July 28, 2023 • 37 mins
Steven Seagal is one of the biggest action stars of the '90s, starring in some of the biggest action films of the decade. He ended up dropping off the radar completely in the early 2000s, being relegated to the Walmart bargain bins and truck stop DVD corners. Mainstream action fans all but forget his talents, but no longer.
The Kulturecast's Chris Stachiw and film critic Trevor Gumbel continue their downhill jog through the stoic world of everyone's favorite portly Aikido master with Code of Honor. Craig Sheffer is Steven Seagal in one of the more interesting straight-to-video films we've talked about.
For more episodes of On Seagal along with many more podcasts that are guaranteed to be your new favorite audio obsession, check out Weirding Way Media at weirdingwaymedia.com.
The Kulturecast's Chris Stachiw and film critic Trevor Gumbel continue their downhill jog through the stoic world of everyone's favorite portly Aikido master with Code of Honor. Craig Sheffer is Steven Seagal in one of the more interesting straight-to-video films we've talked about.
For more episodes of On Seagal along with many more podcasts that are guaranteed to be your new favorite audio obsession, check out Weirding Way Media at weirdingwaymedia.com.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:29):
However, one and welcome to theOnsagal Podcast. I am one of your
hosts, Kristashi. I'm joined asalways by my good friend. He is
all the way on the West Coast. They call it the best Coast,
the one and only. Hello.Hello. I've been wondering where Craig Shepherd
has been, and god damn it, I got my hands. He's breeding
in the night if he could figureout which hole the stick at end.
On this episode of Onstagal, we'retalking about twenty sixteens un justis like shitty
(00:53):
titles at this point, like theseare these? Like these twenty sixteen movies
have the lamest, most generic soundtitles along with the titles of the characters.
Names are bad, but my god, the movie's names are worse.
On this episode, we're gonna betalking about twenty sixteen's Cold Honor. And
tell me that doesn't sound like aknockoff of like Navy Seals Call of Duty.
(01:15):
Yeah, you would think like amilitary Navy Seals kind of action FLA.
But no, nothing, nothing,no, no, yeah exactly,
boy, I didn't even think aboutthat. Yeah. So, ladies and
gentlemen, this film is directed andwritten by one Michael Winnock. It stars
Steven Seagal, at least that's whatthe box says. At least that's what
the trailers would lead you to believe, but it's actually a story focused more
(01:37):
on one Craig Scheffer, Yes,your lead from Night Breed, and he
is a cop, a former excuseme, like a former military guy who's
searching for Steven Seagal, who isa vigilante who has taken out the trash
and I guess la a crime writtenla and he's a one man vigilante squad
looking for looking for love and allthe places including alley ways. I mean,
(02:01):
he's just the term he's a wreckingball is what I would call this,
because he is literally a human deathmachine in this movie. And it
gets to the point where he's justlike killing people with wanton abandoned women included,
which again questionable kind of motives whenwe get to the Steven Seagal character.
(02:23):
But Trevor, we'd never seen thismovie before, neither one of us
had, so I want you togive me your thoughts. What did you
think of twenty sixteen's Code of Honor? Oh? Good god right, that
was my response when we got tothe end of the movie. We're going
to have so much to talk.I mean, you know, I think
you knows fight club some some residentrevenue sixth cents. Maybe just like pulling
(02:46):
out, pulling out the stops rightat the end. Yeah, God,
what a fucking joke, right,Craig Sheffer has Oh man, he deserved
shit, man does he though?Because he knew what he was getting himself
into. I guess you could say, can you imagine being the lead in
a movie where the other actor who'sthe psychotic version of you is the one
(03:07):
build on the poster slash the box? Yeah, I mean, ah,
yikes, right, that's fucked up. I mean when your biggest star besides
fan Damn Houstas met Or Louis Mandelorand h Craig Sheffer, you, yeah,
prob I mean Louis manda As muchas I love Louis Mandelor, I
love Costas cost me too, Yeah, I like, yeah, I'm a
fan of both of them. They'reyeah yeah, um yeah, I mean
(03:30):
he's he's The film starts out withlike this drug deal going down, like
factory parking lot or whatever, right, yeah, right, non descript parking
lot out in the open and thenuh, you see Seagal on the rooftop
with a rifle and basically he's thebest shot there is because he never fucking
misses. No. Oh, bythe way, can we talk about the
(03:51):
flood effects? You mean the aftereffects? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
terrible after effects. Why it couldn'tafford squibs? This movie could not
afford scripts or like we'll just addit in post. They went to fucking
Microsoft paint. But the thing is, like, this is what I expect.
You know, we talked about onthe Culture Cast recently, we talked
about the Three from Hell or theFirefly trilogy, and in Three from Hell
(04:15):
that Rob Zombie movie, he useshe uses those after effect blood effects,
and I was just like, whatthe fuck Rob Zombie doesn't have a budget
to deal with this. I expectit here, Like I'm not surprised here
because it's you know, these moviesare made on like what I imagine is
a shoe string budget outside of thefact that they have to entice segall into
being in them somehow. To paraphrasethe director of Swingers, Um Doug Lyman,
(04:39):
the budget for this one was probablywhat the movie, uh, probably
what a Navy seal spent on theircatering budget, right, Yeah, I
mean that's essentially it Like, that'slike that, that's where that's that's where
I come in with this movie.It's like I have seen better kinds of
these movies. Yeah, this isthe action movie version of the I've never
(05:00):
seen an action version of this.Have you like this twist? The twist?
I mean it's a it's a verypoorly done twist, but it's a
twist that I have not seen donein an action movie. No, I
will give that credit. I havenot seen this before. Unfortunately, it
was spoiled because I had already watcheda review from one of my favorite online
reviewers, and I had seen thatbecause I was as I was watching the
(05:23):
film, like have I seen thisbefore? Did we do this? And
I just forgot about it? Didwe just forget we did this film?
Then it hit my end like,oh my god. I watched a dmudahg
in Film Brain review about this movie, and I know the twist before the
twist happened, and I'm like,oh, Gryce, even the execution the
leading up to it is terribly done, really badly done, and maybe I
(05:44):
should just skip them. Me andwatch the review probably would have saved me
some time, like an hour atleast. Well, that's why I didn't
watch the review, like I neverwatched anything before I watched movies anymore,
because I don't want to regurge someoneelse by act. And I'm not saying
you are. What I'm saying,it's it's a very real problem that could
happen, because I don't want someoneto be like, well, you stole
my thought. It's like I didwell to be fair, it was a
(06:05):
review i'd seen before we get startedthis podcast. Oh sure, well that's
like, that's my point, likeit doesn't count anyways, But my god,
this movie's twist is just idiotic,Like what's what's insane is it doesn't
make any sense? And well,yeah, exactly, And that was my
next point, is they it doesn'tmake any sense on the face of it
(06:26):
with the first twist, and thenthey double twist it, which makes even
less sense than the actual twist.So it's it's compounding stupidity. You twisted
yourself, and now you have fuckingplayed yourself, because what they try to
do at the actual end of thismovie is fucking frankly insulted. Yeah.
Actually, I was like stupid,like so fucking stupid. I don't even
(06:48):
understand what in the holy hell theywere going for because it makes no sense.
Let's set it none zero zero sense. Does it make none? Well,
here's the thing, Uh, CraigShriver's chair for. We don't really
know vig even is FBI or whatever. He just shows up. He just
shows up because he's doing this allon his own, independently, because he
knows Sigal. He knows because theyI think they served together. Yep.
(07:11):
Yeah, in the military. Hewas like his like sense say, in
military. Yeah, so he knowswhat Sigal was capable. So that's why
he's like on the trail of thisguy because he wants to catch him before
because he knows how good he is. That's what And that's what he tells
Lewis Mandy Lord. You don't getthe sense that like he's operating on his
own. You find that out laterin the movie that he's like, you
know, discharged and he's kind oflike he's a whacko. You know,
he's his age, his cannon onhis own. He's a loose cannon.
(07:34):
Yeah. So it's yeah, andso that's the whole thing. It's like,
you don't get the sense that there'sgonna be a twist because again,
they're not confident enough as filmmakers tohandle the twist in the right way,
so they fucking fumble it and insteadof trying, Instead of trying, which
was would have been really hard andwould have required some ability to execute properly,
(07:55):
they just throw the twist in andlike do the minor of like most
minor of things. He's like he'sa loose cannon, which is like probably
their way of saying, like,oh, he's killing people, and the
thing with the double knives, it'slike, oh, he's he's unhinged.
To me, it's like they're thosewere their attempts at foreshadowing, and those
are really lame and like they don'twork at all. No, they don't.
(08:16):
And frankly, I mean Louis Mandalora, I mean he needed more scenes
because he was he was just thebest part of this movie. He's gone
to like a forty five minute spam. Yeah, they don't really do anything
with his character other than other thanhim talk about give exposition kind of bookends.
