Tom Jolliffe looks back at one of Steven Seagal’s early works, as Marked For Death turns 30…
After breaking out with Above The Law, a lot was expected among action fans for what would follow from Steven Seagal. It would take a couple of years waiting until the next one, but 1990 saw two Seagal pictures released. Hard to Kill played up a revenge angle as Seagal, investigating corruption gets a little too close to uncovering the criminal ties of a Senator. Left for dead, in a coma, he eventually recovers and sets about exposing the criminals and getting some good old fashioned revenge. As a righteous lawman he’d already uncovered corruption in his previous film for those seemingly above the law. In some ways Hard to Kill was a spiritual sequel, and whilst effective in its delivery (with action fans again enjoying the trademark gritty and brutally violent action) it felt like a stay on formula. Marked For Death came and offered something just a little different.
Seagal made it three for three playing a lawman (the following film, Out For Justice would make that four). After a Colombian drugs bust leaves his partner dead, John Hatcher returns home and calls it a day, retiring from the DEA. Back in his home town, seemingly rife with drugs, Hatcher finds himself intervening during a gang shootout, and kills a couple of Jamaican criminals. Soon he’s targeted by a villain called Screwface, a practitioner of black magic who seems to invoke fear throughout the Jamaican community. In the end of course, Screwface isn’t quite as mystically inclined, nor immortal as he’d made believe (think the ‘twist’ in The Prestige). Hatcher remains grounded throughout, never really buying into the voodoo, but having been targeted (And his family) sets about ending Screwface’s reign of terror for good. It might sound like it almost borders on comic book, like a lost Punisher comic, but Marked For Death just added a dash here and there of being a little different, and more exotic than the other early films of Seagal’s canon. It was still part of an iconic opening run of five films that pushed him right up alongside Stallone et al.
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In many regards in fact, Marked For Death isn’t lauded in the action genre as much as it should be. Seagal makes for an imposing hero, at the peak of his powers. Van Damme as an antithesis looked great on film and his fight sequences had a definite showmanship and pizzazz, but they didn’t feel like something you might see if someone skilled in the arts took on opponents in a bar, or intervening in a store robbery. Seagal’s fights did and were often shot wide, allowing us to see the action. An opponent had to wait for Jean-Claude to jump, spin 360 degrees in the air, split his legs and kick them square in the jaw. Opponents of Seagal were too busy charging him with blunt objects or blades. His response was always ruthlessly efficient. They were down in one or two moves. He’d use weapons or objects around him too. He’d plant their face in a glass cabinet, or stick them to a wall with the blade they’d just tried to stick him with. Seagal had, and of course perpetuated, an air of being untouchable. Marked For Death had that all, and includes some of his best sequences. One sequence where he evades capture and then takes on three men attacking simultaneously in an enclosed space is amazing in its efficiency (it was choreography that didn’t feel choreographed). The action is taken from Chicago to Jamaica after Screwface returns home. Hatcher follows. Again this change of locale offers something a bit different too, and the entire finale is great.
The film benefits from a good supporting cast too. There’s an early role for Danny Trejo at the beginning, the first of several co-credits with Seagal over the years. Keith David is always a welcome presence in anything. As one of Hatcher’s old buddies, who has become despondent at the state of their old neighbourhood because of drugs and gang violence, he offers a great presence for Seagal to play against. Seagal’s early career gave him the benefit of some great villains to play against too. Henry Silva in Above The Law, William Sadler in Hard to Kill, William Forsythe in Out for Justice and the double hit of Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones in Under Siege. Action films are often only as good as the villains, and the films certainly delivered on that front. Basil Wallace is great as Screwface and there’s a certainly eerie quality about how he plays up to the villains almost mythical image (before Seagal strips away the facade). It’s also what gives Wallace something a little more unique as a villain in comparison to straight up drug kingpins, rogue politicians or unstable gangsters. It’s the fact you buy into the possibility he might have something superhuman within. Wallace revels in the role.
SEE ALSO: Die Hard with Stallone, Seagal and Van Damme
With great action and something a little mystical, Marked For Death is still a great action film to watch. Seagal is great at what he does here, and is centre stage throughout. He comes up against a foe, for the first time that you felt might be formidable. It’s all expertly put together by genre stalwart Dwight H. Little (he’d follow this with the equally brilliant, Rapid Fire) and like many action films of that era has a polish that is rare these days (great cinematography, production design and a brilliant score). Additionally that grounded action of simple, quick efficiency, with brutal payoffs is something we see increasingly used as a point of praise for John Wick these days (and they’re great), but much of what we see for that franchise using Judo and MMA, Seagal was doing with Aikido (and indeed some MMA) in his early films. Such is the antithesis between Marvel theatrics now and what you see in John Wick as an example, that the difference is more noticeable (and coincides of course with the current MMA boom) but Seagal’s films weren’t as lavished with praise back then (for revolutionising film fight sequences) as perhaps they might be these days. His action sequences were ahead of their time. The fans have always loved them, but coming out fresh now they’d be considered a cinematic art form and genre defining, as they have been with Wick now.
Tom Jolliffe is an award winning screenwriter and passionate cinephile. He has a number of films out on DVD/VOD around the world and several releases due in 2020/21, including The Witches Of Amityville (starring Emmy winner, Kira Reed Lorsch), War of The Worlds: The Attack and the star studded action films, Renegades (Lee Majors, Billy Murray) and Crackdown. Find more info at the best personal site you’ll ever see here.
Originally published October 5, 2020. Updated July 19, 2024.
