Into the Sun (2005)

What makes it different from others?

one of my absolute favorites!

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This movie has some pretty good action scenes and is full of signature Seagal classic moments. The only problem is that it is about 75% all in Japanese with NO SUBTITLES explaining ANYTHING that is happening! I bought the Amazon Instant Video version, so let that be your warning if you go to buy it. (They refunded me for what it is worth and I bought Urban Justice, great Seagal movie) That is the reason I had to dock it, because I missed all the great quotes that I love in my Seagal movies. Eddie George makes a brief appearance early on. I was like what the hell is Eddie George doing here? Early on Steven pulls a classic move: instead of using his silenced weapon to kill a couple baddies, he shoots one with the silencer, then shoots the other with the first bad guys unsilenced assault rifle! YES! I knew this was starting out right. After some good initial action the rest of the movie is pretty much Steven aka Big Poppa, asking Japanese and Chinese people about who the hell knows what because it is literally all in Japanese, then at the end he kills a bunch of people with a sword and it is just over. You will laugh your ass off when he ends up in the park apparently proposing to this chick out of nowhere. I mean, you see this chick twice, then the 3rd time he's getting married? He literally talks in English in two word sentences and people answer him back with 10 minutes of Japanese for basically the whole movie. So, as long as you don't care that you have no idea what is happening most of the time, go ahead and watch this film. I went back and read the teaser on Amazon after I watched it to see what the hell I had just watched and what the story was supposed to be, and it said something about Steven saving the US from a secret nuclear attack!? WTF? I never once caught wind of that in the movie, which just made it even more baffling. If it was in English or had subtitles it would have been so much better.

Steven Seagal's best film will always be Under Siege to me. Not all his films are a waste of time, but over the years especially the case with Out for a Kill and Submerged his films have taken a nosedive in quality, and have ranged from just okay to very poor.Into the Sun does have a good soundtrack and some decent moments, but overall it was just adequate for me. Into the Sun occasionally looks good, but there are a lot of scenes where the editing looks messy, and the direction is a very uneven mix of occasionally decent to sorely lacking.The characters are little more than walking clichés(that's my opinion of course), with Seagal's partner very underused in particular. I have no better news about the acting, Steven Seagal looks unkempt and gives another quite lazy performance, while William Artherton seemed bored.The fight sequences are not well-edited and don't make much sense within the plot. Speaking of the plot, it is very thin and derivative complete with a pace that is monotonous and sluggish and a script that at best is very weak.Overall, not one of Seagal's finest hours. 3/10 Bethany Cox

I will rightfully admit I am not a hardcore Seagal fan by any means. But whenever one of his movies is on late night TV I usually end up watching them even if only to enjoy the cheesy acting and plots, etc... We know how they are.So yesterday was Into the Sun, and since I've never heard of it, lest seen it, I keep watching. And you know what? One or two things did quite impress me. For one, the opening credits: They are of quite beautifully done and reminded a little bit of the James Bond movies. I suddenly expected a quality movie. Of course I was going to be disappointed: All in all the movie was as trashy as they always are with SS.I also quite liked some of the visuals and photography like air views of Tokyo and the filming on location. Sure the story went along very slowly and there was not much fighting. But surprisingly, I did not feel it was too bad.And I quite liked the Japanese/Chinese actors, their styling and looks mostly, but some were acting quite well too. Especially the Kojima character (who later becomes the new Yakuza leader) actually is a really good actor! I wish Seagal had some of his talent to render his lines...Then the soundtrack was indeed quite good as well, as has been said before.But of course the sum of it all is still a sad miss. I wonder if Seagal is ever watching his own movies. I mean what would he think?? Come on, he even produces them. So please, can you not get a good scriptwriter for once and put together a decent film that is not full of plot holes, bad acting and cliché? Or is this simply supposed to be like this? I just don't get it... I will stop my rant here because I cannot add anything that has not yet been mentioned in other comments.Still, there were some good moments in this one. I have seen worse of SS, and therefore 2 stars instead of only one.

So it's well known that the movie takes place in the actual neighborhood where Seagal grew up and studied martial arts, and also that he speaks fluent Japanese, but why have Japanese terrorists that are always speaking English? Isn't it just a little off-putting that the American hero is constantly speaking Japanese but the Japanese and Chinese guys all speak broken English to each other? Of course Seagal would want to show off his Japanese, since he almost never gets a chance to do it in his movies, but if they're going to go for that authenticity, they should at least include it where it really belongs as well…As far as a Seagal film, it's about average as far as the films he has been releasing for the last ten years or so, none of which have really been all that impressive. But I still get a great kick out of his movies, even when they're not good. If nothing else, I can even enjoy the cheesy acting and paper-thin plots, and if even those fail at least Steve is always good for smacking around some bad guys.But in Into the Sun, other than a brief skirmish near the beginning, it's a good hour into the movie before anything happens. Before then, we get a tirelessly developing but uninteresting plot about the Chinese and Japanese versions of the Mafia and how they are developing a massive drug corporation, with Seagal entering the mix investigating the murder of a government official. Worst of all, however, is that the movie spends so much time developing the totally unnecessary and unconvincing romantic story, in which 54-year-old Steve in his floor- length leather trench-coat falls deeply and madly in love with a tiny, dainty Japanese girl who can't be more than 22. Needless to say, my favorite part was when he sheepishly explains to her, "You know, I've never had the best luck with women. In fact, you could probably say I haven't had any luck at all…"What's that, he's a virgin? Is he asking her to go easy on him in the sack?But stay tuned, at the end of the movie this impressive team of filmmakers utilize an unbelievably complex and difficult bit of cinematic trickery to make the wife disappear from Steve's grasp. I noticed this particular bit of movie magic because I did the exact same thing in a six-minute movie I made with a $250 video camera when I was taking an Intro to Film class at Fresno City College in 1998. They really spared no expense with this movie!The other problem is the bad guys themselves. They are such tired clichés that it's impossible from frame one to take any of them seriously, particularly the leader of the Yakuza (the Japanese Mafia). He's your typical, b-movie villain – slicked back hair, fishnet t- shirt, arm always slung over the chair he's slouched in and a lot of guys standing around him that jump to attention and do things for him when he snaps his fingers. Yawn.The guy is so unimaginative and so unimpressive that he makes the movie seem longer because I'm just waiting to see him get killed at the end. Evidently, however, they knew when they were making the movie that some serious ingredients were missing, so they tried to cover up the gaps with things like the sound effects that make it sound like whenever someone gets cut with a sword they spray out a fountain of blood all over the place. Nice.In the movie's defense, it's true that Steve does look good for his age, although he has certainly lost the hardened appeal that he had in his earliest movies like Hard to Kill and Out For Justice. At least he looks a lot better than he looked in Urban Justice, but unfortunately that's not saying a lot. The movie is a bit of a curiosity piece because Seagal wrote and performed a lot of the music on the soundtrack, and he actually sings the song during the closing credits. It's a little disturbing to listen to, but I recommend you wait and check it out because it's not disturbing because it's so bad, it's disturbing because it's actually pretty good. Too bad the rest of the movie isn't quite as pleasantly disappointing