Out of Reach (2004)

Who payed the critics

A Brilliant Conflict

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

An action thriller set in Poland. The premise is quite good - a pen pal who has lost touch with a young girl from an orphanage who has become a missing person. Seagal plays a former covert agent turned survivalist, tracking the human trafficking ring into which the young girl has entered. It has some similarities to Taken but it's a low budget production. Unfortunately, some of the supporting acting is poor, and the story is directed in a style that resembles a fable rather than a feature film in parts and so it is inconsistent. As a result tension is reduced somewhat and detective work becomes the main interest for the viewer. It is also badly dubbed in places and editing is poor. There is a memorable sword fight-off scene at the end between protagonist and antagonist which has an ironic subtext about purity in its setting in a white palace. It's prey vs predator in the end. This sequence is well directed and choreographed. For all its faults, and there are many in the storytelling, there is a heart to the film and an important subject.

Segal with dead face, no acting visible - he just walks. Plot so rough that it hurts, irrational behavior and astonishing stupidity of the bad guys is obvious in that category of movie - i.e. when going to get the "good guy" why bother to put the bullet-proof vest on? Good guys are always in danger - when you get shot, never call an ambulance, even when you're a cop. And stereotypes - Polish cop MUST drink vodka! (Actually 98% of polish people don't drink vodka at all!). We were watching to the end to see, how a good film concept can be ruined by the bad scenario, no work on details and poor acting. Waste of time, unless you are HUGE fan of Segal.

Out of Reach had a truly wonderful idea to work from, and as a film it had the potential to be powerful and compelling, but turned out to be neither. For me, the two only reasons why Out of Reach isn't any lower as a score is the idea it had to work from and final sword fight, which was the only well choreographed and performed action scene in my opinion. Steven Seagal looks unkempt and his performance both in the delivery of the dialogue, where he sounds monotone and bored, and the action sequences, where he looks as though he can't keep up with the speed of the choreography, is truly lazy. To be fair though, the film also does have several other things that bring it down. The acting is dire from the whole cast, nobody is believable and it doesn't help that the characters are written and explored badly, while the film making and direction are inept. The pace is sluggish, and this is including in the action which is not very well shot or choreographed excepting the final sword fight, the story is derivative and the dialogue is awful. All in all, there was a good movie in this somewhere but for some reason the good movie didn't come out. 2/10 Bethany Cox

I am being very generous here giving it a 5.... It was not great, but at the same time it was not terrible either..... It did have some good action scenes that were done by Seagal himself.However the story line is typical, and the dubbing in his voice for added scenes (?) was just horrible and shows how low budget this movie is... I cant say much els about the movie, it was OK at best.... keep in mind I am basing this off his last few movies that were just horrible.... Foreigner, out for a kill etc etc... compared to those it was actually enjoyable. Its still not even close to his standard of movies like Out for Justice, Glimmer Man, Above the Law but we know what were getting from steven now and if this is all were getting then I thought it was actually OK.