Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Exit Wounds Blu-ray Movie Review

Painful

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 25, 2014

Released in March 2001 with little competition, Exit Wounds was one of Steven Seagal's more successful films, but that doesn't make it a good movie. In the EPK featurette included in the extras, a producer explains that the film "begins" at the point where Seagal's supercop, having been busted down to traffic duty, hangs up his whistle in his locker and sighs as he realizes he's hit rock bottom. It's an astute observation, but someone should have told the screenwriter, the director and the editor, because that moment doesn't occur until almost half an hour into the film, by which point anyone who expects movies to tell a decent story will have long since tuned out. One of the basic requirements of an effective action picture is efficient exposition. The good guys, the bad guys and the stakes at issue have to be laid out as quickly and clearly as possible. Producer Joel Silver, who is the king of action pictures, and director Andrzej Bartkowiak, who photographed Speed, a model of the genre, should have known better.

Then again, Silver may have simply been counting on the novelty of Seagal's return to the screen after a hiatus of several years, following the commercially disappointing Fire Down Below and direct-to-video (in the U.S.) The Patriot. By uniting Seagal with co-star DMX (who was prominently featured in the promotional campaign and on the soundtrack), Silver was targeting an urban demographic (his term, not mine) that could be pre-sold for a big opening weekend and subsequent album sales. Indeed, everything about Exit Wounds, from its nominal Detroit setting (changed from the source book's Long Island locale and doubled by Canada) to its music to its wire-enhanced martial arts (a first for Seagal, but not for Silver, who was simultaneously working on The Matrix sequels) stinks of commercial calculation. Who cared whether the story was told well?

Orin Boyd (Seagal) is that movie staple, the maverick cop who leaps into dangerous situations and always does The Right Thing even if it makes him enemies. He's the bane of his superiors' existence on the Detroit Police Force, especially his long-time commander, Frank Daniels (Bruce McGill), and his boss, Chief Hinges (Bill Duke). In a spectacular and over-the-top opening sequence that has almost nothing to do with the rest of the film, Boyd rescues the visiting U.S. Vice-President from an ambush by an unidentified group of paramilitary extremists who manage to outgun and out-maneuver both the police force and the Secret Service. But since everyone is embarrassed by the incident, including the V.P., Boyd gets banished to the roughest precinct in town, which is overseen—if you can swallow this—by an elegantly dressed former Internal Affairs detective, Lt. Annette Mulcahy (Jill Hennessy, formerly of Law & Order).

But wait! The story still hasn't started yet. First, Boyd has to meet all the cops in his new precinct, including his future partner, Clark (Isaiah Washington), blunder into an undercover operation being conducted by Det. Montini (David Vadim), get hazed by the squad and almost foil a heroin heist from the police evidence locker (another big action sequence). Only then, after he's been stuck directing traffic (ineptly) and sent to a pathetic parody of anger management classes attended by Tom Arnold's Henry Wayne, a local talk show host, is Orin Boyd ready to dive into the plot of Exit Wounds. By this point, the film is almost half over.

The plot has something to do with a major heroin dealer named Latrell Walker (DMX), whose loudmouth driver and lieutenant is a club owner named T.K., but you might as well call him Anthony Anderson, because Anderson, like Tom Arnold, always plays the same character who can be dropped into any script as a reliable sidekick. Latrell has an unspecified connection to a prisoner in lockup named Shaun Rollins (Drag-On), and dirty cops are somehow involved. By the time this all gets sorted out, we have had plenty more gunfire, car stunts, martial arts, dead bodies—and, of course, chunks of additional exposition, because if your action script fails to set up the story at the outset, you have to keep pausing to fill it. This often creates pacing problems, because the best action movies move relentlessly forward. The last thing a filmmaker should do is hit "pause" to explain things that should be clicking into place automatically, because they were set up properly at the outset. That's why, whenever Exit Wounds tries to spring a "reveal", it falls flat. You can't surprise viewers with a twist, when you've failed to get them on the right path.

Exit Wounds Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

For Exit Wounds, Bartkowiak reunited with cinematographer Glen MacPherson, who shot his debut film, Romeo Must Die. MacPherson once again delivered Bartkowiak's preferred style, with beautiful lighting and rich colors, further undercutting the illusion that the story takes place in Detroit or that the precinct to which Boyd has been assigned as punishment is in any way a hellhole. The image on Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is sharply detailed, down to the wear-and-tear of aging that was beginning to show in Seagal's face. The brightly lit (and hosed-down) streets at night, the flourescent shades of T.K.'s club and even the interiors of office buildings all look attractive under MacPherson's lighting, and the actors all appear to best advantage.

If the screenshots look somewhat soft, that's probably because Bartkowiak's camera is constantly moving, so that individual frames usually suffer from some degree of motion blur. Generally, though, the image in motion remains naturally sharp, without any evidence of electronic enhancement or other digital manipulation. A fine grain pattern can be observed in the background. Warner has once again risked overcompression with an average bitrate of 19.42 Mbps, which really shouldn't be allowed for an action film, but they seem to have gotten away with it, at least at the size at which I watched the film (which is 72").

Exit Wounds Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Consistent with its overall aesthetic, the 5.1 soundtrack for Exit Wounds, presented on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, is loud and agressive, with heavy-duty bass extension and every gunshot, tire skid and shattering of glass on audio steroids. The music and effects are mixed at such high volume that it often takes a foghorn voice like Tom Arnold's or Anthony Anderson's to be heard clearly. Seagal's trademark whisper frequently gets buried, and his throwaway quips are genuinely thrown away, because they can't be heard. No loss; viewers don't watch Steven Seagal films for the dialogue.

The surrounds are actively employed in the many action scenes and in locales full of ambient noise like T.K.'s overwrought club (which is surely more upscale than anything Detroit has seen in recent years). The surrounds also provide depth to the underscoring by Damon "Grease" Blackman and Jeff Rona (White Squall), as well as the pulsing soundtrack selections by DMX, Drag-On, Ja Rule, Moby and Brian Eno, among others.

Exit Wounds Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2006 DVD of Exit Wounds.

• The Making of Exit Wounds (480i; 1.33:1; 18:50): This intensely promotional featurette includes interviews with all the principal cast, as well as with producers Joel Silver and Dan Cracchiolo. (Director Bartkowiak is notably absent.) Everyone obviously had high hopes for the film. What would be interesting would be a cast retrospective. One wonders how many cast members would be as frank as Eva Mendes, who has a small part and later pronounced the film "terrible" after her dialogue was dubbed by another actress because the producers didn't think she sounded sufficiently intelligent for her part.



• A Day on the Set with Anthony Anderson (480i; 1.33:1; 8:52): A documentary crew follows Anderson through a day's shooting while he cracks wise.



• Music Video: DMX "No Sunshine" (480i; 2.40:1; 5:28).



• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 2.40:1, enhanced; 2:15): The trailer contains what might be considered spoilers. Then again, it doesn't reveal anything you can't see coming from a mile away.

Exit Wounds Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

From the very beginning of Seagal's film career, the risk of self-parody always lurked around the edge of the frame. To the credit of both the actor and his director, that danger never materializes in Exit Wounds, which is why the film isn't a disaster. But it lacks the narrative clarity of Hard to Kill or either of the Under Siege films, which makes it a second-rate entry by an action star who was, from the outset, never top-tier player. Seagal fans can add this Blu-ray to their collection with confidence that it adequately represents the film. Anyone else should rent first.