He frankly kind of just bookends themovie. He's at the main,
(08:37):
you know kind of drug drop atthe beginning where Stigall shows up, and
then he's there at the end wherethe building explodes. O Jesus fucking Christ's
squibs look at the explosions and yeah, it's like this movie halfway through decided
like let's just have a full onfucking aneurysm because it just loses its mind.
(08:58):
It just goes yeah. Okay,so the twist is okay. So
here's the twist. I want you. I want you to spoil the movie
because we haven't really spoiled it.Okay, I don't think we can talk
about this movie anymore without spoiling it. Okay, spoilers stop here if you
don't want to hear anymore. Allright, do you want me to do
both twists? Are just the one, the first one. Let's talk about
it, Okay. So from hereon out we're doing spoilers, but we're
spoil and we're gonna talk the twistand the counter twist. Yes, so
(09:22):
apparently, I mean Chrick Scheffer's characterhas like a file that he's you know,
been discharged. He's had issues withhis you know, can't handle himself.
He's kind of been having breakdowns andshit like that. And then we
are told to believe or meant tosee that, uh, Shecheffer and Seagal
are one and the same, thatSeagal is a figment of Shecheffer's imagination that
(09:43):
he's using as a projection of aperson who is taking down these criminals,
when it's actually Cheffer killing these criminals. And and we're meant to think that
Segal is just all in his headall that kind of the twist from My
Bloody Valentine. So is Seagal everexists? Yes? Okay, so Segal
was a real So it's kind oflike the thing in Dexter. That's the
(10:03):
way I imagine it. It's likelike his dark passing. Well, the
end, they confirmed he exists,remembercause they top in the rooftop right and
and Segal says, uh, youknow, clever making them think you were
crazy and that you and me werethe same. So he was, he
did exist, but it does he'sdead. He was making these plans to
make them think Cheffer was crazy anddo with all these killings because he was
(10:26):
gone in sane. And that wasthe second a very terrible second list.
It was like trying to be thisfight club. Hold on a second.
That wait what No, no,No, my reading is Segal was not
dead. He was not dead.He was very much alive on that roof.
My reading, No, okay,my reading is that Segal is dead
and he's all a figment of hisimagination. Then how do he explain the
(10:48):
rooftop scene were he's saying, goodjob making them think you and I were
the same. That's all in hishead. I don't think so. I
think that was real. I thinkthat was actually him. Then how did
Craig Cheffer? Then? How toexplain the thing with Craig Sheffer in the
balloon at the end, because that'swhat I thought you were talking about,
because Lewis Mandylore says like they werethe same person. There was no William
Porter. Yeah, but William Borrddidn't exist. He just they just umld
(11:09):
on, right. I can't,it's I can't. Oh man, did
he say he died in there inhis military file? That's what I don't
remember. That's what I don't remember. That's what I thought they said.
That's what I thought, that Seagalwas already dead and like it was like
a dark passenger dexter thing where he'sconcocted, like his version of him in
(11:30):
his own head. That's like myassisting. Yeah, but my interpretation was
Seagal was alive this whole time,So yours is a literal interpretation. Well,
basically because when they watched the video, because there's one scene where Shepherd
and Seagal meet in this like nightclubdance club thing and Seagal tells him there's
a bomb under your seat if youget up. This all goes up and
spoke, and the video camera veryuh kind of coincidentally or fortuitously has where
(11:54):
Seagall is supposed to sit as ablock something blocking the camera right, can't
see Segal, so you don't knowif he was at actually there. So
crag Scheffer, you know, theycall him the bomb squad or whatever,
and kraig Scheffer is like, wasn'tthere like a shootout where he's trying to
stay seated in the chair while he'sfucking yeah, It's like, well that
yeah, yeah, And then itturns out what there was never a bombit
or that chair right, No,Segal does not exist, is my point?
(12:16):
Or Seagal was fucking with him,No no, no, no,
no no no, I'm telling youthis. You're giving this movie way too
much credit. This movie literally hasSeagal existing in his mind and it's just
him dissociated. It's that it's thatlazy. It's like, that's why I
was saying like it owes a lotto sixth cents and other things, because
it's like it's just going for notit was all a dream, but you
(12:39):
just dissociated and don't remember doing it. I'll have my bloody valentine. I
am very sorry if it was referredto that I was trying to give this
petti fucking credit. It kind offelt like you were like, oh,
but he's still alive. It's like, oh no. My point is those
twists were done well. My oneat the end was the thing about the
balloon. If it's my interpretation.If it's the interpretation, well they're done
(13:00):
terribly either way. Yeah. Andthe building it foolished at the end is
terribly done. The helicopter, thehelicopter taking him um is obviously cged at
the end credits. This whole movieis a fucking mess. From frame one,
this is you know what, It'salmost kind of so bad it's it's
watchable in that kind of way.It's fun. It's like stupid does everything
(13:20):
so wrong that you kind of haveto see it to believe it, because
the attempt was really there. ButI think it verges on being so bad
it's good. I think again,I think it takes itself too seriously.
I think there's yeah, you knowit's there are parts of this movie where
it's a slog it's one hundred andsix minutes, like fucking come off.
It's but luckily as long as it'sa phone where you can have it out
(13:43):
in the background, be on yourphone, and you won't miss a goddamn
thing. Yeah, But to befair, like when I watch it for
this, I can't afford to dothat because it's it's still like insanity,
how fucking wild. Like what's wildto me about these movies more than anything
else, is they're not just fartingthis out. They're they're wrying, and
(14:03):
it's like, are they failing,are they failing in spite of themselves or
are they just this uncoordinated when itcomes to writing a halfway decent screenplay.
That's what I can't figure out.I think Seagal is not very good at
reading scripts or check or picking thembecause I think he does read scripts.
I think there's written for I thinkyes, And I think these films getting
(14:24):
made because Segal put his name.And that's how there's so many of these
things. And that's why something sohorribly done could still be released, is
because Seagal's name on it, andfor some reason it still sells. It
still sells rental because I don't thinkanyone's behind thee or maybe they did.
There's there's five dollar bins a wall. Uh. It just seems like Seagal's
name, as shocking as this sound, still has some clout. Yeah,
(14:46):
just so you know. The theinterpretation by the director, The director said
that Seagal's interpretation of the ending isthat his character framed Craig Scheffer and got
a word. That's what I That'swhat my didial, I know. But
I think that also that's the selfserving interpretation for mister Seagal. Um.
Well, because the movie makes itpretty crystal clear that the other interpretation is
(15:07):
a valid one. Well, we'vesaid before sea can never die, right
right, right, which is likethis decision was an exception to the rule,
but he wasn't. I mean,his build, his build as those
trailers for that movie make him seemlike the lead he was Warner Brothers,
Golcade. Yeah yeah, um notnow, not for this movie. Not
(15:28):
when he's zip lining on the greenscree oh my god. Some of Like
what's funny is this is again we'rein working this kind of counter timeline that
we're doing. We get to seethe good and the bad, but then
the good becoming the bad and thebad maybe becoming good, like because there
are things in this there are thingsin this movie that like I didn't see
in the other movies that we've recentlywatched, Like this movie does kind of
(15:50):
have a more interesting plot than likea bunch of gangsters are mad at other
gangsters, which has been like thelast three movies we watched. Right,
I'll give it that. I'll thinkthat it was of all the movies we've
watched, it's the less um,it's the less hackneyed and um, at
least of these kinds not feel likeit feels less churned out right, Right,
it feels like there was actual thoughtput into this, Right, That's
(16:12):
and that's what I'm saying, Likeit's of all the movies that we've watched,
of this kind of era of Seagal. It's weird because this one feels
drastically different but very much the same. It still has a lot of the
same problems, but the problems thatit has, even as bad as they
are, are not as bad aslike China Salesman, Yeah, or some
(16:32):
of those other movies we watched thatjust felt very like this is the same
thing, to the point where wegot two of them. Fucking it's it's
it's one of those. I'm notmad, I'm just disappointed movie, right
because the potential was there, right, it was wasted because apparently, you
know, I mean, I don'tthink it's Seagal's fault because he had nothing
to do with Scriptum. I thinkthe production values are low. Yeah,
(16:55):
I mean I give them credit forworking with what they ad, but you
know, you have to have acompelling story and a compelling script and kind
of make it work. Because ifyou're gonna have this twist, work with
it a little bit. Don't justthrow it out there and say this is
it because it doesn't feel I mean, the twist is a little bit set
up. The first twist is alittle bit set up, but it needs
to be set up a little betterand less like, oh, a fucking
(17:18):
course this was right. This isJerry Simon signing off because you know the
whole it was me all along.Thing is such an overdone twist usual suspects,
I guess, or the dream sequencethat it was all a dream thing,
right, It's like that, It'slike that equivalent, like this is
the second if that's one A,this is one b of like a character
who you didn't think is one thingis something else. Like that's the next
(17:41):
biggest twist. I was like itwas all a dream. Yeah, I
mean, like fight Club, Ithink set the standard for how to do
the you know, they were thesame person the whole time, okay,
or my bloody valance. I don'tknow. I'm trying to think because like
this is its own kind of subgenreof movies because once you know the twist,
watching the movie is like a verydifferent experience. Well could you analyze
(18:03):
that? Right? So I wonder, like I wonder what a month of
those movies like that would be kindof fun, a month of twist movies,
but twist where it's a it's aspecific kind of twist, like the
the main character is like we know, going into these movies with the twists
are, but the main character issomeone else twist. Yeah, but we're
going with them, right, becauseagain, like I'm I'm not going in
(18:26):
to be shocked. I'm going into understand, Like I don't not talking
about usual suspects, but there areplenty of movies out there like fucking usual
Suspects. I was creative, no, right, But this movie is like
a prime example of like, themain character isn't who you thought. They
were executed so poorly that it's like, but who cares? Yeah, I
didn't care. He never interacted withanybody else anyway, So gaul was never
(18:48):
interacted with any body but were graSheffer to begin with, there were no
stakes in the people he killed becausehe aside from the women that he murder,
let me let me, let meclarify because for the first part he's
mostly killing bad guy drug dealers shitlike that, right, clearly bad guys,
clearly drugs. Yeah, so there'sreally kind of you don't really sense
(19:08):
a moral dilemma, you know,it's like, oh, selling bad guys.
