Exit Wounds (2001)

In 2001, a movie was released starring Steven Seagal and DMX.  That movie was Exit Wounds.  The movie is about a police officer in Detroit who has to deal with… things.  I don’t really know what.  I’ve only watched the first fifteen minutes or so.  It was an amazing fifteen minutes, don’t get me wrong.  I enjoyed every minute of that fifteen minutes.  But I stopped the movie after fifteen minutes and went to bed.  I decided that in the morning, I was going to start writing about the movie, and here I am.

I did a post of this kind back when I wrote about the movie Poultrygeist.  What it will be is this: I am going to write a running commentary as I watch Exit Wounds.  As I watch the movie, I will be writing down my thoughts about it.  What I am seeing, what I am feeling, and any background I can think of related to the movie in any way whatsoever.  There won’t be much when it comes to that side of things.  I haven’t watched the movie before.  There may be some, though.

Hold onto your butts because this is probably going to be a lengthy post.  The one I did for Poultrygeist ended up somewhere in the 3000 word range.  That’s a large chunk of writing that I did for that one.  This will likely end up somewhere around that area.  I hope you enjoy what you are about to read, if you choose to read it.  And so we begin.

The movie begins with the Vice President, who looks a lot like Mitt Romney, talking about gun laws.  He wants to tighten them because of how many deaths are caused by guns.  I can’t stop thinking about how much he looks like Mitt Romney, but it is years before Mitt Romney would run for president.  Maybe this guy is supposed to be based on someone else.  But to me, he looks like Mitt Romney.

Steven Seagal shows up late to this speech.  When he arrives, he notices a motorcycle cop with an earring.  The way that the camerawork is done (slow motion and all that) makes it obvious that something is going to come of this.  Also making it obvious is that the good guy here is Steven Seagal.  He’s always going to be a super-aware supercop.  Let’s see where this goes.

I keep thinking that the Vice President is going to get shot on his way back to the motorcade.  He doesn’t.  He safely gets into his vehicle.  However, Steven Seagal notices two of the police officers passing something to one another.  This seems very suspicious.

There is a very good reason that it seems suspicious.  The motorcade is going to be ambushed on a bridge.  The two fake cops kill the other motorcycle cops.  A helicopter with a smiley face on it shows up and fires machine gun rounds into any car that attempts to drive onto the bridge.  A guy in a catering truck comes from behind and tries to kill the secret service agents.  Don’t worry.  Seagal shows up, kills the not-caterer, takes the truck, shoots all of the bad guys, and blows up the helicopter with his pistol that sounds like a machine gun.  And he throws the Vice President off of the bridge and into the river beneath.  He saves the day.  But he lost his El Camino in the gunfight.  It got blown up by the helicopter machine gun.

I haven’t seen a good old-fashioned unlimited ammo movie in a while.  This seems to be it.  Nobody ever seems to be running out of bullets.  Pistols seem to hold ten million bullets and nobody needs to change cartridges.  They don’t make action movies like this anymore.  Or… They don’t make high profile action movies like this anymore.  I’m sure there are direct-to-video action movies with little to no reloading in them.

Seagal’s bosses don’t like what he did and transfer him to another precinct.  His introduction at the precinct shows his new vehicle (a Dodge pickup truck), and his unknowingly insulting the head of the precinct to her face.  This movie tries comedy with Seagal but he cannot pull of comedy in a satisfying way.  It all falls flat.  Somewhere between the writing and acting of his character, the comedy falls really flat.  It is “gosh this is terribly unfunny” flat.

Hello.  His name is Orin Boyd and he is in anger management with Tom Arnold.  Tom Arnold is some television host, I think.  And Tom Arnold is mad that he doesn’t get to share his story in the anger management class.  Tom Arnold getting mad and trying to tell his story makes the class leader mad.  Everyone is getting a little mad and aggressive, which is the opposite of what should be happening.  Isn’t it funny?  Not really.  I like Tom Arnold, though, so at least there is that.

