OK, hear me out first..... This really IS one of the better Seagal produced "straight to video" 3 word titled movies to come out before he completely ballooned into a force of too many carbs and a sad, cartoon, shadow version of his former self. And rather than playing the usual vigilante out for justice, here, he is actually the BAD guy running his criminal enterprise, who finds himself matching wits with Ving Rhames straight from a comic book wannabe kingpin, who pulls a double cross on Seagal's favorite hitman, Roman Hurst, knowing that the screw-up will, due to a perverse sense of honor, cost him the use of hands as he is beaten just shy of death.

Banished to skid row, but still alive, the Hurst drinks himself into oblivion above a restaurant run by Oso, (Danny Trejo, in the standard Danny Trejo role) and Alexanders daughter(?), Karen. Standard mobster take-over moves ensue, with the appropriately inserted interludes of judiciously edited, standard Steven Seagal mayhem, which is always fun to watch. Double and triple crosses are in effect as "Ice Man" attempts to consolidate power, all the while not realizing that Seagal's Mr Alexander has been "doing this a lot longer and better than anyone else has"

When the time is ripe, Alexander orders Oso to "do that voodoo that you do so well", which involves rare scorpions, a hammer and chisel, and near death, so that Hurst can "find his hands" and join the battle against the Machiavellian machinations of "Ice Man" and his crew.

Gun's, blood, gritty action, and strip club boobies abound, and in the end, Mr. Alexander turns out to be a repentant Gangster with a heart of gold..

A fun watch for those who Seagal fans, even with the bad hairpiece and the weight gain...

First off, don't be fooled: This isn't really a Steven Seagal movie; it's a Bren Foster movie where Steven Seagal gets top billing. Although Seagal plays a central character (crime kingpin) in the film, the story is much, MUCH more centered around Foster's character (Roman Hurst), a protegé of Seagal's character (Mr. Alexander) who - due to a double-cross - mistakenly terminates the wrong person and, according to some twisted "sense of honor" by Mr. Alexander - has to pay the price. The entire film is focused almost completely on Foster, with Steven Seagal and Ving Rhames shoring up the storyline with their own little backstory. But again, don't get fooled: The film opens with Seagal doing his Aikido thing and showing off some skills, but almost immediately after, it slows to a snail's pace and gets boring, VERY predictable, and (again) focused almost entirely on the Roman Hurst character. Danny Trejo makes an appearance, oddly as a greasy-spoon-chef-turned-tough-guy, but like the others, his character is used only to shore up the Roman Hurst character. Seagal, meanwhile, has lapsed back into that atrocious gutter slanguage where he's trying to talk like some street "gangsta"…if nothing else ruined this movie, that was MORE than enough to destroy it. While Seagal and Rhames are interesting additions to the movie, the acting (much like Seagal; very much UNLIKE Rhames) is lifeless and wooden. The gunfights are incredibly ludicrous: what kind of _"I've done this for many many years"_ druglord goes into a turf war - inside his own elaborate estate, no less - poorly armed with, what?...maybe two clips for his automatic weapon? Along with idiotic pieces like that, the entire scorpion/adrenaline/bone-breaking portion was ... well, I would say "laughable" but it was too utterly stupid to even be laughable. Although this isn't his worst, it's a far far FAR cry from the glory days of a strutting, sinewy, ponytail-sporting Italian "Nico Toscani" (_Above the Law_) or "Gino" (_Out for Justice_). Like so many of Seagal's later direct-to-video movies, this one had a TON of ingredients that could have been put togrether to make a VERY GOOD action flick; unfortunately, it seems (per usual) that those involved didn't know what to do with all those ingredients, so the whole was far far LESS than the sum of its parts. And again, this film - even though it sports Seagal's name across the top - is very much a Bren Foster movie. But hey, if Steven Seagal produces it, he gets to put his own name where he wants it, right?