The Foreigner starts in Paris where undercover agent Jonathan Cold (Steven Seagal) is hired by his friend Alexander Marquee (Philip Dunbar) to collect a package & deliver it to an address in Germany. Cold agrees but as he takes delivery of the package a load of guy's try to kill him but fail, miserably. Despite nearly being killed Cold still agrees to take the package to Germany & deliver it to rich industrialist Jerome Van Aitken (Harry Van Gorkum), however it's just not that simple as lots of guy's in long black coats want the package themselves & will kill to get it...
This Polish American co-production was directed by Michael Oblowitz & is bad Seagal which has been said more than a few times over the past few years. The script by Darren Campbell (no, not the retired British Gold Olympic medal winning sprinter! I hope..) takes itself extremely seriously & is a bit of a mess, it jumps all over Europe from Paris to Poland to Germany to Norway seemingly at random & bizarrely although there are occasionally captions to let us know where we are they appear at random & not on every occasion we need them. Then there are the terrible character's, you won't care anybody in The Foreigner or anything that happens to them. The film doesn't quite work & there are lapses of logic (the are obviously no police in Europe & you can openly kill people & carry guns & bombs across borders like it was duty free) & as a whole it just doesn't come together at all particularly the very rushed & unsatisfactory ending. At almost 100 minutes it's too long & not exciting enough to maintain ones interest or like for it. Not Seagal's best work.
Director Oblowitz doesn't do anything special here, the whole film has a very grey, muted colour scheme & it looks like Europe is constantly overcast. Then there's the decision to dress virtually all the bad guy's up exactly the same in long black leather coats, watch it & you'll notice it. The action is generally confined to dull shoot outs where the bad guy's can't shoot straight as usual & Seagal never runs out of bullets, yawn. Looking at Seagal his weight gain is really noticeable, the harsh fact is that he is like Elvis & the older he gets the fatter he gets. He doesn't really have a neck here as it's more just blubber. Set & shot in Europe this even looks bland & fails to capitalise on it's locations.
I was gob-smacked to see that this had a very healthy budget of around $20,000,000 because it certainly didn't end up on screen. This was apparently slated for a theatrical release but was canned & went straight to video after Seagal's previous film Half Past Dead (2002) bombed at the box office. Shot in Poland this probably had some expensive location shooting but not much else bar a couple of explosions. The acting isn't up to much, Seagal is Seagal & mumbles his way the film while I must admit I thought Anna-Louise Plowman who plays Meredith was pretty hot but she's not in it enough to make it watchable.
The Foreigner is a poor action film, if your a Seagal fan remember the good times & watch films like Under Siege 1 & 2 again instead. Not recommended although by no means the worst film ever as some have claimed. The Foreigner was amazingly followed by a sequel Black Dawn (2005) although it's no surprise they tried to distance themselves from this & give it a completely different title.
This Polish American co-production was directed by Michael Oblowitz & is bad Seagal which has been said more than a few times over the past few years. The script by Darren Campbell (no, not the retired British Gold Olympic medal winning sprinter! I hope..) takes itself extremely seriously & is a bit of a mess, it jumps all over Europe from Paris to Poland to Germany to Norway seemingly at random & bizarrely although there are occasionally captions to let us know where we are they appear at random & not on every occasion we need them. Then there are the terrible character's, you won't care anybody in The Foreigner or anything that happens to them. The film doesn't quite work & there are lapses of logic (the are obviously no police in Europe & you can openly kill people & carry guns & bombs across borders like it was duty free) & as a whole it just doesn't come together at all particularly the very rushed & unsatisfactory ending. At almost 100 minutes it's too long & not exciting enough to maintain ones interest or like for it. Not Seagal's best work.
Director Oblowitz doesn't do anything special here, the whole film has a very grey, muted colour scheme & it looks like Europe is constantly overcast. Then there's the decision to dress virtually all the bad guy's up exactly the same in long black leather coats, watch it & you'll notice it. The action is generally confined to dull shoot outs where the bad guy's can't shoot straight as usual & Seagal never runs out of bullets, yawn. Looking at Seagal his weight gain is really noticeable, the harsh fact is that he is like Elvis & the older he gets the fatter he gets. He doesn't really have a neck here as it's more just blubber. Set & shot in Europe this even looks bland & fails to capitalise on it's locations.
I was gob-smacked to see that this had a very healthy budget of around $20,000,000 because it certainly didn't end up on screen. This was apparently slated for a theatrical release but was canned & went straight to video after Seagal's previous film Half Past Dead (2002) bombed at the box office. Shot in Poland this probably had some expensive location shooting but not much else bar a couple of explosions. The acting isn't up to much, Seagal is Seagal & mumbles his way the film while I must admit I thought Anna-Louise Plowman who plays Meredith was pretty hot but she's not in it enough to make it watchable.
The Foreigner is a poor action film, if your a Seagal fan remember the good times & watch films like Under Siege 1 & 2 again instead. Not recommended although by no means the worst film ever as some have claimed. The Foreigner was amazingly followed by a sequel Black Dawn (2005) although it's no surprise they tried to distance themselves from this & give it a completely different title.