Maximum Conviction (2012)

steven segal and steve austin are fantastic. they are both older but they still get the job done. i always enjoy seing good and tough guys get rid of the bad guys. but a movie is never very good unless the bad guys seem to be invinsible. there are a lot of twist and turns the kept me on the edge of my seat. just when i thought there were no more good movies at the the theatres or on dvd. this one came out along with many others.

Cross (Steven Seagal) is an operational genius. His partner Manning (Steve Austin) is a weapons expert. They are ex-special forces who work as black ops contractors. Their current job is to decommission a black ops prison, one that doesn't officially exist and is located in Oregon (seriously?). For some reason our "operational genius" decides to shut down the prison while it still has prisoners in it.

During this period there are men dressed as Federal Marshals attempting a "high risk extraction" of two female prisoners to prevent them from going to a civilian prison. The film consists of Seagal/Austin and crew fighting in a prison maze against the bad guys. Seagal doesn't know if the women are in league with the bad guys or if the bad guys want them dead. It isn't hard for us to figure it out from their faces which show expressions. (Take note Steven, it's called acting!)

Early in the film Steven Seagal laughs, something I don't recall him doing in another movie. It made me laugh to watch it.

The plot is simple as most Seagal productions. There is plenty of killing, fighting, and blood. The picture appears to have been written more with Seagal in mind than Austin. I had expected more. Austin has done better films, and with Seagal it is hard to tell. This could have been one of his better productions. They need to write a part for Danny Trejo and make him the perennial bad guy. I smell sequel.

Parental Guide: F-bomb, no sex, no nudity.

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I had even expectations for this film. On one hand, this was not only one of the rare filmic team-ups between Steven Seagal and a fellow action hero of similar caliber, but it was also the longest time the former had taken to make a movie in almost ten years something I hoped was the result of more effort being made in the production. On the other hand, it was directed by Keoni Waxman, the filmmaker who's now officially worked with Steven Seagal more times than any other but whose vehicles are among my least favorite of Seagal's filmography. Then again, I liked Waxman's outing with Steve Austin well enough, so I considered that perhaps "Maximum Conviction" here could achieve some kind of acceptable balance. I was right: the movie is acceptable, but far from great. It doesn't make all it could have of the collaboration between Seagal and Austin, but is still an okay-enough DTV action outing.

The story: two private security contractors (Seagal and Austin) are caught up in a deadly situation when the two prisoners they had delivered to a secret prison are targeted by a lethal team of mercenaries led by an ex-CIA mastermind (Michael Pare, Streets of Fire).

It needs to be said: however good they may look on paper, Steven Seagal and Steve Austin do not make very exciting partners. Of course, one factor is the limited screentime they share, but even when they're both in the same scene, they seem relatively apathetic to eachother and don't display any discernible chemistry. On their own, they do alright, with Austin as definitely the more charismatic of the two but Seagal getting more fight scenes. They have equal amounts of screentime. The co-stars do fine but are sort of wasted: B-movie staple performer Michael Pare clomps his way through a boring role, and even though Steph Song (Dim Sum Funeral) one of the aforementioned prisoners has a good deal of award nominations to her name, she's given no strong acting scenes and her role could've been played by most anybody. Yes, the script by True Justice-regular Richard Beattie is pretty passive, highlighted only by a couple particularly mean-spirited deaths and the occasional funny line by Austin ("Which one of you [jerks] killed my future ex-wife?").

The action is predominantly composed of shootouts, but there's nothing special to these. Seagal's stunt doubles are hidden relatively well, but at the expense of the editing, which is once again pretty choppy during his fight scenes not as much as it has been in the past, but it's still pretty annoying. With that said, Seagal still gets the occasional cool move in, and the final brawl though painfully one-sided is fun to watch in a guilty way. Steve Austin only has one real fight, but prior to this he gets entertainingly innovative in the prison kitchen, turning a gas tank into a missile and attacking a mercenary with a pot of boiling water. The best fight in the movie doesn't belong to either of them, though: martial artist Bren Foster (Fight Science), despite being stifled by the same editing present in Seagal's fights, brings an energy to his single brawl that the other encounters were sorely lacking. Overall, I deem the action content on the low side of passable.

That also counts as my synopsis for the movie in general. Amateurish post-production inserts can be found here and there but are otherwise restrained, and Steven Seagal is doing his own voiceovers again, but these plus points are deflated a bit by the lackluster story and ho-hum pacing of the film. While it's a good deal better than the previous Born to Raise Hell and therefore a general step up for Seagal (I'm not as well-versed in Austin's output, so I can't speak for him), it's not nearly all I was hoping for during the year-and-a-half spent waiting for it. Consider it a rental.

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With Steven Seagal and Steve Austin you can't go wrong. Bad guys break into a secret government maximum-security prison but they're going to be sorry they did. Even the female prisoners who aren't supposed to be there are tough, one more so than the other and take down a burly prisoner who wants a piece. Steven Seagal is so practiced at beating up bad guys I don't think he bleeds at all. It's action with special ops backup who are a step ahead and don't make a habit of making wrong moves. Of course for the bad guys it's all about money, which they lose out on, Steven winds up with, shares with his partner and the good-guy female prisoner after all she's been through. Now where can I find a guy like that?

It's entertainment. If you've had a bad day at the office plug Maximum Conviction in and let Steven Seagal and Steve Austin beat up the bad guys for you. You'll feel better.

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Way cool to see Austin and Seagal do an action movie together it'd be awesome to see them do a more high budget film where the characters can have more dimensionality and the stakes could be something a bit more grounded and high pitched!

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