So first off, I just need to say thank you to Wal-Mart.
Now I know that sentence above iss going to get me a lot of weird glances and mutterings under breaths at the fancy cocktail parties I imagine being one day invited to, so allow me to explain:
There’s one thing I like at Wal-Mart - the $5.00 DVD bin.
And sometimes in that bin you find one of those double-feature DVDs that packages up one of an action star’s popular theatrically-released films together with one of their later direct-to-video releases.
This is the story of one of those films: Mercenary for Justice, one of the later films of Steven Seagal. It was paired in a box set with Marked for Death, whose claim to fame is a sequence where Seagal continues to beat the crap out of a dead body.
If I could sum up Mercenary in one word, that word would be confusing.
Seagal plays John Seeger, the bestest soldier from the Gulf War (number 1, the GOOD one). As the film begins, CIA agent/director/guy in a suit with an office John Dresham is speaking with “CIA Black Opps producer” Anthony Chapel. And yes, it’s misspelled onscreen.
So CIA guy Dresham is looking to hire a team of mercenaries with the idea they are liberating a government as cover for grabbing oil and diamonds. He wants Chapel to set up the perfect team, one that gives him “Plausible Deniability.” So Chapel lists each member of the team he’ll assemble. When he gives the names of each person, it cuts to a clip of that person doing mercenary stuff like shooting guns and shooting guns while yelling. Apparently they’re going to hire Radio Jones so they can get him to get Seeger to join up, as well.
So at this point I figured I knew what was coming. Radio would talk Seeger into going on a humanitarian mission which would turn out to be a front and John Seeger would spend the rest of the film hunting down the people who hired him, culminating in a gunfight with Mr. CIA Guy at some historically important monument.
As the ghost of Don LaFontaine might have said, I thought wrong.
It turns out that the clips of the mercenaries fighting is the mission that Dresham and Chapel hired them for. So they were in a flashback and the mercenaries were in the present day, without any pesky “editing” or “writing” to alert us to this fact. Because, you know, it would have gotten in the way of the plot or something.
The members of this mercenary team are:
- John Seeger, the most decorated soldier in the first Gulf War.
- Kruger and Kirk, munitions experts from South Africa. They have excellent dialogue coaches; there’s not a trace of a South African accent left.
- Samuel Kay, Hacker and computer guy.
- Maxine. She’s a woman.
- Radio Jones, communications expert and the guy who talks John into joining.
Seeger realizes that CIA shenanigans are afoot. Radio gets shot and apologizes for talking John Seeger into joining the team. You know what would have been nice to see in the film? A scene of Radio talking Seeger into joining the team.
Kruger and Kirk take the French ambassador hostage to use as a bargaining chip with the French army, who are fighting the mercenaries. So from what I can gather, the regime on the island are fighting against the mercenaries who think they are liberating the island but are only making it safe for the CIA to exploit the island’s wealth.
I had to watch the beginning of this movie twice to get that.
Radio asks Seeger to look after his wife and child, and Seeger agrees. Frankly that’s all I have to write about the wife and kid. Not that they don’t have any scenes in the film, but to be honest they are almost completely unnecessary to the story.
A rich Greek guy needs his son sprung from the worst prison in South Africa before the son is transferred to Leavenworth, so he calls Chapel. Chapel gets talked into it (translation: he was offered a lot of money) and puts together his team. It’s the same goddamn team he assembled for the last job. With the exception of Radio, of course. That would be awkward at best and kind of smelly at worst.
Seeger doesn’t want to join at first, but Chapel talks him into it (translation: he threatens Radio’s wife and son). Samuel asks Seeger about it and Seeger lets him know that he’s going to kill Kruger and Kirk for that whole ambassador thing. You’d think that a hardened mercenary would be a bit more callous, but you have to remember one thing: John Seeger isn’t a Mercenary for a Six-Figure Salary from a Major Yet Shady Government Subcontractor, he’s a Mercenary for Justice.
Hacker guy is cool with this. Apparently he is also for Justice.
Meanwhile, Dresham realizes that Seeger’s up to something and, after a chance meeting outside the airport with Maxine, is following them to South Africa. Maxine, however, tells Dresham that the mercs are planning to hit the South African Superbank instead of the South African Superjail.
