Customer Reviews
Segal's Last Good Theatrical Movie 
2008-07-31
This is the last true good theatrical release from Seagal; his preceding films afterwards would not match this movie in anyway, in exception of Belly of The Beast and Urban Justice. Seagal decided that it was time to loose weight and serve his fans right by doing another good movie like Under Siege.
Segal plays Orin Boyd, A good cop, one of the few that is not corrupt. After breaking the rules to save a vice president he is sent to a lower class precinct to learn some manners and earn his badge again. After proving his valor he is re assigned to work with a partner (Isaiah Washington) they are on the look for Drug rings around the neighborhood, they suspect something funny about a man named Latrell Walker (DMX) he is seeing doing dealings with cops and other people. Segal later finds out that Walker is with the good guys, and indeed wants to bring down the corruption...but who do you trust?
The movie is a bit unoriginal in some areas, but Seagal, DMX and the cast do a decent job with what they have. a thing I disliked was that there was to much wire work on the fight scenes. They at least managed to keep the Seagal's doubles minimal. Definitely worth owning even if you're not a Segal fans.
MY PERSONAL RATING: 3 ½ OUT OF 5
Heavily, I mean Heavily Clichéd, But Good Nonetheless 2008-04-29
There was a blaxploitation quality about this film which I really enjoyed. I think this was because of the silly cop banter and DMX's hard hitting musical score. But I could also quite easily and oddly see Seagal's character being substituted by a leading African-American actor of the Blaxploitation era and this film making it quite big. As clichéd as it was, it really was a solid lone wolf cop story, which only Seagal could do so well in his forever deadpan way.
Even the slightly silly, over-the-top action sequences had an endearing quality about them. I still laugh, but smile with excitement in the scene where Seagal flicks a gun up to his hands with his feet. Its all in slow motion, the music intensifies, you know doubt will crack up with the ridiculousness of the "move" that Siegel is doing, yet you will feel comforted and at home with the whole ordeal. Thus as I say this film is reminiscent of blaxploitation films, it is also reminiscent of action films of the 90's, for those growing up in that era, like myself. "Three Ninjas", "The Last Action Hero", "Ninja Turtles" all come to mind.
All in all the storyline kept me interested, Steven Seagal was a pleasure to watch and DMX's acting looks promising.
A great action film 2008-04-02
Steven Segal makes a great action comeback in this movie. His last good movie was Under Siege was his last okay movie was The Glimmer Man. This movie is about dirty cops and Segal is trying to bring them down. DMX who is one of the best rapper/actors is also a good co-star. The only let down for me was the fact that Steven and Micheal Jai White didn't have a longer fight scene. All in All this is one of Segal's best and his late good film.
Good story 
2007-09-28
Unlike other action movies where the action outweighs the story, this movie has a strong plot. There is action in this movie including a massive automatic gun firefight on a bridge at the start of the movie and a good car chase about half way through. What makes Exit Wounds different than other Seagal movies is the plot is very strong in this movie. Where does a good cop go when he suspects there are bad cops in his department? That is the question Seagal must answer. There is not a lot of martial arts in this movie but there is a good amount of gun fights.
Unusually effective frequency, intensity and quality of action scenes 
2007-06-17
EXIT WOUNDS (2001) does justice to Steve Seagal's reputation for
outdoing all others motion pictures for the frequency, intensity and
quality of action scenes, gun firefights, and man-to-man combats.
With a plot that's somewhat difficult to follow or believe (such that
some in the audience may reach for a Bufferin), the story deals with
an inside job, being coordinated and masterminded at the highest
level in the US police force, such that in the end, it is entirely
logical, explicable, and comprehensible for why so many police
officers were recruited for, and participated in a narco-trafficking
operation without being caught, by Internal Affairs or by clean cops.
In addition, Seagal's characters learns the lesson that high level
officials in an organization can take out their rivals (lower in the
hierarchy) by taking on alone the roles of judge, jury and
executioner, all-in-one.
