his lines in a monotone. He is showing his age a bit too I think at times. Does anyone else think he is getting a tad too old for movies like this? Segal also seems to be suffering from the Clint Eastwood squinty eye syndrome in this movie - no offense meant towards Eastwood or any of his fans. He just has that squinty eye thing going on in a lot of his movies, and Segal was doing it in this one. At least Segal didn't have that stupid ponytail this time. DMX was ok in his role. Nothing spectacular, but nothing extremely horrible either. Anthony Anderson was pretty funny in some of his scenes as T.K.

None of the characters were developed that well. There was a little background information given on a few characters, like Orin, but not that much, and none for other characters. We are pretty much only told about Orin's past troubles on the job relating to his authority problem, and how he would beat people up. More is revealed about Latrell as the movie progresses. George is shown at home with his wife and baby once or twice. There is little to nothing told about some of the other characters.

Exit Wounds had a lot of characters, and frankly, I still don't know who all of them were, or even why they were in the movie. I have no clue why Henry Wayne was even in the movie beyond the scene with the anger management class. There was no need for that character outside of the class. None of the other people from that class showed up in other parts of the movie. Henry first showed up in the anger management class, but he kept popping up for no real reason. Orin did get Henry to do some digging into someone's background once. I still haven't figured out why Orin trusted Henry to do that. Henry was an idiot. An annoying idiot. There was just no reason for his character to have had as big of a role in the movie as he had. Maybe the role was expanded to help revive Tom Arnold's career.

CHARACTERS

Orin Boyd - He is a cop in Detroit. He doesn't follow orders. He has a problem with authority. He likes to go off on his own and do his own thing. He beats up a lot of people. He gets transferred to the worst prescient in the city after he saves the Vice President by throwing him into a river. At the new prescient, he manages to screw up some more, and he gets demoted to crossing guard. He has to go to anger management classes. He discovers there are dirty cops at his new prescient and he tries to take them out.

Annette Mulcahey - Commander of the prescient where Orin is sent. She isn't going to put up with Orin's usual way of doing things. She sends him to anger management class. She used to work for Internal Affairs. She suspects there is something going on in the prescient.

George - Orin's partner once he gets off crossing guard duty. George doesn't like the way Orin does some things.

Latrell - Young man that is very rich. He is involved in selling drugs with the dirty cops. He is very close to another man that is in jail. He is friend's with T.K.

DVD EXTRAS

The movie was in wide screen format. I don't know what the ratio thing was. The picture and sound quality was very good. There are a few extras on the DVD for this movie.

Cast & Crew - This gives a list of some of the actors and crew of the movie, and a list of other movies they have worked on.

Making of Exit Wounds Documentary - This was about 20 minutes long. There are interviews with some of the cast and crew. It is shown how some of the fight scenes are done, and how wires were used in some of them. The author of the book that the movie is based on also talks.

DMX music video - This is a video for a song that is in the trailer of the movie. I can't remember now if the song was in the actual movie or not. I think it is called No Sunshine, but I may be wrong about that. There are clips from the movie in the video.

A Day on the Set with Anthony Anderson - A camera followed Anthony Anderson around on the set for a day. Some scenes are shown when they are being filmed, including the one where Orin walks up to T.K. in the nightclub and kicks him. In some of the shots, I could see that Segal was wearing a brace on one of his legs. It looked a lot like the one I had to wear for months after a knee surgery I had to have. I think the brace was on the leg he kicked T.K. with, but I can't remember for sure. I really think Segal is getting too old for this kind of action movie.

Theatrical Trailer - The movie trailer that played in movie theaters.

That is all the extra features there were on this DVD. There were no deleted scenes, and no commentary by anyone. There was the scene selection feature, but I don't really think of that as an extra since all DVDs have that.

I found Exit Wounds to be somewhat entertaining. Part of that came from me laughing at things that were supposed to be funny, but it did make that movie entertaining. I think people who like mindless action movies would like this one. You just have to remember that is an action movie, and don't expect too much from it. Anyone who is a fan of Steven Segal would probably like this movie too. If you hate action movies, or Steven Segal, this is not the movie for you. If you hate Tom Arnold, you should stay away from this movie.







Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age