There's so it's like you don't givea shit. I get on board
with him killing drug dealers any dayof the week. Yeah, But what
he killed women, innocent women thatit kind of stakes of it didn't just
kind of blew them up, detonateda bomb with innocent women. And unfortunately,
there there's no there's no Okay,here's the thing. There's no reason
(19:32):
why he's suddenly killing innocent right,it's not set up that, Oh,
first he kills just bad guys.Now he's on innocent people. There's no
there's no h there's no arc forthat. You don't see anything going.
You don't see his moral compass failing. No, not at all. It's
just suddenly innocent people can dynam Iwas like, what the what the fuck?
Yeah, I had no I didn'tunderstand again, like it felt like
(19:52):
it felt like a better movie washere, but in the hands of Michael
Winnick and friends, clearly not.And look, he edited, wrote and
directed this movie, so his handsare very deeply in, said Cookie Jar.
It's all on his hands. Yeahyou can. I'm sorry. It's
it's as the director. You shouldn'thave your actor telling you how to interpret
fucking movie. Yeah, but oh, he said, he said, he
(20:15):
survives. You're the director and youwrote the fucking movie. Man, does
he survive or not? Have someballs and say you fucking die with it.
I wonder if Seagal is the reasonwhy it feels wishy washy, and
there's two interpretation. I wonder ifSeagal is the reason that there's that one
seat at the end with them onthe what about the balloon thing? The
thing with the balloon is what pissedme off? Or not the balloon.
(20:36):
It's the catcher's mint. Oh,that he gives the kid at the end.
What is that? That's the twistthat I was talking about with the
catcher's mint, because I was like, they have the twist that he's not
the guy, like Stephen Seagal doesnot exist and Craig Scheffer is just the
guy. Okay, that's the firsttwist. And the second twist is after
he kills himself, he is stillalive. That's what that's the second twist
in the movie. I wash right. We forgot to mention there's woman and
(21:00):
her child in the film, buta stripper and her and her son and
her son. But she worked atthe club that got blown up. Yeah,
and she just happened to leave togo get her son. Yeah,
And I'm leaving to go get myson can you cover my cheft for me?
You're about to die? How muchdoes she even factor into the film,
Well, that's Craig Cheffer like protectsher. But again, like what
(21:22):
she knows is unimportant. Ultimately,everything that happens in this movie is unimportant
because it like it boils down toCraig Cheffer was Steven Seagal all along and
you don't know that. And sothe entire pursuit by Craig Cheffer of Steven
Seagal's character is an u is aplotline that has gone nowhere because he was
him all along, And that's theentire movie. The movie is not about
(21:45):
Seagal killing drug dealers. It's aboutCraig Cheffer protecting the stripper and making sure
that he catches Steven Seagal who happensto be him. And I'm sure if
we watch the film again analyzing it, we would see things in the film
that would have the plot have thetwist make no fucking sense. I watched
it twice just to make sure,and there are plenty of things. That's
(22:06):
what I was saying, Like it'ssuch a lazy twist because they didn't do
any of the successful foreshadowing all theydid was like drop in what are essentially
a dr lines so they could belike, oh remember this, and they
do, like they seep a toneit and they have it like and then
it's like a faraway voice is sayingsomething. It's like remember it's like that
kind of lazy, that's also ropeyshit we've seen a million times. Well,
(22:30):
well I'm saying, is you seelike things in the plot that if
you think about it would make thetwist not even fucking work, Like you
know, it would just like wait, how would this happen? Then if
this is a twist, like howdid that happen? How did you know
the continuity? I mean, hehad a lot of free time on his
hands and was able to get aroundthat city really fast. Yeah, he
apparently Craig Scheffer. I mean,he doesn't look terrible, but he doesn't
(22:52):
look like a guy who could runaround the city that fucking quick. Also,
don't forget that Steven Seagala is likestanding in the crowd at one point
at the explode o of the likethe strip club, and like people would
have seen him, but nobody magicallynobody did. It's like it's again like
it's just like logic, like massiveplot holes, magic, massive logicals in
a movie where they had to makethose logicals be like they had to just
(23:15):
not address them because if they did, like the movie falls apart in media.
Well, this is the thing abouttwist is that you really it's not
just something you can throw in afilm. You have to make sure it's
very carefully and methodically planned out,that there's nothing that I did. You
can say, wait, if thistwist, why did this happen? Or
why did this happen? You haveto make sure those holes are as closed
(23:37):
as you can get so the twistcan make sense and the twist can actually
be oh, you know what,now that I think about it, that
does make sense that this happened,or that this is why the twist.
You know, the twist happen.Don't just throw a twist in to try
to be clecker. You didn't.You can't. You know, it doesn't
work that way, or to coverup a failing of the movies like Finale.
I mean, I do believe theyhad this twist in mind from the
(23:57):
start. The problem is they thoughtthey could get away with it no matter
what they wrote around. They justhad to add some things like drag Scheffer
is crazy and shit like that,and Segal was killed in action or something
something to like think they could makeit work, but you need a little
more than that to make a twistbelievable and acceptable. Like oh, okay,
I'm satisfied with you know what Imean? Yeah, no, I
(24:18):
agree, it's again for me,it's just like it's it's a there's a
level of there's a level of expectation, Like you said, there's a level
of expectation when you make a movieand there's a there's a twist in it,
and especially when it's a twist thateffectively changes your interpretation of the entire
film. Yep. You then youthen are forced to rewatch the movie to
see how well the filmmakers did insticking the landing and as one would expect
(24:41):
with a film like this made bythe fucking belly flop. Yeah, of
course, but that's not surprising.Even even filmmakers who are good at what
they do fuck up all the time. I was not a huge fan of
Shutter Island because I feel like thetwist in that movie was telegraphed from like
scene one. Ye just A'm alsojust not a Leonardo Dicabrio fan. Unfortunately,
(25:02):
I've never seen Sean Island, butI was the twist was spoiled for
me. Anyway, what's the twist? The twist is pedestrian? What the
fact that he was in the asylumthe whole time? Oh wow, you
could have You can suss that outfrom like pretty early on, you know
what I mean. Like, andI'm not saying because I'm like some smart
guy. I'm saying, if you'reif you're just a if you're a moviegoer
who is engaged like I know youare, because you wouldn't be doing this
(25:25):
if you were just giving half ofa shit about movie. This is not
easy to sit and critically watch aSteven Seagal and find things to talk about
critically because for one reason or another, these movies in a lot of ways
don't deserve it. We're putting inmore effort than they put in to make
it to be critical about it.Fun it comes when it comes to twists.
I mean, there have been timeswhere I kind of figured out a
(25:45):
twists and there are times where itwas ruined for me before I even saw
the twist coming. On the sixthsaid story, Did I ever tell you
that story. Okay, I wentwith my mom when I was nineteen.
He went and saw the Success inthe theater. Right as we were watching
the film, in the middle ofthe film, she leads over to me
and whispers, I think he's dead. And I'm like, for mega,
For a second, I thought shegot a hilly Joel Osmond's scart, then
(26:06):
like, oh, you need firstWils's character. And I spent the whole
rest of the movie thinking, you'dbetter not be right about this. You'd
better not be right about this.You'd better not be right about this.
Turns out she was fucking right.He was dead the whole time. She
knew. She told me, She'slike, I think he's dead. No,
did she know ahead of time?No she didn't. So she called
it. She called it because andshe was like, well, how did
(26:27):
you not see that coming? Nobodyelse but the kid was interacting with it.
You don't see him talk to anyoneelse but the kid, And like,
god damn it, how would Imissed that? Frankly, because most
of the time that twist has done, it doesn't land, so you don't
assume anybody's gonna try it. Well, and plus m night. Shamala wasn't
necessarily known for twists at the time, and we didn't really he wasn't really
known for much at the time otherthan ghostwriting. She's all that and this
(26:48):
one movie with Rosie O'Donnell um forout him is called good already. I
can pass on that one before weeven figure out the title. Oh yeah,
he wrote Stewart Little as well.Um, so I mean, and
I did see it again. Idid end up watching Sixtus theaters again,
knowing the twist and watching it likewe said, watch again in the analyzing.