Playing an iconoclast, independent-minded police detective, who is
able to think things over for himself, pulled from a vast experience
on the force, and talent, with the ends for him always justify the
means, (in terms of stopping a suspect, and protecting civilians) ,
this gets Seagal in trouble, for not being a low-profile officer.
Clearly, the non-stop action scenes will send thrills down the
audience's spine, their jaws and eyes wide-open, as all types of
vehicles (cars, motorcycles) and arms are used (shotgun, pistol, Uzi,
swords) including karate body to body defense and attack moves, etc.
The soundtrack is a mixed bag, but obviously, having been prepared by
DMX, with the cast split 50/50 with African Americans, evidently, hip
hop and the latest style of rap music was employed.
The sound effects for those with a 5.1 home theater will clearly meet
and exceed expectations. The wide-screen is well done, and a plus.
There's a number of quirky short catch-phrases, most often uttered by
Anthony Anderson's character, such as when he admits fearing Seagal
"will stick a plunger up his a#$" or "you need the meat, to feel the
heat" praising obese women.
Showing plenty of fitness and gym scenes, (weight lifting, boxing,
athletics), and a $300,000 Ferrari and phenomenal stunts and
firefights almost every 10 mins, the movie clearly aims to have to
audience's adrenalin and testosterone pumping, and manages this well.
The non-sequitur of the last 5 mins, with Tom Arnold doing comedy,
and the short shelf life of the rap numbers are the weak points.
3 Stars for Anger Management 
2007-03-07
A hero cop is busted to traffic duty when he threatens corrupt elements on the police force.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: R
Release Date: 14-FEB-2006
Media Type: DVD
A dance of violence... 2006-12-29
'Exit Wounds' begins explosively with a terrorist raid on the Vice President, who is surrounded by an array of police escorts...
When renegade Detroit detective Orin Boyd (Seagal) takes on the whole Michigan militant group to save the man's life, in true action hero fashion, he is punished for his lack of respect for authority and procedure and sent to one of the toughest precincts in the city of Detroit, the 15th...
Once there, Seagal begins his usual habit of investigating things he's not assigned to, and quickly begins to suspect police corruption involving a major heroin operation...
Seagal plays a super tough cop who stays in trouble for complaints filed against him for excessive force...
He lands in a bad dangerous precinct and before you know it finds himself in nonstop furious action, trying to clean up the streets while taking on drug dealers and dirty cops pretty much all by himself...
Seagal is accompanied in this film by rapper DMX and a few other familiar faces including Anthony Anderson who is absolutely hilarious...
Better than average by the numbers Action Flick 2006-05-29
This is one of the better Seagal Action movies and features a convincing DMX who shows he has some movie star charisma and acting chops. It's not UNDER SEIGE but it's far better than GLIMMER MAN, ON DEADLY GROUND and FIRE DOWN BELOW. It's also better than all of Seagal's direct to video fare. You also don't have to worry about him singing any Country-Western or blues songs in this one.
Seagal does not really act, but he does have an interesting charisma. At his best he's a poor-man's Clint Eastwood, who's spare Akido influenced martial arts moves are bone break-ingly no nonsense, macho stuff. He frowns a lot, he grimaces once in a while, he's sometimes photographed at unflattering angles, has vampire like teeth, runs like a girl and he almost never raises his voice and stays very very-- sometimes zombie-like, calm.
At times, Seagal's acting is so minimal you want to laugh at the irony that you actually wanted to spend your money to watch this guy. I mean I still can't decide if I think Seagal is a first class jerk with little talent (rumors of his big ego persist) or if he's kind of cool. It's remarkable he's gotten away with what he does in more than a dozen big screen movies and at least that many direct to video mistakes.
