Some critics might say that On Deadly Ground, Steven Seagal's ham-fisted jeremiad against Big Oil, was an abject failure. I beg to differ. It undoubtedly succeeded in crippling, if not killing, his career. Ending a Hollywood career in one fell swoop is not easy, but this farrago, directed by Seagal, is about as close to career self-immolation as an established celeb can get. Not only did this film cement his stature as a walking pop culture punch line, it consigned him to celluloid Hades, where he stars in throw-always with the likes of DMX. The beauty of this film is that everyone thinks it is horrendous, so you can ridicule it at social gatherings without fear of offending anyone's cinematic sensibilities--if there is a Platonic form for Bad Movie, this is it. The films opens innocuously enough, lulling one into believing that this is just another schlocky actioneer: Seagal is Forrest Taft, a laconic, bad-ass who puts out fires for truculent oil baron Michael Jennings' (yes, Michael Caine) Aegis Oil in the wilds of Alaska. The tension between the two is, like the entire movie, not very subtle, so the audience soon realizes that the denouement will involve Seagal pimp-slapping Caine, the only question is how many explosions it will take to get there. Then, without warning, the movie morphs into a Greenpeace polemic this is as didactic as it is unconvincing. If Aegis Oil's flagship oilrig Aegis I "the largest in the world" does not go online in 13 days, Aegis' land rights revert back to the indigenous Eskimos. Faced with the possibility of losing a drilling rights that will generate "billions of dollars a day," Aegis' helmsman, Jennings, resolves to use substandard parts to get Aegis I operational, risking a Valdez redux. Did anyone do a cost-benefit analysis on this decision? Suddenly, the film's raison deter is no longer to entertain but to educate-maybe a better word is indoctrinate. The lesson here is simple: capitalistic fat cats=Bad; conservationist Native Americans=Good. If you can wrap your mind around that chestnut then there is no reason for you to see this movie. Go rent Under Siege 2-wait, on second thought, don't.

But that is not entirely fair. On Deadly Ground espouses another, more powerful message-when it is not vilifying industrialists and glorifying ecoterrorism, it is preaching the gospel of multiculturalism. And you had better listen because Seagal is no Gentle Jesus, he's more the cold, punitive Jehovah . . . with a mean streak. In the film, potential converts either accept the Word according to Forrest Taft or get punched in the face or stomach. Our first object lesson comes in a smoky barroom where a well-lubricated roughneck is bullying a hapless Eskimo. Enter Forrest Taft, the Pugilist of Progress. After enduring a hail of insults for his Native American dress, Taft intervenes, proposing a game of slaps in which the loser lets the winner have a free shot. The beery rig-worker goes first, and, of course, loses. Taft flattens him with a punch in the face; dazed, he staggers to his feet to try his luck again, only to have Taft KO him with another haymaker. Finally, after failing to slap Taft's hands for the third time, he's girding for another punch to the face, so Taft cheap shots him in the stomach. As the bloodied palooka wobbles to his feet, Taft wistfully asks him, "What does it take to change the essence of a man?" Taken aback and bleeding internally, he responds tearfully, "Time. I need time." Cut to Taft nodding approval, "Me too." Huh? Thus, in one scene, Seagal debunks a nostrum that Western civilization has been laboring under for generations-i.e. social progress is best affected though peaceable means, such as moral suasion, reasoned argument and social engineering. Turns out, the best way to foment social amelioration is by punching people in the face or, in the alternative, stomach. Imagine the possibilities if we had only known this sooner. If only Abolitionist Quakers had pummeled Southern legislators into Enlightenment.

Though far more sanctimonious that your typical Seagal vehicle, On Deadly Ground is certainly not any less violent. In fact, the whole movie oozes ultraviolent sadism. Seagal believes that the righteousness of his cause gives Taft carte blanche not only to throw some punches, but also to commit cold-blooded murder. For example, when Taft is infiltrating Aegis I to sabotage it and foil Jennings' designs, he happens upon a security guard who he summarily shoots in the head. This frontier justice begs a host of questions "Wait, what did that guy do?" "Was he one of the Bad Guys?" "Couldn't that poor sot at least have gotten a couple of punches in the face first?" Obviously, Seagal eschews namby-pamby philosophy that martial arts should only be used in self-defense" he averages at least one broken arm per film, and he fills that quota here. And it is not just bindery rig-workers who are vulnerable to beat-downs" no sentient being is safe. During the peyote-induced dream sequence in which a shamanic Eskimo elder reveals his vision quest, Taft has to put the smackdown on a grizzly. I'm serious. But Taft cannot do all the bloodletting himself, so villains have to get in on the act. In one particularly repellant scene, Jennings' mononymous henchman, MacGruder (played with aplomb by John C. McGinley of Office Space fame), emasculates a septuagenarian foreman, Hugh Palmer, who is about to blow the whistle on Jennings' use of substandard parts in Aegis I.