Huh right, that that makes sense. Donnie Wahlberg killed him at the
(27:11):
start, you know, Yeah,and how embarrassing killed by a new CADI.
Yeah. I was about to saykilled by Donnie, But you got
to admit his performance is really fuckinggood in that small role, he asked
Donnie Wahlberg. Yeah, you know, I actually don't mind him as an
actor. No, he's a goodactor. He's not bad. And the
Saw movie I think he was more. I always forget the order that they
have those he's told in. Ibelieve it was Saw two and four he
(27:33):
was at because three three mostly takesplace with agus mcfaden going through the whole
thing and the doctor being at trappoint I call it trying to take out
Um yeah, saw this thing.If you want to hear a entire podcast
worth of episode information on SA go, check out the culture Cast episode where
we talk about all the movies thatexisted at the time, which I think
(27:56):
is everything. But the last twomust have been a whig Jig Saw and
Spiral Spiral Spiral. Yeah, JigSaw and Spiral are the only two that
we didn't cover, So if youwant to hear that they both incredibly underwhelmed,
Well, I have not covered thembecause I feel like I don't have
anything else to say about the Sawmovies. Speaking of twists that I saw
(28:17):
coming. When I watched Spiral inthe theater, I'm like, oh,
yeah, he's the killer. Don'tsay why not? Has it been?
Has it not been long en spoiledthese Trevor, I'll say who the killer
was. It was Samuel L.Jackson. No, it wasn't. Wow,
you spoiled the movie, Trevor.I'm just kidding. I know who
I was. It was Chris rowlesManella Anthony, Anthony whatever, that one
guy who looks like the guy fromHereditary But he's not the guy from Hereditary.
(28:40):
I mean, tell me, tellme I'm wrong. I like her.
I think with Cout is a twistwhen it comes to what you expect
of the film. Did we notexpect that movie to be a fucking Exorcist
demon shit movie? No, itwas Rosemary's Baby, right. I expected
the girl to be the main folksof the film, right, And not
even halfway through it she gets beheadedand spoiled the movie for everybody. Put
(29:02):
beeps on this beep fucking you're cursingevery time, and then they baby bye
baby, I'll do Well, wedidn't we spoil Malignant? Well, we
did Malignant, Yeah, but that'swhen we did the Malignant podcast. People
who listen to the Code of Honorepisode are not wanting to have. I
don't know what's another thing we couldspoil. Rosebud was a sledholes Okay.
(29:23):
The the timing that I use isten years Okay, Well, I'm sorry,
no, I'm what are you fuckinganything pre twenty twelve is fair game?
Okay. Finkel is eine Horn isfinkal. That's why Roger Padactor is
dead. He found Captain God,what a fucked up movie. I love
(29:44):
that movie. I mean, nowit's a little transphobic, don't you thinks
no think, I don't. Idon't because the thing about them being trans
is not played for lab I meanit is right at the end, but
that's it. Think about it,Like throughout the movie are they like,
oh my god, you know trans. I don't know why. I don't
know, but yeah, it's atwist. We're talking about twist still is
(30:06):
just this is more exciting than talkingabout the movie that they don't nail the
twist. Yeah, that's a twistand that movie that's it's funny, it's
meant to be. It's like anoir twist if you think about it,
like a Spintura is almost if itwasn't a comedy, it would almost be
neo noir, well almost of thevision of like Psycho or or what's that
William Castle felt, um, it'slike Sleepaway Camp. Yeah. But like
(30:29):
my point is like a Spentura iskind of like neo noir ish, Like
some of the stuff is like youknow, like the what what he's doing,
his profession, where he lives,you know, like it's like any
like a it's like a Charles Willifordnovel because he lives in Miami. You
know, he could run into HokeMoseley type thing. But the twist in
that movie, I don't think it'sI don't think it's transphobic. I think
(30:51):
it's happening. I think it's unI think it's in poor taste. But
I think that's always going to bein poor taste, that twist regardless.
Yeah, I mean that movie theI don't think it give um. I
think no, I know, butI mean that was a movie you don't
expect to even have a fucking butyeah, but Aspinur is also not mean.
He's not a mean characters. No, he's a smart ass, but
(31:12):
he's not me right like, whichis why I say the movie is not
transphobic, because like the character thatSean Young plays being you know, uh
Finkel and Ihorn, like, yeah, that's found out. So at the
end of the movie, like yeah, he does the thing where he's like
plungering his face. That's probably theworst part, I think, because I
like, well, at least thefirst two I love, Yeah, the
(31:33):
second one's great. I have notseen the third one with technically called I
don't could you consider it the thirdone. Say what am I trying to
pervert? No? I don't evenwant to think about that movie existing.
Well, I think Jee Jerry's nota record saying no more sequels for him?
Wasn't he why not just do it? Isn't? Aren't they making an
aspentura something? Right now? Ithought? I thought Jim Jerry said that
(31:53):
he's not. He's not doing sequels, because here's the thing, spent three,
You fucking coward. I want toOkay, I do too, right,
aisven Tur two is really I likeaispen Tur two more than I like
the first one. Well, bybeif you're going to make a film this
many years after the fact, justbe careful. Because Dumb and Dumber two,
well, I thought it was funnyat ark, not as near as
(32:14):
good as I don't even I thankyou for reminding me that exists. Oh
fucking pox upon my brain? Whatabout dumb and dumber? When Harry met
Lloyd Starry? Why are you doingthat? Man, Darry? Eric Christian
Olsen and uh fucking the guy fromHostile? Why are you doing Why are
you gotta be that way? Whyare you gotta do that for everybody else?
Why are you gotta bring the restof us down to that, to
(32:35):
that level that's subterraneous, like weirdsequels to eighties movies from the like mid
well oh yeah, but also likeit's the same, Like okay, so
in the in the mid thousands theywere doing the eighties movies because I just
I love how Ghostbusters After Life wasthe final eighties Installedgiament. Oh, it's
not. It was the final form. Oh you mean the final form.
(32:57):
It was like the final form ofeighties Installedgiament. Now everything's nineties nostalgia.
Nineties nostalgi is really picking up.Well, I mean, top Gun Mavericks
show them that eighties nostalgia doesn't.But that's different because that's just like America
rod nostalgia. I don't care.Fucking playing with each other's fat fucking balls.
What is that? What do theycall it? What they call them?
Like? What does that sound?Playing with them? So it's just
(33:21):
so fucking just giving one of lifesimple joys, playing with the boys.
Oh yeah, I bet they flexin this movie, Kenny Loggins for d
Yeah, Everett, we have strayedso far from this movie. It's the
code of honor that we've strayed far. It's deserved to be straight from because
it's fucking it's garbage. It's it'sjust it's well intentioned garbage. It is.
(33:45):
I'm not even it's Look, we'veseen worse already on this show.
Things that meander for fucking the worstthing you've seen that's still China Salesman,
Like, without a doubt, Well, that movie will always be the worst
film. I don't know if we'lleven top China Sales. Yeah, I'm
with you. Didn't I see anotherone was worse than that? What wasn't
there one? There was one wherewe were kind of even more pissed off.
(34:06):
Hold on, but I don't rememberwhat. I don't remember what it
was. It definitely was one ofhis earlier not a connection connection yet,
doesn't it? Or have we watchedthat Asia Connection sounds like a p I've
more had the I've had the HaroldFultimeyer theme stuck in my head more than
(34:27):
the man du was it the perfectweapon? Pervict Wippon, I don't remember
we've watched something like that. Wewatched something that was really bad. It
was oh god weapon. That wasthe one where it takes place in the
future and yeah, yeah, thedirector oh, he has a brother.
(34:52):
He has a brother. At theend, it turns out so even though
Steven Seagal's dies, his brother wantshonor anyway. So fucking I don't know
what else are there to say aboutit, because there is a good there
is a good movie in that plotor in that thing, but they needed
to go over the script way moretimes before they could before I think it
was filmable. What there is tosay is that this movie is a better
(35:16):
attempt at a movie like this thanwe've seen so far from these kinds of
movies. Trevor, Where can peoplefind you? Well? Of course you
can find me on the Else podcast. You can find me at Twitter at
mad Verdict or bedroom. You canalso find me from time to time on
the Culture Cast with my glorious cohost Chris dash You and you can also
find me from time to time atthe Projection Booth hosted by the Great Mike
(35:38):
White, a great Mike White Sharkif you will, and Chris. Where
can people find you? You canfind me at c stashu dot com,
cstacchiw dot com. That's my linktree. Go there for all the things
that I work on. They arevarious in a quantity, and I think
um high in quality. So,you know, if you're into seventies TV
show where movies are weird, thingslike a up of the night, that's
(36:00):
where you can go as for thisshow on seagal dot Com, on Seagal
on Twitter, just go, justgo on iTunes and rate and review the
show. Just do us favor,Do me a favor, do Trevor a
favor, Do Stephen Seagal a favor, and tell us about Do me a
favor on this the day of mydaughter's winning. Yeah, do us a
favor, give us a good review, a good rating. It'll help us
move up like one in the schemeof like a thousand, given that everybody,
(36:23):
I'm surprised Seagal doesn't have his owngoddamn podcast, given that everybody else,
it's just a matter Team Russia doesn'tallow them, so it's just a
matter of time. Trevor. Yeah, but he's he's in with the right
people, so okay, so untilthen, yeah, just uh you know,
yeah, yeah, stay tuned toStephen sa
However, one and welcome to theOnsagal Podcast. I am one of your
hosts, Kristashi. I'm joined asalways by my good friend. He is
all the way on the West Coast. They call it the best Coast,
the one and only. Hello.Hello. I've been wondering where Craig Shepherd
has been, and god damn it, I got my hands. He's breeding
in the night if he could figureout which hole the stick at end.
