That night Seeger, driven by the big bald mercenary named 'Bulldog', picks up Maxine and takes her to a fancy restaurant void of any other customers. The restaurant probably told them Steven Seagal was coming so only vegetables would be available by the time he finished cleaning house. Seeger calls Chapel and wants more assurances that Shondra and little Eddie will be safe. He says he will repeatedly call throughout the mission for "Proof of Life"; whoa Steven slow down, one bad movie at a time!
Seeger visits the men's room. Moments later, an unknown gunman follows him in. Seeger emerges from his stall but the gunman doesn't pass out, so I guess it was a false alarm. Instead of just shooting, the gunman, in the spirit of the setting I guess, says, "That's it for you, poophole!" Mr. Gunman, please… think of the children! I replayed it three times and I swear to you he said 'poophole'! Seeger walks right up to the idiot gunman and slaps him around, eventually smashing him into the urinals. The urinals fall off the wall easily, as they don't appear to have been screwed in or caulked one bit. Now they look like they were 'pissed off'!' Sorry. The bald mercenary walks in and jokes with Seeger and he goes back to dinner and dances with Maxine, with the dead gunman lying in the bathroom.
Welcome, Mister Seagal. Which page of the menu will you be having this evening?
Outside the police station, Chief Malek casually informs Dresham that they located the abandoned building where the mercs were staying but the mercs recently left it. Dresham gets into a tizzy and yells they must be going to rob the bank now, and tells Malek to get every cop over there immediately. He complies, though I wonder why it hadn't occurred to Chief Malek to do this already.
Dresham gets into a car and is taken surprise by a gun to the head from Seeger, who was hiding in the back seat. Dresham probably should've noticed the rear end of the car almost touching the pavement before getting in. He confirms Seeger's suspicions that he wanted him dead. Seeger gets on the radio and coordinates the mission as we see the mercenaries head for the prison, making Dresham feel like a doofus.
Sam the hacker disables the prison alarms as the team led by Kruger enters thru an underground tunnel. The filmmakers probably felt that prison-breaking sequence to follow wasn't annoying enough, so they added an irritating techno soundtrack, with sound effects thrown in every time one of the mercs waves a flashlight or turns into a doorway.
After a few shootouts with the guards, Kruger gets to the Greek guy's son's cell but its empty, the son having been flown out of the country. It was all a setup concocted by Seeger, Sam and Maxine, who was in fact working with Seeger all along. Sam taunts Kruger, who predictably tells his team "Let's get the fuck outta here!", before walking into an ambush where he yells out, "What the fuck?" That Kruger sure has a way with… a word. Another shootout ensues, with only Kruger and his bleach-blond sidekick escaping the prison. One might think that a Kruger-Seeger confrontation is on the horizon, but that's the last we will see of him, at least until the sequel (Ha! Scared ya!).
Back to Dresham's car; he signals a cop. Seeger escapes the car and around the corner right in the direction of the unnoticing cop, even though a blind man would have noticed Seeger's vibrations on the sidewalk. Dresham orders all the police he dimly sent to the bank to instead head to the prison.
Seeger and Maxine enter the bank posing as detectives. They make their way to a big fancy vault with some assistance from hacker Sam. The computer whiz brags about how good he is, which has been a movie cliché since back when all you could do with a computer was draw a picture of a square. In the vault, they search for the source of the big transfers going into Chapel's account, which results in them tipping off the Greek army to arrest the rich Greek guy.
Over at a lighthouse, Chapel returns and finds out that Seeger is screwing with his money. He gets on the phone and asks Seeger, since he's at the bank, for a hundred million dollars in exchange for releasing Shondra and little Eddie, who are there at the lighthouse. Chapel is really hammy here as he speaks every word with a dramatic whisper; it's as if he's trying to ape Will Ferrell's imitation of James Lipton.
Bald Bulldog, posing as a cop, warns that the real cops are returning to the bank. Chief Malek arrives and is all pissy that the vault is open. Seeger and Maxine make their escape, killing a few innocent cops and bank guards in the process, which effectively kills the 'cheer for them' mood; at least when Neo and Trinity killed guards in The Matrix you knew that it wasn't happening in a real existence, but enough about good films.
Seeger finds and knocks out Dresham. He sets him up by leaving a receipt showing a bunch of money stolen from the bank placed into his own account. I doubt that evidence would hold up, as I'd imagine security tapes would show Seeger and Maxine were the ones moving money around but never mind, as we're moving toward the home stretch.
Mercedes has German engineering, but BMW gives you your own German engineer!
Bulldog shows up to 'arrest' Seeger and Maxine, and he takes them to their getaway police van while all the other cops mill about. If there was a heist in the biggest bank in a major city, I doubt only one uniformed cop would drive the two perps away and have no vehicle escorts but maybe South African cops are very independent-minded. Chief Malek sees the deposit receipt and arrests Dresham, who strangely makes no objection; I guess he's just happy that he's exiting the film here.
Chapel is furious that his parade is getting pissed on and he has Shondra and Eddie moved to a nearby house. The hostages get placed in a bedroom full of windows but none of Chapel's goons feels the need to close the drapes. After a shootout at the lighthouse Seeger, Maxine, Sam and Bulldog get to the house. After a bunch of Chapel's useless guards get kacked, Seeger finds his way inside through a conveniently unlocked window. I've seen tougher security for garage sale tables than for this safehouse. Eventually Seeger rescues Shondra and Eddie from the lone guard watching them, while Chapel tries to escape.
The doctors would've done a better job, but Bulldog's shitty HMO only covered his left side.
Mom, this vacation sucks!
Chapel has an opportunity to shoot Seeger, but doesn't because, as Seeger says, "I'm the only guy that can do what you want gettin' done", which seems a dumb thing to say since Seeger did the opposite. Apparently the script copied Gigli, where JLo made a lame speech to save both her and Ben Affleck, when it would've made complete sense (in the story and to please the audience) for Pacino to blow them away. Just like Pacino, though, Chapel buys it so he can drive away in his bomb-rigged car and let Seeger blow him up.
As an epilogue, we see a slow-motion montage of Radio receiving his full-military honors funeral. His big gravestone oddly looks decades old so maybe it happens far into the future or Seeger could only afford a used one. Maybe they used someone's real gravestone for the shot; talk about kicking a person when they're down, yikes!
- reviewed by Richie 10/13/08