Seagal you'll notice almost right away in this movie still has that walk of his. Movie stars like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Robert Mitcum, Humphrey Bogart, and James Cagney, to name just a few used to have interesting walks. Walks which were full of attitude and set them apart from regular people. Seagal has a special way of walking... strutting actually. It's a modified Pimp's walk. Oh not the herky jerky kind of Huggy Bear (of Starsky and Hutch fame) walk, but more the Fred Williamson or Ron -Superfly- O'neal type of strut. When you add Seagal's greased back hair (he got rid of his pony-tail a few years ago) perpetual frown, wrinkled forehead and slanted eyebrows, with the strut, he drips with the I'm a pis-ssed-off-bad-a-s-s-vibe that action movie hero's since Eastwood and Bronson are supposed to exude. Seagal's got the attitude, and he's shed most of that beer belly gut he had during the last few films he walked through (on video about three years ago, on screen it's been four years). He may be 50 years old but he's quite willing and able to do some impressive looking martial arts moves and play cops and robbers quite well.
The film also stars Issiah Washington-- a real actor. Why he isn't working in better movies I have no idea. Issiah isn't actually asked to do much acting, but you can tell if the script asked him to do any, he would have been able to pull it off.
DMX (aka Earl Simmons) is another reason people were initially curious about this film. Perhaps the biggest reason. And he has some presence in the film. I'm not sure how good of an actor he actually is since he's playing a pretty cliché'd kind of character through most of the film. He acts tough, does some physical stunts (or seems to be doing them) very well and when he's supposed to have some warmth and the audience is supposed to like him--we do. He doesn't embarrass himself and has some on-screen charisma that's not the same as other rap stars turned movie stars. He contributes a few songs to the soundtrack as well--including an interesting version of the Bill Wither's hit Ain't No Sunshine.
Maybe the worst news about this movie is that we have not one... but two characters who are in the movie mostly to provide comic relief. They are written into the movie in a very forced manner and the actors that have been cast don't do themselves any favor by trying much too hard to be funny with the material they are given. Anthony Edwards and Tom Arnold try way to hard to be funny. They usually annoy. You might enjoy their end credit comic riffing however.
So what's THE STORY? The story updates ,merges and dumbs down Dirty Harry and Serpico.
During the first sequence some bad guys impersonate cops to try and kidnap a politican. Seagal as Orin Boyd, a decorated but Lone Wolf kind of hero-cop, is the only officer who notices that the impersonating cops are breaking regulation by wearing earrings. Hundreds of cops around and only our hero sees the irregularity and suspects something funny might be going. Some sort of gadget passes hands and Orin is the only guy who pays this any attention.
Cue the action complete with some bloodshed and a climax involving the fiery explosion of a helicopter.
In the process of saving the politician's life Orin has embarrassed the politician and caused lots of damage, endangered lots of lives and broke lots of rules. He's a decorated hero cop so he's transferred to the worst ghetto precinct you could imagine where a lot of misfit neanderthal cops work.
Oh that old chestnut huh? Yep.
What you couldn't imagine is that this precinct is run by a woman whom everyone pretends doesn't look like a cover-girl model. She's tough though and sends Orin to anger management classes and eventually demotes him to traffic cop. It's at the anger management school that Orin meets up with the t.v. talk show host played by Tom Arnold.
However Orin has quickly had a run-in with the local drug king pin, Latrell Walker (played by DMX), and his over-weight comical assistant and combo dance/strip club owner, T.K. (played by Anthony Anderson). When he tries to be the lone -wolf hero and take Latrell down he winds up screwing up another cops undercover operation. This is what gets him demoted temporarily to a traffic cop.
Oh but something isn't quite right with the picture and Orin discovers that dirty cops are involved and not all the players are who, they at first, seemed to be. I know this will come as a huge shock to action movie fans (NOT).
This leads to Orin getting involved in several scrapes that lead to a fairly big shoot-out/ action scene to wrap things up.
All of this takes supposedly takes place in Detroit. If you haven't been to Detroit you probably won't notice that Toronto is where the movie has been shot.