On this episode of Onstagal, we'retalking about twenty sixteens un justis like shitty
(00:53):
titles at this point, like theseare these? Like these twenty sixteen movies
have the lamest, most generic soundtitles along with the titles of the characters.
Names are bad, but my god, the movie's names are worse.
On this episode, we're gonna betalking about twenty sixteen's Cold Honor. And
tell me that doesn't sound like aknockoff of like Navy Seals Call of Duty.
(01:15):
Yeah, you would think like amilitary Navy Seals kind of action FLA.
But no, nothing, nothing,no, no, yeah exactly,
boy, I didn't even think aboutthat. Yeah. So, ladies and
gentlemen, this film is directed andwritten by one Michael Winnock. It stars
Steven Seagal, at least that's whatthe box says. At least that's what
the trailers would lead you to believe, but it's actually a story focused more
(01:37):
on one Craig Scheffer, Yes,your lead from Night Breed, and he
is a cop, a former excuseme, like a former military guy who's
searching for Steven Seagal, who isa vigilante who has taken out the trash
and I guess la a crime writtenla and he's a one man vigilante squad
looking for looking for love and allthe places including alley ways. I mean,
(02:01):
he's just the term he's a wreckingball is what I would call this,
because he is literally a human deathmachine in this movie. And it
gets to the point where he's justlike killing people with wanton abandoned women included,
which again questionable kind of motives whenwe get to the Steven Seagal character.
(02:23):
But Trevor, we'd never seen thismovie before, neither one of us
had, so I want you togive me your thoughts. What did you
think of twenty sixteen's Code of Honor? Oh? Good god right, that
was my response when we got tothe end of the movie. We're going
to have so much to talk.I mean, you know, I think
you knows fight club some some residentrevenue sixth cents. Maybe just like pulling
(02:46):
out, pulling out the stops rightat the end. Yeah, God,
what a fucking joke, right,Craig Sheffer has Oh man, he deserved
shit, man does he though?Because he knew what he was getting himself
into. I guess you could say, can you imagine being the lead in
a movie where the other actor who'sthe psychotic version of you is the one
(03:07):
build on the poster slash the box? Yeah, I mean, ah,
yikes, right, that's fucked up. I mean when your biggest star besides
fan Damn Houstas met Or Louis Mandelorand h Craig Sheffer, you, yeah,
prob I mean Louis manda As muchas I love Louis Mandelor, I
love Costas cost me too, Yeah, I like, yeah, I'm a
fan of both of them. They'reyeah yeah, um yeah, I mean
(03:30):
he's he's The film starts out withlike this drug deal going down, like
factory parking lot or whatever, right, yeah, right, non descript parking
lot out in the open and thenuh, you see Seagal on the rooftop
with a rifle and basically he's thebest shot there is because he never fucking
misses. No. Oh, bythe way, can we talk about the
(03:51):
flood effects? You mean the aftereffects? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
terrible after effects. Why it couldn'tafford squibs? This movie could not
afford scripts or like we'll just addit in post. They went to fucking
Microsoft paint. But the thing is, like, this is what I expect.
You know, we talked about onthe Culture Cast recently, we talked
about the Three from Hell or theFirefly trilogy, and in Three from Hell
(04:15):
that Rob Zombie movie, he useshe uses those after effect blood effects,
and I was just like, whatthe fuck Rob Zombie doesn't have a budget
to deal with this. I expectit here, Like I'm not surprised here
because it's you know, these moviesare made on like what I imagine is
a shoe string budget outside of thefact that they have to entice segall into
being in them somehow. To paraphrasethe director of Swingers, Um Doug Lyman,
(04:39):
the budget for this one was probablywhat the movie, uh, probably
what a Navy seal spent on theircatering budget, right, Yeah, I
mean that's essentially it Like, that'slike that, that's where that's that's where
I come in with this movie.It's like I have seen better kinds of
these movies. Yeah, this isthe action movie version of the I've never
(05:00):
seen an action version of this.Have you like this twist? The twist?
I mean it's a it's a verypoorly done twist, but it's a
twist that I have not seen donein an action movie. No, I
will give that credit. I havenot seen this before. Unfortunately, it
was spoiled because I had already watcheda review from one of my favorite online
reviewers, and I had seen thatbecause I was as I was watching the
(05:23):
film, like have I seen thisbefore? Did we do this? And
I just forgot about it? Didwe just forget we did this film?
Then it hit my end like,oh my god. I watched a dmudahg
in Film Brain review about this movie, and I know the twist before the
twist happened, and I'm like,oh, Gryce, even the execution the
leading up to it is terribly done, really badly done, and maybe I
(05:44):
should just skip them. Me andwatch the review probably would have saved me
some time, like an hour atleast. Well, that's why I didn't
watch the review, like I neverwatched anything before I watched movies anymore,
because I don't want to regurge someoneelse by act. And I'm not saying
you are. What I'm saying,it's it's a very real problem that could
happen, because I don't want someoneto be like, well, you stole
my thought. It's like I didwell to be fair, it was a
(06:05):
review i'd seen before we get startedthis podcast. Oh sure, well that's
like, that's my point, likeit doesn't count anyways, But my god,
this movie's twist is just idiotic,Like what's what's insane is it doesn't
make any sense? And well,yeah, exactly, And that was my
next point, is they it doesn'tmake any sense on the face of it
(06:26):
with the first twist, and thenthey double twist it, which makes even
less sense than the actual twist.So it's it's compounding stupidity. You twisted
yourself, and now you have fuckingplayed yourself, because what they try to
do at the actual end of thismovie is fucking frankly insulted. Yeah.
Actually, I was like stupid,like so fucking stupid. I don't even
(06:48):
understand what in the holy hell theywere going for because it makes no sense.
Let's set it none zero zero sense. Does it make none? Well,
here's the thing, Uh, CraigShriver's chair for. We don't really
know vig even is FBI or whatever. He just shows up. He just
shows up because he's doing this allon his own, independently, because he
knows Sigal. He knows because theyI think they served together. Yep.
(07:11):
Yeah, in the military. Hewas like his like sense say, in
military. Yeah, so he knowswhat Sigal was capable. So that's why
he's like on the trail of thisguy because he wants to catch him before
because he knows how good he is. That's what And that's what he tells
Lewis Mandy Lord. You don't getthe sense that like he's operating on his
own. You find that out laterin the movie that he's like, you
know, discharged and he's kind oflike he's a whacko. You know,
he's his age, his cannon onhis own. He's a loose cannon.
(07:34):
Yeah. So it's yeah, andso that's the whole thing. It's like,
you don't get the sense that there'sgonna be a twist because again,
they're not confident enough as filmmakers tohandle the twist in the right way,
so they fucking fumble it and insteadof trying, Instead of trying, which
was would have been really hard andwould have required some ability to execute properly,
(07:55):
they just throw the twist in andlike do the minor of like most
minor of things. He's like he'sa loose cannon, which is like probably
their way of saying, like,oh, he's killing people, and the
thing with the double knives, it'slike, oh, he's he's unhinged.
To me, it's like they're thosewere their attempts at foreshadowing, and those
are really lame and like they don'twork at all. No, they don't.
(08:16):
And frankly, I mean Louis Mandalora, I mean he needed more scenes
because he was he was just thebest part of this movie. He's gone
to like a forty five minute spam. Yeah, they don't really do anything
with his character other than other thanhim talk about give exposition kind of bookends.
He frankly kind of just bookends themovie. He's at the main,
(08:37):
you know kind of drug drop atthe beginning where Stigall shows up, and
then he's there at the end wherethe building explodes. O Jesus fucking Christ's
squibs look at the explosions and yeah, it's like this movie halfway through decided
like let's just have a full onfucking aneurysm because it just loses its mind.
(08:58):
It just goes yeah. Okay,so the twist is okay. So
here's the twist. I want you. I want you to spoil the movie
because we haven't really spoiled it.Okay, I don't think we can talk
about this movie anymore without spoiling it. Okay, spoilers stop here if you
don't want to hear anymore. Allright, do you want me to do
both twists? Are just the one, the first one. Let's talk about
it, Okay. So from hereon out we're doing spoilers, but we're
spoil and we're gonna talk the twistand the counter twist. Yes, so
(09:22):
apparently, I mean Chrick Scheffer's characterhas like a file that he's you know,
been discharged. He's had issues withhis you know, can't handle himself.
