Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.

I'll start by telling you that I've always watched movies with the idea in mind that the film's ideas, characters, and execution should entertain me. "Exit Wounds" has absolutely no redeeming values for you to consider renting, let alone buying this disastrous cop flick about police corruption.

If someone could please inform me as to what the opening sequence of this film has to do with the rest of the picture, I'd be very happy. I don't have a clue, as it basically serves as a ten-minute montage of over the top stunts and action, and gets the movie's hero Orin Boyd (Steven Seagal) into hot water with his superiors.

The Vice-president is speaking at some sort of outdoor convention, where he's later ambushed in his limousine by two crooks dressed as cops and several other cars and a helicopter. Boyd manages to save the day by popping countless bad guys and rescue the vice-president by tossing him into the water off a bridge. He saves his life and his reward? He's demoted from whatever job he previously had to the 15th precinct of Detroit by the chief of police (Bill Duke of Predator).

You can tell almost instantly when he walks into this place that everyone is either corrupt or soon will be. We're supposed to believe that these are the same cops that work hard jobs, protecting the streets and keeping order among civilians. In their spare time you won't see them filing reports or patrolling the neighborhood, but rather they shock one another with tasers in the locker room. This zoo is run by the short skirted and brainless Chief Mulcahy (Jill Henessey). Boyd perfectly describes the station with the line "I've seen mental institutions that are saner than this place".

When officer Boyd isn't eating lunch in a diner with his new partner Clark (Isaiah Washington), he's conveniently walking around late at night stumbling onto one crime after another. I really hate dumb and unbelievable coincidences in movies, and this film has a ton of them. The Boyd character could literally step outside the precinct and discover a crime's being committed right in front of him. How stupid do the producers think we are to expect to believe all this? One of these lucky crimes comes when he happens on a drug deal between Latrell Walker (rap artist DMX) and an undercover cop (David Vadim). Naturally there's more to this than meet's the eye and Boyd and his partner must seek out the players in a huge drug scandal that's about to go down.

Part of what makes this movie so ridiculously lame is the absurd about of police corruption in the precinct. If you thought that "Training Day" had bad cops, wait until you see this. Point the finger at just about any cop you think will be involved in the drug operation and I guarantee you'll probably be right.

Along Boyd's bewildering quest to root out those evil cops he runs into a talk show host (Tom Arnold) at a rage-aholics club. Arnold essentially plays the same character here as he did in "True Lies" a couple of years ago, and again he's obnoxious, hyper, and almost unbearable in some scenes.

As for the rest of the "acting", you already know how Steven Seagal will play his run-in-the-mill heroic detective. He gets punched a couple of times, thrown around, and chained up but emerges at the end with hardly a scratch on him. Seagal's facial expression goes unchanged throughout the length of the movie; he never raises his voice, sheds a tear, or laughs during any part of the film. I've always said that he's the third rate type of actor if Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone isn't available. As for the other star, rapper DMX is surprisingly decent as Walker, and he's really the only reason to ever consider watching this movie.

However, all of these problems I've listed thus far could have been saved had the movie been reasonably fun to watch. I can forgive plot mishaps and underdeveloped characters if the movie itself is exciting, like in "Tremors" or "Jurassic Park". "Exit Wounds" can't even manage to satisfy my low expectations as an action film.

For instance, stuff blows up for no logical reason whatsoever. In one scene a man in a helicopter shoots an oncoming car a couple of times and it proceeds to not only explode into a ball of flaming wreckage but also to do about six or seven flips and flops along the way. In another scene two heroes have their truck riddled with bullets, shot at by a rocket launcher, and yet nothing happens to them.

Another completely incoherent action set-up has a villain trying to escape on a rooftop by means of a getaway helicopter. The helicopter is no more than five feet off the ground and yet for some bizarre reason it must have a ladder hanging down from it so the villain can flee. My question: why not just land the chopper on the roof and leave instead of having a Batman-esque escape attempt that any intelligent viewer can see is bound to go wrong?

As for director Andrzej Bartkowiak, who helmed the pointless martial arts escapade "Romeo Must Die", here he has a few nice shots in the opening scenes but after a while everything just waters down to typical humdrum shootouts and unoriginal fistfights. The film never really has a chance to develop any of it's characters or untangle the messy and often confusing plot quirks because it's too busy trying to cram in one more impossible gun fight or karate match.

This just happens to be my very first one-star review here at epinions, and it couldn't have come at the expense of a more disorganized and tedious excuse for an action movie. Is this really what action cop flicks have come to these days? No longer are the investigations of any importance to the filmmakers, they're only goal is to create as much mind-numbing shootouts and illogical plot leaps as possible within two hours. "Exit Wounds" may not only serve as the end of all good police films, but also of Steven Seagal's primarily unmemorable career.

Recommended: No

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age