221) Flight of Fury (2007)

221) Flight of Fury (2007) Dir: Michael Keusch Date Released (DTV): February 2007 Date Seen: July 25th, 2009 Rating: 0.75/5

Considering that Steven Seagal was once renowned for being the socially conscious star of conservative and hilariously hyper-violent action films, it may be prudent to read Flight of Fury as his belated attempt to capture his deluded idea of what the zeitgeist is. According to Seagal, Afghani terrorists are still the bad guys we should be paying attention to. Wow. This is...six years after 9/11? Remarkable.

Typical of Seagal's terrorists, the Afghanis in Flight of Fury could be anyone if you just changed their accents and outfits. They hire a corrupt American pilot to steal a tippy-top secret stealth bomber which naturally only Seagal can bring back to America safely. In their blind hatred of Western civilization and the American way specifically, they decide to nuke two, ahem, specific targets--Europe and America (Yes, all of Europe's going to get it. Suck on those baguettes, amorphous mass of non-English speaking folk!). Like every other Seagal villain, they are truly the baddest of badmen yet, but for serious this time. These guys are so e-ville that they're capable of bribing an American soldier, the noblest of men, to the dark side (the inordinate time the film spends on filming soldiers barking orders at each other and Air Force facilities and equipment in action would make Michael Bay envious).

The flip side to this argument is that one should watch Flight of Fury as just another dumb "Steven Seagal film," which it definitely is. The man still insists on being an unapproachable badass, a holier-than-thou figure with more skills than chins, of which he by now he has a surplus. Like much of his later filmography, it's mostly dull and humorless. The action scenes are still satisfying in their unimpeachable stupidity. Watching Seagal spring into action is a real treat. Though he's gotten older, he still skulks around with his a slight hunch, brisk, kitty-corner baby steps and a constipated stare that he rapidly swings from side-to-side like an impressionable child that's taken his mother's admonishment to look both ways too seriously. He's still the best butthead hero and hence isn't really worth taking too seriously, even if he thinks he is sometimes.