Continuing my plan to watch every Steven Seagal movie in order I come to Ticker (2001)
Before I talk about this movie, I need to say director Albert Pyun hates this film and has publicly apologized for it several times. He says Nu Image suddenly cut off his funds 12 days into shooting before taking it from him and splicing it with archive footage before releasing it. Pyun has since made an unofficial release of his drastically different director's cut. I am pretty sure I watched the studio's release as it is awful. Shockingly bad so. With the cast, I was certainly expecting something more.
This is actually more of a Tom Siezemore vehicle than a Seagal one. He is easily the main character here. For an action movie, this is pretty light on action. Seagal filmed his scenes in 6 days. Which is 5 more than Dennis Hopper. Hopper was only on set for 1 day and never met Tom Sizemore, Steven Seagal or Jaime Pressly once on set. When his scenes were screened for him later, he declared it "a righteous day's work."
This is woefully bad, with the use of stock footage being laughably bad, Hopper having a weird Irish accent at times, some strange dubbing on Sizemore and Seagal, who's weight fluctuates a lot between scenes. For the first time, its obvious he is using a stand in for most of the action scenes.
Pyun originally recorded a commentary track for the DVD, in it he described how Nu Image had taken the film from him and edited into the "Steven Seagal action film" they wanted. Because of the heavy criticism towards them Nu Image and Artisan Entertainment edited and watered down his commentary.
Easily the worst movie in his filmography so far. Truthfully, if this isn't his worst film then I despair at the depths he has reached.