So here, I figured I knew the rest of the story. Dresham wastes time at the bank while the prison break is planned but discovers the plans for the break in and goes after the mercenaries culminating in a gunfight inside South Africa’s worst prison ever. Cue La Fontaine again.
At first the bank heist really is being used as cover for the prison break. But when Kruger and Kirk’s team go in they find that the Billionaire’s son is no longer in residence. They are ambushed and the last ones left alive are Kruger and Kirk, who manage to commandeer a repurposed armored personnel carrier and make a break for freedom. Unfortunately, the good folks of the South African Prisons Ministry apparently considered the possibility of such a thing happening and destroyed the APC with the rocket launcher they had on standby. Exit Kruger and Kirk, Mercenaries for Douchedom.
At this point, the viewer might wonder exactly what will happen for the rest of the film. I know I was. Then again, at this point I was also wondering why I was watching the thing in the first place so your mileage may vary.
Well, the south African police and Dresham get the word of the prison break and, realizing they’ve been had, make tracks for the prison. Once they are gone John and Maxine go to work on their real plan: robbing the bank. That’s right, the bank heist was cover for the prison break which was a cover for the bank heist. In a better film, this would probably be a clever bit. Here, it just makes me want to open that second bottle of Yukon Jack and dig right in.
Computer Guy for Justice takes out all cellular communications at the bank with his computer. John and Maxine go in, posing as government agents or something, telling the bank staff that there is a bomb threat in the bank. One of the employees tries to contact his superiors on the phone but is unable to. John purs on the pressure with one of those “While you sit here, people are about to DIE!” speeches, which works.
Now let’s stop here for just a moment. Earlier in the film we were told about all the security in place at this bank. It’s supposedly one of the most secure banks in the world or some such thing. Now you would think that in a country with a past as turbulent as South Africa’s that they would put in a dedicated protected hardline just in case of terrorist attacks or rioting. I mean I would have thought of something like that, and I don’t even live in South Africa. I suppose that’s what the bank’s designers get for not hiring me to develop their security (for a list of services and a schedule of fees, you can email VirtualBasement@mondo-recondo.com).
Maxine and John connect their briefcase computer to an easily accessible port in the main computer of the most secure bank ever and begin several funds transfers.
First, they funnel the money out of the account of the Greek chief of staff who the billionaire pays off. John calls the chief to let him know the billionaire betrayed him. The chief notices that all his money’s gone and BAM! Billionaire guy gets arrested (and presumably posts bail like 5 minutes later).
Then John makes another transfer. Maxine notices who it is going to and she says she can’t believe it. Now at this point I was figuring he was wiring money to Radio’s son and then at the end John would reveal they are now millionaires and will live happily ever after.
Cue LaFontaine.
No, he wires the money to Dresham. Then when he gets back to the bank with the head of the South African police and they notice that Dresham has suddenly come into a great deal of money they arrest him on suspicion of being an accomplice.
Finally John, Maxine, and the rest of the team go off to kill Chapel after fighting their way out of the bank. Radio’s wife and son also need rescuing from Chapel but, really, Seeger was going to go down there and kill him anyway.
Seeger and his team take out all of Chapel’s men and rescue Radio’s family, while Chapel escapes in his car. He’s giving the victory laugh and keeps looking back at the house he’s just escaped from. You just know his car’s going to explode. Maxine doesn’t like the fact that Chapel escaped because he was such a bad person. Chapel laughs and keeps driving. Any second now, his car’s going to explode. John makes a pun about Chapel having an “explosive personality.” Any second now. Cut to Chapel. Any second now. John makes the exact same pun. Any secoGODDAMMIT MOVIE, JUST BLOW HIM UP ALREADY SO I CAN TURN OFF THE DVD PLAYER!
Chapel’s car explodes.
At the very end John has managed to wrangle a funeral with full military honors for Radio Jones. And thus ends Mercenary for Justice.
Note: You may find that the Wikipedia entry for Mercenary for Justice has a different storyline. When I said this film is confusing, I mean it is so confusing that two different people watching the same move can have two completely different ideas of what they just saw. That is amazing fillmaking.