After about 98 minutes of propagandizing, you are relieved to watch this tree-hugging morality play grind to its ineluctable conclusion "capitalist swine who could not be punched into a higher state of consciousness die grisly deaths and bloody-minded enviros are vindicated. And then Seagal crosses the line" he rhetorically punches the audience in the face by launching into a three minute long philippic on the evils of Big Oil, Corporate Syndicalism and the internal combustion engine complete with a slide show of stock footage showing billowing smoke stacks and polluted tributaries. This harangue is obviously intended to re-educate the dunderheads in the viewing audience who have not yet accepted the abecedarian morality of the film: capitalism=Bad; nature=Good. After a while, you get the feeling that Seagal would have rather punched all of us in the face if logistics of such an undertaking were not so prohibitive" his arm would eventually get tired. So, instead, we get this filibuster, which in the interests of not gilding the lily, I won't rail against, but will only provide below. It speaks for itself1

Can't Miss Scene: Once Jennings realizes that Taft is on the loose and headed for Aegis I, he hires a band of mercenaries to assassinate him. (There's a thinly-veiled implication here that bankrolling such death squads is not an unusual outlay for multinational corporations" First Call/Thomson Financial expects P&G's earnings to be off by a quarter due to a large one-time death squad write-off.) While trying to intercept Taft, the posse's point man, Stone, feels the need to stop and rhapsodize about just what a bad mo-fo Taft is:

"My guy in D.C. tells me that we are not dealing with a student here, we're dealing with the Professor. Any time the military has an operation that can't fail, they call this guy in to train the troops, OK? He's the kind of guy that would drink a gallon of gasoline so he could piss in your campfire! You could drop this guy off at the Arctic Circle wearing a pair of bikini underwear, without his toothbrush, and tomorrow afternoon he's going to show up at your pool side with a million dollar smile and fist full of pesos. This guy's a professional, you got me? If he reaches this rig, we're all gonna be nothing but a big g*dd*mned hole right in the middle of Alaska. So let's go find him and kill him and get rid of the son of a b*tch!"

This impromptu paean to Forrest Traft struck me as a rather sub-optimal use of the death squad's time, but no more moronic than the rest of the movie, which is, on the whole a can't miss in itself. In my opinion, it's one of the worst major theatrical releases of the '90's, but that's just my opinion" it could change. All I need is time and a punch in the face . . . or stomach.

¹"I'd like to start out by saying, thank you to all the brothers and sisters that have come here today representing this cause. I have been asked by Mr. Itok and the tribal council to speak to you and the members of the Press about the injustice that has been brought against us by some Government Officials and Big Business. How many of you out there have heard of alternative engines? Engines that can run on anything from alcohol to garbage or water. Or carburetors that can get hundreds of miles to the gallon. Or electric or magnetic engines, that can practically run forever. You don't know about them because if they were to come into use, they'd put the oil companies out of business. The concept of the internal combustion engine has been obsolete for over fifty years. But because of the Oil Cartels and corrupt government regulation, we and the rest of the world have been forced to use gasoline for over a hundred years. Big Business is primarily responsible for destroying the water we drink, the air we breathe and the food we eat. They have no care for the world they destroy, only for the money they make in the process. How many oil spills can we endure? Millions and millions of gallons of oil are now destroying the ocean and the many forms of life it supports. Among these is plankton, which supplies sixty to ninety percent of the Earth's oxygen. This supports the entire marine ecosystem which forms the basis of our planet's food supply. But the plankton is dying. I thought, well, let's go to remote state or country, anywhere on Earth. But in doing a little research I realized that these people broker toxic waste all over the world. They basically control the legislation, and, in fact, they control the Law. The Law says, "no company can be fined over $25,000 a day." For companies making $10,000,000 dollars a day by dumping lethal toxic wastes into the ocean, it's only good business to continue doing this. They influence the media so that they can control our minds. They have made it a crime to speak out for ourselves, and if we do so we're called "conspiracy nuts" and we're laughed at. We're angry because we're all being chemically and genetically damaged, and we don't even realize it. Unfortunately, this will effect our children. We go to work each day and right under our noses we see our car and the car in front of us spewing noxious poisonous gasses that are all accumulative poisons. These poisons kill us slowly, even when we see no effect. How many of us would have believed if we were told twenty years ago that on a certain day we wouldn't be able to see fifty feet in front of us. That we wouldn't be able to take a deep breath because the air would be a mass of poisonous gas. That we wouldn't be able to drink out of our faucets, that we'd have to buy water out of bottles. Our most common and God-given rights have been taken away from us. Unfortunately, the reality of our lives is so grim that nobody wants to hear it. Now, I've been asked what we can do? I think we need a responsible body of people that can actually represent us rather than Big Business. This body of people must not allow the introduction of anything into our environment that is not absolutely biodegradable or able to be chemically neutralized upon production. And finally, as long as there is profit to be made from polluting the Earth, companies and individuals will continue to do what they want. We have to force these companies to operate safely and responsibly, and with all our best interests in mind. So that when they don't, we can take back our resources and our hearts and our minds and do what's right."