This is the third movie in Steven Seagal’s career, and is a bit more miserable than his last one. Compared to Hard To Kill, this movie is less cool, less smooth, less exciting, more messy, more depressing, more into the old-school TV drama and horror genres and less of an enjoyable action hero movie.
Steven Seagal does a fair job as John Hatcher – the star of this movie. It’s just the plot and genre are not to my cup of tea. While some scenes are still decent, and the plot still has some qualities to it; because it’s a messy and and unpleasant to watch I’m going to call it a bit of a stinker compared to the baseline set by the better composed first couple of movies in his career. It’s clear there was some budget and resource put into this movie, but I like what I like and I don’t like what I don’t like, and for my taste this movie is about as bad as his poorest modern movies, and that’s saying something because some of them are unwatchable and I’m Steven Seagal fan saying it. I bet he struggles to watch his own worst movies back himself! Marked For Death (1990) is not unwatchable but it belongs in a category called (barely) watchable and I’m certainly in no hurry to rewatch it in the next few years (if ever) so long as I remember how weak it was. I’d rather rewatch The Glimmer Man twice in one night than rewatch Marked For Death twice in one year. But hey, if you like a bit of drama and horror, you might enjoy this one. Seagal is still here doing his thing, occasionally, and some scenes are decent.
While this movie was released in 1990 in USA (the same year as Hard To Kill – just a few months later), Marked For Death wasn’t released until 1991 in the UK for some reason.
Martial arts wise, Seagal is his usual self, with plenty of assertive Aikido on display. For example he does a nice pivoting block into Shiho-Nage, against a wide swinging hook with a knife, at nearly an hour into this movie, in the jewellery store scene. There’s lots of arm breaks here too.
Seagal’s partner-in-crimefighting in this movie, called Max, is played by Keith David, who gives a very basic NPC-style performance. I feel like he was only brought in, on Seagal’s side, to counter possible narratives of racism, since Seagal is primarily beating up a crew of Rastafarian Jamaican drugdealers in this movie, led by a character called Screwface, played by Basil Wallace in a way that I can only describe as weird while over-playing to and mixing-up stereotypes. Rastas are among the most peaceful and positive-spirited people in the world, in real life, in my experience.