Retro Review: Hard To Kill (1990)

Hard to Kill
1990
Cast: Steven Segal, Kelly LeBrock, William Sadler, Frederick Coffin
Genre: Action
Worldwide Box Office Gross: over $59 Million  

Plot: Left for dead with his wife in their house, an L.A detective will have to make a quick recovery, expose those behind the murder & take revenge 

'Not Quite Hard To Endure, But Lacking In Edge'

Mason Storm is left for dead after he and his wife and kid are shot and killed by some goons, well, it is presumed that Mason is dead, when, in fact, he miraculously survives and awakens from a coma, 7 years after the attack. With the help of a nurse who aids him in his recovery, Mason goes out of his way to find the people, in some crooked cops and a corrupt politician, responsible and bring them to justice. Mason becomes a cop who is hard to kill, hence the title, a tough nut for the bad guys to crack, the cop of whom the villains can't outmuscle or defeat. Hard To Kill was Steven Segal's second major feature film, following on from 1988's Nico/Above The Law. 

The first half opens up with a vicious and riveting 20 mins or so, but then comes to middle third when the film begins to sag, as it goes down the lull route with the boring back-and-forth interplay between Kelly LeBrock and Segal dominating the film's proceedings and the action heating up in the final third - only to come to a sluggish end, - and one that was also a cop-out.

I was never big on Steven Segal, I mean, sure enough, he has the skills (Aikido to be more precise) and he is no slouch in the fight department, but as a movie star, an action movie star with screen presence and charisma, he just never wowed me and it just comes across in his performances that there was that vibe that looked brooding-yet bored and showing less enthusiasm. His movies also ranged from okay to half-decent to forgettable and bad direct-to-DVD showings. Under Siege is (arguably) the high point of his ever-fluctuating movie career.

There is something about Steven Segal in a fight scene, whereby he always gains the upper hand and rarely gets smacked or kicked around, which is what happens to Jackie Chan, Slyvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenneger, Jean-Claude Van Damme. His characters, or be it Segal himself, are so zoned in he would stroll through his roles by beating the hell out of them in a fight scene, with no fear, with sheer confidence, and his opponents have no way to counter-attack Segal. At times, it's entertaining to watch, other times this becomes aggravating this will bother many viewers. Of course, Mason gets killed earlier on, unlike so many of Segal's characters, but he comes back to life to exact his vengeance. 

The fight scenes themselves are at times, flashy looking, but nothing to behold, but rather basic as well and the action was done better elsewhere. Back in 1990 and in the early '90s, I would have been all right with Hard To Kill; If I saw this during the early 1990s, I wouldn't have thought too much about it, but in seeing this today in 2020, it underwhelmed. Hard To Kill is by-the-numbers as action films go and whilst there are 2 or 3 decent action sequences, the drab storyline, co-written by Segal also, and the pacing of it dragged and took up way too much time. The romance with Steven Segal and then-wife Kelly LeBrock was unconvincing as they had no onscreen chemistry, whatsoever, whilst her performance wasn't much to write home about, in fact, there weren't any real standouts. There wasn't even a proper toe-to-toe fight with William Sadler's meanie character; instead, that was reserved for Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2: Die Harder, released in the same year as Hard To Kill. & whilst these are two very different action films, both in terms of plot, story and main characters' motivations in going after the villain, Renny Harlin's Die Hard 2 reigned, big-time. 

Hard To Kill's final third, but for the limp ending, is worth sitting through, and it's a shame that the first half wasn't bad and yet the middle of the movie felt pretty lacklustre. Alas, the story was just so forgettable and so lethargic, you couldn't care when it tried to tell the story, & the action scenes were, well, for me, I expected a whole lot more and with more quality, but this just didn't transpire.  

Final Verdict: 

Hardcore and ardent Segal fans will get plenty of bang for their buck, but for everyone else, there are better action films out there that excel much more so than Hard To Kill. This is serviceable stuff, at best, otherwise, it's lacklustre but not as bad as his latter straight- to- DVD offerings. 

Overall: