When you think of the modern era’s most noteworthy action heroes, the name of Steven Seagal is always destined to come up. Obviously, the veteran actor hasn’t exactly been renowned for the quality of his output, but he’s become so synonymous with a particular brand of low budget ass-kicking that it would be unfair to leave him out of the discussion, regardless of how bad the majority of his filmography over the last three decades has proven to be.
While Seagal has certainly starred in a handful of actioners that range from solid to great, an alarming number of them have proven to be interminably uninteresting, or just straight-up awful. However, a recent Reddit thread looks to have settled on one title above all that straddles the line in beautifully silly fashion, and it also happens to be the ponytailed martial arts enthusiast’s passion project.
Seagal starred, produced, and even directed 1994’s On Deadly Ground, which earned a robust $78 million from theaters back in the day his films would actually see the inside of a theater. Playing the wonderfully-named Forrest Taft, the leading man works as a hired gun for Michael Caine’s hammy villain, before a chance encounter with a local woman while on assignment in Alaska leads him to change his ways in exceedingly preachy fashion – complete with an excruciatingly wooden monologue.
A 12 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, 34 percent user rating, and a Worst Director win at the Razzies from six nominations in total tells you all you need to know about the technical merits of On Deadly Ground, but it’s endured as an ironic cult favorite based entirely on how unrelentingly stupid it is, which kind of makes it endearing to a certain extent.