Boyd got stuck in the desk at the anger management class.  In a fit of rage that he says isn’t rage, he rips the top off of the desk.  Then he goes outside and sees some guys trying to break into the truck he is driving.  He beats them all up, handcuffs them, and leaves to the sound of cheers from the rest of his anger management class.  I am left wondering when DMX is going to show up.  I want X to give it to me.  Not like that.  I mean I want to see him in the movie.  I thought he was one of the stars.  I’m fifteen minutes in and he hasn’t shown up yet.

Oh.  Next scene, DMX shows up to go see his friend in jail.  Well then.  There’s DMX.

In the strangest yet best scene in the movie so far, DMX and Anthony Anderson go to a car dealership where they are racially profiled by a black man who keeps calling them “brother.”  Based on the first twenty minutes of the movie, I was expecting it to remain on a really dumb level.  Instead, it comes in with this interesting look at racism that seems more intelligent than what has come before it.  If the movie ends up being this intelligent, it will surpass being dumb fun, and become something more.

Orin Boyd notices a heist about to happen when he sees a guy in a Hummer throw a cigarette butt on top of a pile of cigarette butts in the street.  I would not have noticed the heist.  I would have gotten angry about the pile of cigarette butts because that is littering.  Stinky, unhealthy littering.  Ah.  The heist isn’t a heist.  It’s a drug deal that DMX is involved in.  Okay.

A wild Eva Mendes appears and speaks in what does not sound like her voice.

Boyd gets in a fight with DMX and the guy with the drugs.  DMX runs off and jumps through a window.  The other guy tries to kill Boyd with a saw.  Boyd arrests him only to find out he’s an undercover cop.  How?  The undercover cop has a badge in his back pocket.  Why would an undercover cop have a badge on him?  Anyone could frisk him and find it.  It makes no sense at all.  That’s a way to get yourself caught and killed.

As punishment for his actions, Boyd is demoted to traffic cop.  And he’s terrible.  So that’s a whole scene.

For some reason, all of the police officers at this precinct like to shoot each other with stun guns.  That seems like a safe pastime.  They peer pressure Boyd into joining them in the idiocy.  Kids, don’t succumb to peer pressure.  The results may shock you.

I can see now that Exit Wounds is going to be a movie about Orin Boyd stumbling upon criminal activity and doing his job, then getting chastised for it.  Everything in this movie seems to be that.  The bridge, the drug deal, and now he goes into a building and rescues the janitor and his family.  He didn’t get in trouble this time.  Yet.  But I think that undercover cop who is no longer undercover is actually a dirty cop.

Oh.  Next scene, he’s getting in trouble.  I wrote too soon.  And there’s a guy fighting a Pepsi machine.  It’s Isaiah Washington, playing George.  He is assigned to be Boyd’s new partner.  Let’s go back to the Pepsi machine.  They point it out, they show it a bunch.  Pepsi must be sponsoring this movie.  But why?  Why not sponsor something better?  Pepsi has the money.  They could easily promote themselves in better movies.

At forty minutes in, we discover that Tom Arnold is, in fact, a television host.  George picks Boyd up from his houseboat and they watch a little bit of the show before heading off on patrol.  Fun fact, Boyd sleeps with a gun.  Anyone who tries to wake him will get the gun pointed at them.

I guess there needed to be a scene full of exposition.  It gave the background of the police precinct while setting up for Orin Boyd to go to a club owned by Anthony Anderson’s character, TK.  It’s a club where topless women in body paint dance inside Plexiglas boxes while everyone else talks and drinks without paying them any attention.  I’m not quite sure how Boyd got into the club.  It doesn’t seem like a place where the bouncer would be all “Sure.  Go right on in, sir.”  Unless he showed his badge.  That’s probably what he did.

And Orin Boyd is in a fight with two big guys.  How long until Jill Hennessy shows up to ask what he was doing there and why he got in a fight?  Not long, I’m guessing.

I was wrong.  It wasn’t Plexiglas.  It was real glass.  I know this because Boyd gave a guy an uppercut, then crotch punched him while he was in the air.  The guy flew through the glass, shattering it.