He's kind of been having breakdowns andshit like that. And then we
are told to believe or meant tosee that, uh, Shecheffer and Seagal
are one and the same, thatSeagal is a figment of Shecheffer's imagination that
(09:43):
he's using as a projection of aperson who is taking down these criminals,
when it's actually Cheffer killing these criminals. And and we're meant to think that
Segal is just all in his headall that kind of the twist from My
Bloody Valentine. So is Seagal everexists? Yes? Okay, so Segal
was a real So it's kind oflike the thing in Dexter. That's the
(10:03):
way I imagine it. It's likelike his dark passing. Well, the
end, they confirmed he exists,remembercause they top in the rooftop right and
and Segal says, uh, youknow, clever making them think you were
crazy and that you and me werethe same. So he was, he
did exist, but it does he'sdead. He was making these plans to
make them think Cheffer was crazy anddo with all these killings because he was
(10:26):
gone in sane. And that wasthe second a very terrible second list.
It was like trying to be thisfight club. Hold on a second.
That wait what No, no,No, my reading is Segal was not
dead. He was not dead.He was very much alive on that roof.
My reading, No, okay,my reading is that Segal is dead
and he's all a figment of hisimagination. Then how do he explain the
(10:48):
rooftop scene were he's saying, goodjob making them think you and I were
the same. That's all in hishead. I don't think so. I
think that was real. I thinkthat was actually him. Then how did
Craig Cheffer? Then? How toexplain the thing with Craig Sheffer in the
balloon at the end, because that'swhat I thought you were talking about,
because Lewis Mandylore says like they werethe same person. There was no William
Porter. Yeah, but William Borrddidn't exist. He just they just umld
(11:09):
on, right. I can't,it's I can't. Oh man, did
he say he died in there inhis military file? That's what I don't
remember. That's what I don't remember. That's what I thought they said.
That's what I thought, that Seagalwas already dead and like it was like
a dark passenger dexter thing where he'sconcocted, like his version of him in
(11:30):
his own head. That's like myassisting. Yeah, but my interpretation was
Seagal was alive this whole time,So yours is a literal interpretation. Well,
basically because when they watched the video, because there's one scene where Shepherd
and Seagal meet in this like nightclubdance club thing and Seagal tells him there's
a bomb under your seat if youget up. This all goes up and
spoke, and the video camera veryuh kind of coincidentally or fortuitously has where
(11:54):
Seagall is supposed to sit as ablock something blocking the camera right, can't
see Segal, so you don't knowif he was at actually there. So
crag Scheffer, you know, theycall him the bomb squad or whatever,
and kraig Scheffer is like, wasn'tthere like a shootout where he's trying to
stay seated in the chair while he'sfucking yeah, It's like, well that
yeah, yeah, And then itturns out what there was never a bombit
or that chair right, No,Segal does not exist, is my point?
(12:16):
Or Seagal was fucking with him,No no, no, no,
no no no, I'm telling youthis. You're giving this movie way too
much credit. This movie literally hasSeagal existing in his mind and it's just
him dissociated. It's that it's thatlazy. It's like, that's why I
was saying like it owes a lotto sixth cents and other things, because
it's like it's just going for notit was all a dream, but you
(12:39):
just dissociated and don't remember doing it. I'll have my bloody valentine. I
am very sorry if it was referredto that I was trying to give this
petti fucking credit. It kind offelt like you were like, oh,
but he's still alive. It's like, oh no. My point is those
twists were done well. My oneat the end was the thing about the
balloon. If it's my interpretation.If it's the interpretation, well they're done
(13:00):
terribly either way. Yeah. Andthe building it foolished at the end is
terribly done. The helicopter, thehelicopter taking him um is obviously cged at
the end credits. This whole movieis a fucking mess. From frame one,
this is you know what, It'salmost kind of so bad it's it's
watchable in that kind of way.It's fun. It's like stupid does everything
(13:20):
so wrong that you kind of haveto see it to believe it, because
the attempt was really there. ButI think it verges on being so bad
it's good. I think again,I think it takes itself too seriously.
I think there's yeah, you knowit's there are parts of this movie where
it's a slog it's one hundred andsix minutes, like fucking come off.
It's but luckily as long as it'sa phone where you can have it out
(13:43):
in the background, be on yourphone, and you won't miss a goddamn
thing. Yeah, But to befair, like when I watch it for
this, I can't afford to dothat because it's it's still like insanity,
how fucking wild. Like what's wildto me about these movies more than anything
else, is they're not just fartingthis out. They're they're wrying, and
(14:03):
it's like, are they failing,are they failing in spite of themselves or
are they just this uncoordinated when itcomes to writing a halfway decent screenplay.
That's what I can't figure out.I think Seagal is not very good at
reading scripts or check or picking thembecause I think he does read scripts.
I think there's written for I thinkyes, And I think these films getting
(14:24):
made because Segal put his name.And that's how there's so many of these
things. And that's why something sohorribly done could still be released, is
because Seagal's name on it, andfor some reason it still sells. It
still sells rental because I don't thinkanyone's behind thee or maybe they did.
There's there's five dollar bins a wall. Uh. It just seems like Seagal's
name, as shocking as this sound, still has some clout. Yeah,
(14:46):
just so you know. The theinterpretation by the director, The director said
that Seagal's interpretation of the ending isthat his character framed Craig Scheffer and got
a word. That's what I That'swhat my didial, I know. But
I think that also that's the selfserving interpretation for mister Seagal. Um.
Well, because the movie makes itpretty crystal clear that the other interpretation is
(15:07):
a valid one. Well, we'vesaid before sea can never die, right
right, right, which is likethis decision was an exception to the rule,
but he wasn't. I mean,his build, his build as those
trailers for that movie make him seemlike the lead he was Warner Brothers,
Golcade. Yeah yeah, um notnow, not for this movie. Not
(15:28):
when he's zip lining on the greenscree oh my god. Some of Like
what's funny is this is again we'rein working this kind of counter timeline that
we're doing. We get to seethe good and the bad, but then
the good becoming the bad and thebad maybe becoming good, like because there
are things in this there are thingsin this movie that like I didn't see
in the other movies that we've recentlywatched, Like this movie does kind of
(15:50):
have a more interesting plot than likea bunch of gangsters are mad at other
gangsters, which has been like thelast three movies we watched. Right,
I'll give it that. I'll thinkthat it was of all the movies we've
watched, it's the less um,it's the less hackneyed and um, at
least of these kinds not feel likeit feels less churned out right, Right,
it feels like there was actual thoughtput into this, Right, That's
(16:12):
and that's what I'm saying, Likeit's of all the movies that we've watched,
of this kind of era of Seagal. It's weird because this one feels
drastically different but very much the same. It still has a lot of the
same problems, but the problems thatit has, even as bad as they
are, are not as bad aslike China Salesman, Yeah, or some
(16:32):
of those other movies we watched thatjust felt very like this is the same
thing, to the point where wegot two of them. Fucking it's it's
it's one of those. I'm notmad, I'm just disappointed movie, right
because the potential was there, right, it was wasted because apparently, you
know, I mean, I don'tthink it's Seagal's fault because he had nothing
to do with Scriptum. I thinkthe production values are low. Yeah,
(16:55):
I mean I give them credit forworking with what they ad, but you
know, you have to have acompelling story and a compelling script and kind
of make it work. Because ifyou're gonna have this twist, work with
it a little bit. Don't justthrow it out there and say this is
it because it doesn't feel I mean, the twist is a little bit set
up. The first twist is alittle bit set up, but it needs
to be set up a little betterand less like, oh, a fucking
(17:18):
course this was right. This isJerry Simon signing off because you know the
whole it was me all along.Thing is such an overdone twist usual suspects,
I guess, or the dream sequencethat it was all a dream thing,
right, It's like that, It'slike that equivalent, like this is
the second if that's one A,this is one b of like a character
who you didn't think is one thingis something else. Like that's the next
(17:41):
biggest twist. I was like itwas all a dream. Yeah, I
mean, like fight Club, Ithink set the standard for how to do
the you know, they were thesame person the whole time, okay,
or my bloody valance. I don'tknow. I'm trying to think because like
this is its own kind of subgenreof movies because once you know the twist,
watching the movie is like a verydifferent experience. Well could you analyze
(18:03):
that? Right? So I wonder, like I wonder what a month of
those movies like that would be kindof fun, a month of twist movies,
but twist where it's a it's aspecific kind of twist, like the
the main character is like we know, going into these movies with the twists
are, but the main character issomeone else twist. Yeah, but we're
going with them, right, becauseagain, like I'm I'm not going in
(18:26):
to be shocked. I'm going into understand, Like I don't not talking
about usual suspects, but there areplenty of movies out there like fucking usual
Suspects. I was creative, no, right, But this movie is like
a prime example of like, themain character isn't who you thought. They
were executed so poorly that it's like, but who cares? Yeah, I
didn't care. He never interacted withanybody else anyway, So gaul was never
(18:48):
interacted with any body but were graSheffer to begin with, there were no
stakes in the people he killed becausehe aside from the women that he murder,
let me let me, let meclarify because for the first part he's
mostly killing bad guy drug dealers shitlike that, right, clearly bad guys,
clearly drugs. Yeah, so there'sreally kind of you don't really sense
(19:08):
a moral dilemma, you know,it's like, oh, selling bad guys.
