Marked for Death Blu-ray

Marked for Death

 (1990)

Marked for Death Blu-ray offers solid video and audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
Burned-out after losing his partner on the job, Drug Enforcement Agent John Hatcher (Seagal) hopes to find some calm and serenity by returning to his hometown. But things at home have changed - and not for the better. Jamaican drug lords, led by a black-magic high priest named Screwface (Basil Wallace), have completely infiltrated the small town. But this gang soon learns that they've met their match in John Hatcher...and all the mystical voodoo in the world won't be enough to stop Hatcher's wrath!

For more about Marked for Death and the Marked for Death Blu-ray release, see the Marked for Death Blu-ray Review

Starring: Steven Seagal

Marked for Death Blu-ray Review

Marked for the bargain bin.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater, May 21, 2010

As far as I can figure it, there are two types of Steven Seagal fans nowadays. The first are middle- aged guys—yes, almost exclusively guys—who have a genuine love for the big/dumb/fun action genre, with its masculine cornucopia of ass-kicking, limb-breaking, and skull-busting. On lazy Sunday afternoons, you'll find them sprawled out on the couch, a cold beer in one hand, a remote in the other, cruising cable TV for a man-sized matinee, preferably one with a relatively high gunfire-to- dialogue ratio. The second sort are the twentysomething sons of these channel surfers, who grew up watching second-tier action films with their dads and, despite a full realization that these movies aren't cool or original, have developed an ironic admiration for the likes of Dolph Lundgren and Steven Seagal, in much the same way that hipsters have nursed a mock-serious love for '80s hair metal and, say, Pabst Blue Ribbon. Oh, and mustaches. Admittedly, I fall into this latter category (minus the mustache, metal, and crap beer). Though I know, instinctively, that Marked for Death is nothing more than schlocky pulp violence, and though my tastes tend to run toward more serious fare, there's something perversely satisfying about seeing Steven Seagal force a drug dealer's elbow backwards or toss a dude down an elevator shaft.

Machine gunning a side of beef. It doesn't get any better than this...

Marked for Death's set-up is pure cop film cliché. Seagal plays John Hatcher, an undercover law enforcement agent who kills a hooker in the line of duty—fair enough, she had a gun trained on him—and decides that enough is enough, it's time to retire. We see him in a confessional booth, where he intones, with utmost earnestness, "Father, I just killed a woman. I've lied, I've slept with informants, I've taken drugs, I've falsified evidence, I've done whatever I had to do to get the bad guys. Then I realized something, that I had become what I most despised." No, you don't come to a Steven Seagal movie expecting good dialogue. The padre tells Hatcher to take a break from the crime fighting derring-do, but it's never that easy, is it? Hatcher returns to his hometown, Chicago, to live with his sister and niece, but the day after he arrives he discovers a gang of Jamaicans peddling crack rock to pretty high school girls. He arrests one of the dread-headed gang members after a shoot-out in a bar, and in retaliation, the gang's leader—a green-eyed mystical voodoo freak named Screwface (Basil Wallace)—marks Hatcher and his family for death. With the help of his best pal Max (Keith David) and reluctant informant Jimmy Fingers (Tony DiBenedetto), Hatcher hacks his way through Screwface's minions —using some bitching aikido moves and whatever blunt objects happen to be lying around—before tracking down the kingpin in Kingston, Jamaica.

The film wastes no time in delivering the bone-crushing goods. Within the very first scene—a drug bust in Columbia gone bad—Seagal has already lopped off two limbs with an enormous machete and busted caps in numerous asses. The pace cools a bit in Chicago as the various plot machinations are set in place, but once Seagal enters full-on revenge mode, the brutally doled out violence rarely relents. You wanna see bones get snapped in half like candy canes? Seagal obliges. You wanna see him take a samurai sword to some mofos for some slice 'em, dice 'em action? It'll happen. You want a decapitation and eyes gouged out—a la 28 Days Later—by Seagal's massive thumbs? Have at it. How about a car crashing through the front of a ritzy department store, sending namby pamby patrons fleeing in horror, or a guy getting tossed from a ten-story window and landing on the roof of a Pontiac Bonneville below? It's all here. And just when you think Marked for Death can't possibly get any more manly, Seagal fires a machine gun clip full of ammo at a Fred Flintstone-sized side of beef that just happens to be hanging in a warehouse. Why? To give our pony-tailed hero something for target practice, of course. You can rag on this kind of film all you want—and in this job, I frequently do—but you can't say that Marked for Death doesn't give its intended audience exactly what they want.