DMX got away again.  This movie is a classic case of cat and mouse.  Steven Seagal is clearly the cat, even though his name is closer to a kind of bird.  His curiosity keeps bringing him and those around him closer to death.  And you know what curiosity did to the cat?  It made it a sandwich.  I think.  I’m not funny.

There’s a random scene where a bunch of off duty police officers are in a bar arguing over who the best athlete ever is.  No mention of Bo Jackson or Jim Thorpe.  Instead, they go with the typical top of one sport choices like Tiger Woods, Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, and Wayne Gretzky.

I knew that undercover cop guy was dirty!

The reason that Tom Arnold’s character exists at all is finally revealed at the halfway point of the movie.  (Yes, I know this post is already long.  Yes, I know that this post isn’t that good.  But I’m halfway there.  I might as well finish it.)  Boyd needs his help to get information on DMX and DMX’s crew.  Since Tom Arnold has a talk show and has done exposés, he should be able to dig up dirt.  At least there’s a reason for him now.

Orin tells his superior about his suspicions.  It’s in a fancy restaurant at dinner.  She gives him the sexy wink, which would be a winkyface emoticon today.  They don’t do the nasty.

Did I mention that Michael Jai White is in this movie?  Well, right now, Black Dynamite/Spawn is beating the crap out of a punching bag while staring at George.  George is being interrogated by not-undercover cop about when he and Boyd went to the club.  Exciting stuff.  I know.  Oh, and Michael Jai White told not-undercover cop to shut the feck up.

DMX is now off to see The Wizard.  That’s basically what not-undercover cop said to him when he told DMX to put a bag over his head.  Who is The Wizard?  It’s Spawn!  Of course it is.  You make him a good guy in one scene and a bad guy in the next.  Because, you know, you wouldn’t want to save that reveal for the end of the movie.  Why would you want to save something like that, and build actual surprise?  Maybe they should have introduced him as a good guy much earlier and built the character up.  Make him a fine, upstanding human then turn that on its head.  Instead, he stopped someone from punching someone, told someone to shut up, then was revealed as the bad guy mastermind.  How satisfying in a completely non-satisfying way.

In an unexpected, strange turn of events, this movie got all cyber.  Tom Arnold shows up to reveal that DMX is really not Latrell Walker, but is instead some other guy who created an online start-up and got lots of money.  He is trying to save his brother who is in jail and is probably selling heroin online in order to do it.  That happened.

The bad cops have now kidnapped Orin Boyd.  Will he escape?  Sure he will.  He’s Steven Seagal.  Kidnapping him involved crashing his pickup truck.  That is two vehicles of Boyd’s that have been destroyed in this movie.

Oh gosh.  Two references to classic movies right in a row:

1.       “This’ll make me talk?”  “No, it’s to make you die.”  That’s basically Goldfinger.

2.       “He made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.” And that’s basically The Godfather.

Side door smashed off of van.  Oh wait, it’s on.  Nope, it’s gone.  There it is again.  This shot continuity is terrible.  And then the van hits a car, which explodes.  Then another car, and it explodes and flips the van.  The cars explode really easily in this movie, it seems.  Helicopters too, according to the opening gunfight.  Garbage trucks don’t though.  A garbage truck plowed through the van without exploding.

There was a fight in the van, but when it crashed, the three survivors (two bad cops and Boyd) jumped out the back.  Then it cuts to another scene.  How did Boyd get away from them?  Did he catch them?  Who cares?  He’s fighting DMX now because he thinks that DMX told the bad cops to kill him.

Eva Mendes is back!  DMX wants to show Boyd what is going on.  Eva Mendes is in on DMX’s plan.  Also, TK offers to give back the grill of Boyd’s truck which he stole when escaping from Boyd earlier in the movie.  Boyd doesn’t need it anymore though.  He has no truck.