There's no romance in the film and outside of some naked club dancers and the brief hint of a flirtation, none of the stars have any on-screen relationships with women. In fact we have no idea about Seagal's private life in the film at all. You want depth? Go swim in the deep end of the pool. This is a Joel Silver action movie darn it.
Exit Wounds, is just one more time-wasting action movie that too many people weren't able to resist, so it became successful at the box-office. It's slightly better than you probably think it is, but you would still be better off satisfying your macho movie 'jones' by watching some action movies from Hong Kong (directed by Johnny To, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark or John Woo to start with), but hey, this one is in English.
IMAGE AND SOUND
Overal the 2.35:1 anamorphic wide screen transfer looks very good. The film has lots of nigh scenes and the black levels are strong and shadow details pretty good. There's some pixalation in a few scenes and if you want to be really picky you'll notice several white spot drop outs that are the result of some wear and tear on the original print used for the transfer. That's a bit disappointing that they didn't find a print in better condition or combine a couple of prints to Create one pristine one to transfer, but it's a pretty minor distraction. There doesn't seems to be too many problems with edge enhancements or bouncing video levels either.
There's only one soundtrack on the DVD and it's in 5.1 dolby. If you don't have the 5 channel system you'll be hearing a squeezed version of it which others call a down-mix. That means some of the squeezed together separation will create some muddier sound effects but usually it is not problematic and it won't affect your ability to hear dialogue.
The 5.1 track is utilized quite well. There's lots of big bangs and sound is bounced around from the various channels so there are plenty of left to right, back and forth, and right to left sound effects. When a noisy Humvee drives across the screen the sound moves through the room as well. This however isn't always the case... which is a bit puzzling. Why in the opening action sequence is the bun battle now nearly as lively as the one later in the film? The music score , occasional DMX songs and several sound effects are base heavy, so the LFE is being used throughout the film.
Extra Features:
The longest extra is the obligatory behind the scenes puff piece. There's the expected discussion about Seagal's come-back (of sorts) the casting of DMX and pre-planning for the film. Everyone is upbeat and positive and congratulating and praising everyone else of course. You do hear from Seagal, who sounds a bit tired and bored as well as producer Joel Silver who sounds enthusiastic. We get to see how a few stunts were done and see how the wire work played a big part in making Seagal look pretty good in the action scenes. Seagal as we see is a very agile athletic guy and he doesn't look 50 years old.
There is also the 9 plus minute feature called A Day on the Set with Anthony Anderson. Anderson plays T.K. in the film and he's often called upon to be the comic relief. We follow him from his hotel room, to his trailer, to the set for a scene he is shooting, and then, at the end of the day, he does a bit of a comic rant about what a long hard day it has been and how he has sacrificed so much to give those of us in the audience some entertainment value. Anderson's running commentary is only occasionally amusing and we don't see enough on the set type action for the piece to have much value.
The music video is presented in wide screen (but it is not anamorphic). Mysteriously the audio for the video is in Dolby 2.0. It should certainly have been in 5.1. The re-make, hip-hop version of the Ain't No Sunshine sounds okay in 2.0.
Exit Wounds is explosive! 2006-01-31
When I saw previews for this movie, I thought to myself man I want to go see this movie. I never did though go to the movies to see it. I finally rented it though and I wasn't disappointed one bit. The action is off the chain, the plot is pulsating, and Seagal is his typical bad ass self. There were other good performances in this movie as well. DMX is equal to Seagal in the bad ass department, Isaiah Washington shows off his versatility as the cop teamed with Seagal, and Michael Jai White is very convincing as the devil cop Louis Strutt. The best part in the movie is when Boyd (Seagal) fights Strutt while Rollins (DMX) fights Bontini. If you're a movie fan who likes over-dramatized Oscar movie dribble, then this movie isn't for you. If you like an entertaining plot with pizazz and style, then this movie is right up your alley!
Just doesn't work... 2005-11-06
It is obvious the makers of this film were trying to create some kind of action-comedy hybrid, however it just doesn't work. The action scenes seem tacked-on and the gags just don't work.
