Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The director is a No Wave artist, arguably the heir of Waters and Jarmusch; his movie is a jewel, it has cool and often lyrical cityscapes, a carefully made work, also a hallmark of action tropes: awesome swordplay, enjoyable choreography. Seagal plays a streetwise professor of archeology (and the movie begins as if this was Seagal's 'Indiana J.'). The plot takes place on the Sino-Kazakh border, in Connecticut, in Chinatown and in Sofia, and at the general headquarter of the Chinese mob, where the families have shaken hands; the story is remembered by the Chinese policewoman. Smuggling leads to vendetta: very generic tropes, but always intriguingly treated, with a lyrical freshness. The movie was nicely crafted by a No Wave director.In the previous decade, Seagal enriched the B cinema hallmark with very good outings; the DTV market worked as a quieter place where goodish things have been made.The ending credits claim that the director made this movie for his son; and if his work of stylish B cinema is undeniably lovingly crafted, the very generic plot of revenge, with its over the top idea (a professor, albeit one with a peculiar past, beheads the Chinese smuggling cartel) shows he wished a fairy tale; otherwise, Burns leaves the cemetery, where his murdered wife has just been laid to rest, hand in hand with his new girlfriend. This refreshing movie is very good, often intriguing, suspenseful.

It should be one of those films where by the time it's over you couldn't name a single character, yet Steven Seagal shares a name with the most famous Scottish poet so you can't help but remember at least one.It's surprisingly well-lit for a post-millennium Seagal offering but this is a mixed blessing. While it's pleasing to see him in something other than a face-only Col. Kurtz impersonation, the fact he's (reasonably) well lit merely makes him look like what he is - fat. The fights are cumbersome and not a single blow impresses.Seagal's lines have been dubbed - poorly - and there's a noticeable difference in his voice depending on whether we can see his face or not, and almost everything he says when off camera sounds like it was read into a dictaphone on a lazy Sunday afternoon on his couch after a few too many doobies. Still, he's not the only one. MC Harvey, a former member of UK rap collective So Solid Crew, suffers the indignity of having his film debut dubbed entirely by an actor with a more masculine voice. After they meet towards the beginning of the film he shouts after Seagal's character "Don't forget about me Burns!" It's the last we see of him.But aside from one bad guy who inexplicably develops superhuman powers, some dreadful CGI and pointless green screen work, that's about the only amusement the film has to offer. The lead villain is so over the top it's outrageously hammy even by cheesy action movie standards. Delivering lines like "I have decided we must put an end to this professor" it's the kind of performance that would be laughed out of a Power Rangers audition. Having said that, he explains the plot so many times it's hard not to wish your manager were more like him for clarity in the workplace's sake.It plays out almost like a video game, with ten bosses being defeated one by one until the final showdown but I promise that's not as much fun as it sounds. That final showdown is a complete non-event and an embarrassment even to a film of this quality. It's painful - although not impossible - to watch, and even die-hard Seagal fans will struggle to find anything of worth in this tedious, derivative bore.

Wow, what can I say, Well I could add all the words of every review written here and the end result would grossly fail to portray just how unbelievably horrible this movie is. But I think I can sum it up in one sentence, here goes, Steven Seagal has officially, undeniably, and irrevocably lost his bad ass status forever. The question that begs answering is how in the hell do movies like this get made in the first place, that means a lot of really untalented people had to be involved in making this. I have a theory: This movie will end up making a lot of money, Why? Because once word gets around about how bad this movie is people will want to see it to believe it. Furthermore, this movie will assuredly take its place at film schools around the world when a reference or illustration as to what not to do in movie making is needed. Too bad cause I really liked him, but he has shamelessly and sadly reduced himself to nothing more than a laughing stock has-been. The only reason I made it more than 5 minutes into this movie was because I really wanted to see just how bad it was and I can honestly say on that note the movie really delivered. On a good note, at least this movie will be able to inspire future film makers because if a movie like this can get made, then even the worst of the aspiring film makers out there will have hope at achieving success and probably have a really good shot at making it. I really hope Seagal stops embarrassing himself, maybe stop with the movies and get back in the gym so he can loose the trench-coat that pathetically tries to hide the fact that he has lost his bad ass status only to replace it with an equal amount of weight. Seriously man stop embarrassing yourself.

Michael Oblowitz must have been stoned out of his mind and I will be avoiding movies made by him in the future. Watching this movie must be like a bad trip. The perspective is zooming in and out all the time and jumps from one location to an other so often it will make you dizzy watching. Though Seagal never was more than a martial art action hero, good OLD Seagal became a cartoon of himself trying to hide his fatness in a big leather coat, which hardly ever comes off. I think I saw him getting dressed in it when he woke up and went out of bed. Excuse me for not wanting to look at it again to make sure. Probably he became so slow that every fight scene was edited in slow motion with lots of smoke and flashes to make it look like a fight scene. He meets hoods in several parts of the world that are in a smoke filled room in the U.S.A. the next moment and back in Europe the next. At least the few women were pretty nice although they couldn't really act either.