Now Boyd is driving TK’s Hummer because that’s not obvious at all.  As if the bad cops don’t know TK’s Hummer and watch where it goes.  Yeah.  He got ambushed while trying to tell Jill Hennessy that the cops are crooked.  This leads to a giant car chase.  And in the most realistic moment of the entire movie, she crashes into a fire truck and dies.  Boyd escapes though, steals a motorcycle, and the chase continues.  I have to say that the stuntman on the motorcycle looks nothing like Steven Seagal.  I know Steven Seagal wanted this guy as the stuntman, but boy does he look like a different person.  And in the most unrealistic moment of the entire movie, Boyd jumps over a car, front to back, without touching it.  Boyd could be brought in as the next member of The Avengers.

With his superior dead, Boyd calls up his old boss, Bruce McGill.  He wants to make a team to take down all of the dirty cops.  He also calls up George to help him out.

A good twist!  Boyd’s old boss is actually in on it with the dirty cops!  It’s something I should have expected but didn’t.  Interesting.  He’s in charge too!

Apparently Boyd called up Bill Duke, his other old boss, too.  He shows up to start a shootout.  TK is hit in the shin.  George is headshotting all over the place.  Boyd gets shot in the middle of the back.  But he’s wearing a bulletproof vest, obviously.  He’s okay.

Bill Duke is barely in this movie, and in his time, he gets a one-liner that is better than anything Steven Seagal has said in the entire movie.  He shoots Bruce McGill’s character about five times.  He kills McGill’s character.  Then he shouts “You’re fired!”  Much better delivery than Seagal.  I know that’s not saying much, but it’s so clear when you watch this movie.

DMX shooting people by tying his belt to the trigger of a shotgun, throwing the gun in the air, and yanking the belt… That’s pretty cool.  I liked that.  I haven’t seen that before.  Meanwhile, this swordfight between Seagal and The Wizard is kind of dumb.  By kind of, I mean I feel like I’m losing brain cells by watching it.

The DMX and non-undercover cop fight is so much better than Boyd/Spawn.  It ends with non-undercover cop getting his head smashed into the sprinkler on the ceiling and water shooting out because of it.  That’s pretty cool.  Oh, it doesn’t.  He then gets impaled while trying to impale DMX.  And Spawn falls off of a helicopter and gets impaled.  Both fights end with impalement.  Wow.

Tom Arnold shows up in the aftermath to ask TK to be on his television show.  DMX’s brother is safe.  Boyd is offered his old job back.  He doesn’t take it.  He wants to stay in his new precinct.  He also goes back to anger management.

Is the movie over?  Almost.  But first, we are treated to TK’s appearance on Tom Arnold’s show.  Wait, it’s not an appearance.  He’s the new cohost.  They talk about… things.  I don’t even know what I just watched there.  What they talked about would not be allowed on television.  I think it was just a scene of Anthony Anderson and Tom Arnold improvising a conversation.  It’s a funny way to end the movie.

So that’s the end of Exit Wounds.  3000 words since the post began, and I am finally done with the movie.  It was an entertaining, albeit bad movie.  It was the first Steven Seagal movie that I’ve actually sat through from beginning to end.  I don’t think that I’ve seen all of any of his other movies.  Bits and pieces, sure.  Not the whole thing, though.  So this is a landmark for me.  Wait… This is the second.  I saw Machete.

Watching the movie and writing about it taught me one thing.  I should not do this kind of post on a first time watch.  It ruins the viewing experience.  Not completely, but somewhat.  It was a bad choice on my part and made for a long and not that good post.  I’m sorry guys.  Next time I do a post like this, I will make sure that it’s a movie I have seen before and actually have real things to say about it.  That way, it won’t seem like I’m Arnold Schwarzenegger telling you what is happening at every point in the movie.  That’s no fun.

The movie is fun though.  Check it out, if you haven’t seen it.  It’s not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination.  It’s an insane action movie that entertains though.  That’s all you want sometimes.

I have a few notes to put in here:

• I mentioned Poultrygeist at the top of the post.
• Did I namedrop Arnold Schwarzenegger?  I think I did.  He was in Hercules in New York.
• John McConnach was in Exit Wounds.  He was also in Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, which I wrote about a long time ago.
• What are your thoughts about Exit Wounds?  Put them in the comments for everyone to see.
• If you have any suggestions for future Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can put the suggestions into the comments.  Or try telling me on Twitter.