Movie Name: Out for Justice
Director: John Flynn
Produced: Steven Seagal and Arnold Kopelson
Release Date: April 12th, 1991
Box Office Budget: $14 million
Box Office Revenue: $39,673,161
Introduction
This is probably my second favourite Steven Seagal movie after Hard to Kill. Back when this came out I used to get excited for his movies to come out. For me he is part of the martial artists circle that made 90's action movies so great. These included Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Jackie Chan, Jean-Claude Van Damme, just to name a few.
Let us see if this one holds up.
Story
You are introduced to a detective named Gino Fellino (played by Steven Seagal) from Dyker Heights, Brooklyn. Gino and his partner and childhood friend Bobby Lupo (played by Joe Spataro ) are on a drug bust. In broad daylight a childhood friend named Ritchie Madano (played by William Forsythe) kills Bobby in front of his wife and kids.
After the incident Detective Fellino is on a mission to bring down his old friend who has gone on the deep end. We learn early on that Ritchie is a drug addict that has gone insane, probably due to his abuse of drugs. As the movie progresses he seems to get more and more aggressive and unhinged.
The movie (as the trailer indicates) then becomes a cops vs. robbers type of movie.
Fun fact: The original title for the movie was supposed to be The Price of Our Blood. However, Warner Bros. did not like that and wanted the title to have 3 words, similar to his other movies Marked for Death and Above the Law.
I do not really care either way but I did not know that until I read this in a few places while doing my research.
Fun Fact 2: This marked the first movie role for Julianna Margulies.
Out for Justice Trailer
Bottomline
When everyone talks about Seagal movies, this is what they are talking about. A bad ass, that goes around, beating people up and getting justice done. Essentially all of his early movies had that same premise.
What makes this a good movie to me? Well number one, Jerry Orbach is in it. He does not have a big role but I always loved him as the wise cracking cop / detective in Law & Order as Lenny Briscoe. That alone is good enough for me.
Then you have the typical Seagal fight scenes. Nothing fancy about it except just kicking butt. He has numerous good scenes, but my favourite is the bar scene where he kicks everyone's butt around the bar.
Bar Fight Scene
Is this movie Oscar worthy? Hello no, but it is a good action movie to watch and just enjoy for an hour in a half. Not all movies need to be well written and have a purpose. Sometimes you just want to escape and forget about life for a few hours and this is a great movie to do that.
I can say that the villain in this movie is probably the weakest part of the movie. You know the saying, "It is the journey and not the destination."? Well this movie encompasses that exactly. The best part of the movie is Seagal running after the bad guys. The end although, tried to be satisfying but ended up not that great. I like William Forsythe, but I think they could have picked someone with a little more fighting skill. Then again, he is an Italian guy that is good with guns.
Out for Justice is what these 90's movies were all about. Yes they were cheesy but that is how we like our martial arts movies. :)
What do you think? Did you like this Steven Seagal movie? let us know below.
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