He was never as charismatic a screen presence as some of the era's top-tier action stars—Willis, Stallone, Schwarzenegger—but Seagal is a bull in a china shop here, if the china were actually Jamaican drug peddlers. Thankfully, all the action doesn't afford him too much time to, you know, talk and stuff, because acting—as opposed to punching guys in the face—isn't exactly Seagal's forte. When forced to emote or play any other expression beyond grim determination or absolute rage, he comes off like a linebacker at a tea party—he just doesn't know what to do with himself. The acting, across the board, is fairly atrocious, but it adds to the so bad it's good charm if you're in it for the irony, and if you're taking this stuff seriously, well, you probably don't care much about the acting anyway. The Jamaicans all seem like borderline-racist stereotypes— seriously, if Hatcher's buddy Max wasn't black the whole thing would have an unsettling us vs. them vibe—and they all basically look/act like Dave Chappelle imitating Lil Jon. Also, the patois accents lead to some hilariously incomprehensible dialogue, like "Dreadlocks, monkey be with us again," and "Stop the bloodclot crying. Everyone must dead." Oh yeah, here's the other thing: for some reason that goes completely unexplained, the Jamaicans call Hatcher "bloodclot" or variations thereof, like "bumbaclot" and "raasclot." Perhaps it's a subtle warning that watching too many films like Marked for Death can give you an aneurism.

Marked for Death Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

Marked for Death arrives on Blu-ray with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that's certainly an appreciable upgrade from its DVD release—or television broadcasts—but you won't exactly go running out to the store to nab this one for its picture quality. Clarity is middling, with some decent detail and texture in close-ups—Seagal's doughy visage never looked so good—but in general the image is slightly soft. This seems to be a product of the original film elements, though, and not an aftereffect of the transfer, so it's hard to be too hard on 20th Century Fox. As the old saying goes, you can't polish a turd. (To be fair, the image is nowhere near turd-like.) The transfer's color reproduction is consistent but unremarkable, with a flat, drab look that occasionally gives way to bursts of neon reds and blues. Black levels are a bit more problematic, sometimes crushing detail in the shadows and often taking on a hazy, dark grayish quality. On the plus side, there's no harsh DNR, no over-the-top edge enhancement, and no real compression problems to be found. Grain spikes a little here and there, but never to distraction. Likewise, the print itself is very clean, with only a few white specks showing up throughout.

Marked for Death Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

While you might expect Marked for Death to be pretty bombastic audio-wise considering all the broken glass, gunfire, and body blows, the film's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is front- heavy and restrained. You'll definitely hear some activity in the rears—gunshots, quiet ambience, James Newton Howard's rather unmemorable score—but there's a lack of directional accuracy to the effects, and it sounds to me like the film's presumably stereo original elements were simply bled into the surround channels to encompass a full 5.1 presentation. In fact, I don't think I noticed any distinct cross-channel movements. The big fights, chases, and shootouts never sound as detailed or dynamic as what you'd hear in a more modern action film—gunshots, in particular, seem flat and impotent—but there is some unexpected low-end LFE engagement. Besides a few scenes when dialogue sounds overtly looped (and slightly muffled), the lines are clean and easy to understand. Except when the Jamaicans are speaking, anyway—good luck trying to figure what they're talking about.

Marked for Death Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras

 

I'd love to hear Seagall, with his characteristic whisper-threat voice, mumble through a commentary track, but alas, there are not supplementary materials whatsoever on this disc.

Marked for Death Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

 

Though Marked for Death isn't Seagal's best film—that dubious honor probably goes to Under Seige—there are enough visceral thrills here to please less discriminating 1980s action fans. I might watch it if it was on TV and I was seriously, monumentally bored—a rare occasion when there are so many good films to watch—but I don't think I ever need to own it. I'll leave that to the dads.

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