There's so it's like you don't givea shit. I get on board
with him killing drug dealers any dayof the week. Yeah, But what
he killed women, innocent women thatit kind of stakes of it didn't just
kind of blew them up, detonateda bomb with innocent women. And unfortunately,
there there's no there's no Okay,here's the thing. There's no reason
(19:32):
why he's suddenly killing innocent right,it's not set up that, Oh,
first he kills just bad guys.Now he's on innocent people. There's no
there's no h there's no arc forthat. You don't see anything going.
You don't see his moral compass failing. No, not at all. It's
just suddenly innocent people can dynam Iwas like, what the what the fuck?
Yeah, I had no I didn'tunderstand again, like it felt like
(19:52):
it felt like a better movie washere, but in the hands of Michael
Winnick and friends, clearly not.And look, he edited, wrote and
directed this movie, so his handsare very deeply in, said Cookie Jar.
It's all on his hands. Yeahyou can. I'm sorry. It's
it's as the director. You shouldn'thave your actor telling you how to interpret
fucking movie. Yeah, but oh, he said, he said, he
(20:15):
survives. You're the director and youwrote the fucking movie. Man, does
he survive or not? Have someballs and say you fucking die with it.
I wonder if Seagal is the reasonwhy it feels wishy washy, and
there's two interpretation. I wonder ifSeagal is the reason that there's that one
seat at the end with them onthe what about the balloon thing? The
thing with the balloon is what pissedme off? Or not the balloon.
(20:36):
It's the catcher's mint. Oh,that he gives the kid at the end.
What is that? That's the twistthat I was talking about with the
catcher's mint, because I was like, they have the twist that he's not
the guy, like Stephen Seagal doesnot exist and Craig Scheffer is just the
guy. Okay, that's the firsttwist. And the second twist is after
he kills himself, he is stillalive. That's what that's the second twist
in the movie. I wash right. We forgot to mention there's woman and
(21:00):
her child in the film, buta stripper and her and her son and
her son. But she worked atthe club that got blown up. Yeah,
and she just happened to leave togo get her son. Yeah,
And I'm leaving to go get myson can you cover my cheft for me?
You're about to die? How muchdoes she even factor into the film,
Well, that's Craig Cheffer like protectsher. But again, like what
(21:22):
she knows is unimportant. Ultimately,everything that happens in this movie is unimportant
because it like it boils down toCraig Cheffer was Steven Seagal all along and
you don't know that. And sothe entire pursuit by Craig Cheffer of Steven
Seagal's character is an u is aplotline that has gone nowhere because he was
him all along, And that's theentire movie. The movie is not about
(21:45):
Seagal killing drug dealers. It's aboutCraig Cheffer protecting the stripper and making sure
that he catches Steven Seagal who happensto be him. And I'm sure if
we watch the film again analyzing it, we would see things in the film
that would have the plot have thetwist make no fucking sense. I watched
it twice just to make sure,and there are plenty of things. That's
(22:06):
what I was saying, Like it'ssuch a lazy twist because they didn't do
any of the successful foreshadowing all theydid was like drop in what are essentially
a dr lines so they could belike, oh remember this, and they
do, like they seep a toneit and they have it like and then
it's like a faraway voice is sayingsomething. It's like remember it's like that
kind of lazy, that's also ropeyshit we've seen a million times. Well,
(22:30):
well I'm saying, is you seelike things in the plot that if
you think about it would make thetwist not even fucking work, Like you
know, it would just like wait, how would this happen? Then if
this is a twist, like howdid that happen? How did you know
the continuity? I mean, hehad a lot of free time on his
hands and was able to get aroundthat city really fast. Yeah, he
apparently Craig Scheffer. I mean,he doesn't look terrible, but he doesn't
(22:52):
look like a guy who could runaround the city that fucking quick. Also,
don't forget that Steven Seagala is likestanding in the crowd at one point
at the explode o of the likethe strip club, and like people would
have seen him, but nobody magicallynobody did. It's like it's again like
it's just like logic, like massiveplot holes, magic, massive logicals in
a movie where they had to makethose logicals be like they had to just
(23:15):
not address them because if they did, like the movie falls apart in media.
Well, this is the thing abouttwist is that you really it's not
just something you can throw in afilm. You have to make sure it's
very carefully and methodically planned out,that there's nothing that I did. You
can say, wait, if thistwist, why did this happen? Or
why did this happen? You haveto make sure those holes are as closed
(23:37):
as you can get so the twistcan make sense and the twist can actually
be oh, you know what,now that I think about it, that
does make sense that this happened,or that this is why the twist.
You know, the twist happen.Don't just throw a twist in to try
to be clecker. You didn't.You can't. You know, it doesn't
work that way, or to coverup a failing of the movies like Finale.
I mean, I do believe theyhad this twist in mind from the
(23:57):
start. The problem is they thoughtthey could get away with it no matter
what they wrote around. They justhad to add some things like drag Scheffer
is crazy and shit like that,and Segal was killed in action or something
something to like think they could makeit work, but you need a little
more than that to make a twistbelievable and acceptable. Like oh, okay,
I'm satisfied with you know what Imean? Yeah, no, I
(24:18):
agree, it's again for me,it's just like it's it's a there's a
level of there's a level of expectation, Like you said, there's a level
of expectation when you make a movieand there's a there's a twist in it,
and especially when it's a twist thateffectively changes your interpretation of the entire
film. Yep. You then youthen are forced to rewatch the movie to
see how well the filmmakers did insticking the landing and as one would expect
(24:41):
with a film like this made bythe fucking belly flop. Yeah, of
course, but that's not surprising.Even even filmmakers who are good at what
they do fuck up all the time. I was not a huge fan of
Shutter Island because I feel like thetwist in that movie was telegraphed from like
scene one. Ye just A'm alsojust not a Leonardo Dicabrio fan. Unfortunately,
(25:02):
I've never seen Sean Island, butI was the twist was spoiled for
me. Anyway, what's the twist? The twist is pedestrian? What the
fact that he was in the asylumthe whole time? Oh wow, you
could have You can suss that outfrom like pretty early on, you know
what I mean. Like, andI'm not saying because I'm like some smart
guy. I'm saying, if you'reif you're just a if you're a moviegoer
who is engaged like I know youare, because you wouldn't be doing this
(25:25):
if you were just giving half ofa shit about movie. This is not
easy to sit and critically watch aSteven Seagal and find things to talk about
critically because for one reason or another, these movies in a lot of ways
don't deserve it. We're putting inmore effort than they put in to make
it to be critical about it.Fun it comes when it comes to twists.
I mean, there have been timeswhere I kind of figured out a
(25:45):
twists and there are times where itwas ruined for me before I even saw
the twist coming. On the sixthsaid story, Did I ever tell you
that story. Okay, I wentwith my mom when I was nineteen.
He went and saw the Success inthe theater. Right as we were watching
the film, in the middle ofthe film, she leads over to me
and whispers, I think he's dead. And I'm like, for mega,
For a second, I thought shegot a hilly Joel Osmond's scart, then
(26:06):
like, oh, you need firstWils's character. And I spent the whole
rest of the movie thinking, you'dbetter not be right about this. You'd
better not be right about this.You'd better not be right about this.
Turns out she was fucking right.He was dead the whole time. She
knew. She told me, She'slike, I think he's dead. No,
did she know ahead of time?No she didn't. So she called
it. She called it because andshe was like, well, how did
(26:27):
you not see that coming? Nobodyelse but the kid was interacting with it.
You don't see him talk to anyoneelse but the kid, And like,
god damn it, how would Imissed that? Frankly, because most
of the time that twist has done, it doesn't land, so you don't
assume anybody's gonna try it. Well, and plus m night. Shamala wasn't
necessarily known for twists at the time, and we didn't really he wasn't really
known for much at the time otherthan ghostwriting. She's all that and this
(26:48):
one movie with Rosie O'Donnell um forout him is called good already. I
can pass on that one before weeven figure out the title. Oh yeah,
he wrote Stewart Little as well.Um, so I mean, and
I did see it again. Idid end up watching Sixtus theaters again,
knowing the twist and watching it likewe said, watch again in the analyzing.
Huh right, that that makes sense. Donnie Wahlberg killed him at the
(27:11):
start, you know, Yeah,and how embarrassing killed by a new CADI.
Yeah. I was about to saykilled by Donnie, But you got
to admit his performance is really fuckinggood in that small role, he asked
Donnie Wahlberg. Yeah, you know, I actually don't mind him as an
actor. No, he's a goodactor. He's not bad. And the
Saw movie I think he was more. I always forget the order that they
have those he's told in. Ibelieve it was Saw two and four he
(27:33):
was at because three three mostly takesplace with agus mcfaden going through the whole
thing and the doctor being at trappoint I call it trying to take out
Um yeah, saw this thing.If you want to hear a entire podcast
worth of episode information on SA go, check out the culture Cast episode where
we talk about all the movies thatexisted at the time, which I think
(27:56):
is everything. But the last twomust have been a whig Jig Saw and
Spiral Spiral Spiral. Yeah, JigSaw and Spiral are the only two that
we didn't cover, So if youwant to hear that they both incredibly underwhelmed,
Well, I have not covered thembecause I feel like I don't have
anything else to say about the Sawmovies. Speaking of twists that I saw
(28:17):
coming. When I watched Spiral inthe theater, I'm like, oh,
yeah, he's the killer. Don'tsay why not? Has it been?
Has it not been long en spoiledthese Trevor, I'll say who the killer
was. It was Samuel L.Jackson. No, it wasn't. Wow,
you spoiled the movie, Trevor.I'm just kidding. I know who
I was. It was Chris rowlesManella Anthony, Anthony whatever, that one
guy who looks like the guy fromHereditary But he's not the guy from Hereditary.
(28:40):
I mean, tell me, tellme I'm wrong. I like her.
I think with Cout is a twistwhen it comes to what you expect
of the film. Did we notexpect that movie to be a fucking Exorcist
demon shit movie? No, itwas Rosemary's Baby, right. I expected
the girl to be the main folksof the film, right, And not
even halfway through it she gets beheadedand spoiled the movie for everybody. Put
(29:02):
beeps on this beep fucking you're cursingevery time, and then they baby bye
baby, I'll do Well, wedidn't we spoil Malignant? Well, we
did Malignant, Yeah, but that'swhen we did the Malignant podcast. People
who listen to the Code of Honorepisode are not wanting to have. I
don't know what's another thing we couldspoil. Rosebud was a sledholes Okay.
(29:23):
The the timing that I use isten years Okay, Well, I'm sorry,
no, I'm what are you fuckinganything pre twenty twelve is fair game?
Okay. Finkel is eine Horn isfinkal. That's why Roger Padactor is
dead. He found Captain God,what a fucked up movie. I love
(29:44):
that movie. I mean, nowit's a little transphobic, don't you thinks
no think, I don't. Idon't because the thing about them being trans
is not played for lab I meanit is right at the end, but
that's it. Think about it,Like throughout the movie are they like,
oh my god, you know trans. I don't know why. I don't
know, but yeah, it's atwist. We're talking about twist still is
(30:06):
just this is more exciting than talkingabout the movie that they don't nail the
twist. Yeah, that's a twistand that movie that's it's funny, it's
meant to be. It's like anoir twist if you think about it,
like a Spintura is almost if itwasn't a comedy, it would almost be
neo noir, well almost of thevision of like Psycho or or what's that
William Castle felt, um, it'slike Sleepaway Camp. Yeah. But like
(30:29):
my point is like a Spentura iskind of like neo noir ish, Like
some of the stuff is like youknow, like the what what he's doing,
his profession, where he lives,you know, like it's like any
like a it's like a Charles Willifordnovel because he lives in Miami. You
know, he could run into HokeMoseley type thing. But the twist in
that movie, I don't think it'sI don't think it's transphobic. I think
(30:51):
it's happening. I think it's unI think it's in poor taste. But
I think that's always going to bein poor taste, that twist regardless.
Yeah, I mean that movie theI don't think it give um. I
think no, I know, butI mean that was a movie you don't
expect to even have a fucking butyeah, but Aspinur is also not mean.
He's not a mean characters. No, he's a smart ass, but
(31:12):
he's not me right like, whichis why I say the movie is not
transphobic, because like the character thatSean Young plays being you know, uh
Finkel and Ihorn, like, yeah, that's found out. So at the
end of the movie, like yeah, he does the thing where he's like
plungering his face. That's probably theworst part, I think, because I
like, well, at least thefirst two I love, Yeah, the
(31:33):
second one's great. I have notseen the third one with technically called I
don't could you consider it the thirdone. Say what am I trying to
pervert? No? I don't evenwant to think about that movie existing.
Well, I think Jee Jerry's nota record saying no more sequels for him?
Wasn't he why not just do it? Isn't? Aren't they making an
aspentura something? Right now? Ithought? I thought Jim Jerry said that
(31:53):
he's not. He's not doing sequels, because here's the thing, spent three,
You fucking coward. I want toOkay, I do too, right,
aisven Tur two is really I likeaispen Tur two more than I like
the first one. Well, bybeif you're going to make a film this
many years after the fact, justbe careful. Because Dumb and Dumber two,
well, I thought it was funnyat ark, not as near as
(32:14):
good as I don't even I thankyou for reminding me that exists. Oh
fucking pox upon my brain? Whatabout dumb and dumber? When Harry met
Lloyd Starry? Why are you doingthat? Man, Darry? Eric Christian
Olsen and uh fucking the guy fromHostile? Why are you doing Why are
you gotta be that way? Whyare you gotta do that for everybody else?
Why are you gotta bring the restof us down to that, to
(32:35):
that level that's subterraneous, like weirdsequels to eighties movies from the like mid
well oh yeah, but also likeit's the same, Like okay, so
in the in the mid thousands theywere doing the eighties movies because I just
I love how Ghostbusters After Life wasthe final eighties Installedgiament. Oh, it's
not. It was the final form. Oh you mean the final form.
(32:57):
It was like the final form ofeighties Installedgiament. Now everything's nineties nostalgia.
Nineties nostalgi is really picking up.Well, I mean, top Gun Mavericks
show them that eighties nostalgia doesn't.But that's different because that's just like America
rod nostalgia. I don't care.Fucking playing with each other's fat fucking balls.
What is that? What do theycall it? What they call them?
Like? What does that sound?Playing with them? So it's just
(33:21):
so fucking just giving one of lifesimple joys, playing with the boys.
Oh yeah, I bet they flexin this movie, Kenny Loggins for d
Yeah, Everett, we have strayedso far from this movie. It's the
code of honor that we've strayed far. It's deserved to be straight from because
it's fucking it's garbage. It's it'sjust it's well intentioned garbage. It is.
(33:45):
I'm not even it's Look, we'veseen worse already on this show.
Things that meander for fucking the worstthing you've seen that's still China Salesman,
Like, without a doubt, Well, that movie will always be the worst
film. I don't know if we'lleven top China Sales. Yeah, I'm
with you. Didn't I see anotherone was worse than that? What wasn't
there one? There was one wherewe were kind of even more pissed off.
(34:06):
Hold on, but I don't rememberwhat. I don't remember what it
was. It definitely was one ofhis earlier not a connection connection yet,
doesn't it? Or have we watchedthat Asia Connection sounds like a p I've
more had the I've had the HaroldFultimeyer theme stuck in my head more than
(34:27):
the man du was it the perfectweapon? Pervict Wippon, I don't remember
we've watched something like that. Wewatched something that was really bad. It
was oh god weapon. That wasthe one where it takes place in the
future and yeah, yeah, thedirector oh, he has a brother.
(34:52):
He has a brother. At theend, it turns out so even though
Steven Seagal's dies, his brother wantshonor anyway. So fucking I don't know
what else are there to say aboutit, because there is a good there
is a good movie in that plotor in that thing, but they needed
to go over the script way moretimes before they could before I think it
was filmable. What there is tosay is that this movie is a better
(35:16):
attempt at a movie like this thanwe've seen so far from these kinds of
movies. Trevor, Where can peoplefind you? Well? Of course you
can find me on the Else podcast. You can find me at Twitter at
mad Verdict or bedroom. You canalso find me from time to time on
the Culture Cast with my glorious cohost Chris dash You and you can also
find me from time to time atthe Projection Booth hosted by the Great Mike
(35:38):
White, a great Mike White Sharkif you will, and Chris. Where
can people find you? You canfind me at c stashu dot com,
cstacchiw dot com. That's my linktree. Go there for all the things
that I work on. They arevarious in a quantity, and I think
um high in quality. So,you know, if you're into seventies TV
show where movies are weird, thingslike a up of the night, that's
(36:00):
where you can go as for thisshow on seagal dot Com, on Seagal
on Twitter, just go, justgo on iTunes and rate and review the
show. Just do us favor,Do me a favor, do Trevor a
favor, Do Stephen Seagal a favor, and tell us about Do me a
favor on this the day of mydaughter's winning. Yeah, do us a
favor, give us a good review, a good rating. It'll help us
move up like one in the schemeof like a thousand, given that everybody,
(36:23):
I'm surprised Seagal doesn't have his owngoddamn podcast, given that everybody else,
it's just a matter Team Russia doesn'tallow them, so it's just a
matter of time. Trevor. Yeah, but he's he's in with the right
people, so okay, so untilthen, yeah, just uh you know,
yeah, yeah, stay tuned toStephen sa
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