Cartels aka Killing Salazar (2016)

This is one I watched a while back on I think Epix, and then it was taken down or we lost the Epix free trial or something like that, so I waited for it to become available, and when it didn't, I got images from the trailer so I could review it, only for it to be added to Tubi. It was also available as Killing Salazar with a different cover on Xfinity, so after watching it on Epix, I went to watch Killing Salazar, only to discover they were the same movie. In addition to us, our friend Mitch from the Video Vacuum has covered this. 

Cartels has Luke Goss as a special forces soldier who's been called in by the US Marshals to join their team, who are then called in by the DEA to do a job for them? The "job" is transporting crime boss Florin Piersic, who everyone thinks is dead after DEA agent Steven Seagal kills him. These transport things never go as planned, and another DEA agent, Howard Dell, tells the marshals (who are maybe more military than marshals?) they need to "sit" Piersic in a fancy hotel in Romania before can be transported back to the States, where he's going to rat out other criminals. Once things go bad, will Goss be able to make it out alive?

This is roughly what the story is, and to be honest, does it matter that much? This thing has the feel of a project that was made because Seagal's people came to line producer Ben Sacks and asked if he could get him another movie because Seagal needed the money. (I also have this sense because Sacks was interviewed on "I Must Break This Podcast" with Sean Malloy, and he talked about this kind of thing with Seagal.) Looking at it in that vein, this is one of three films like this made at the same time and released in 2016, the others being Contract to Kill and End of a Gun (the latter of which I haven't seen yet), and while this isn't the greatest, as I watched it I wondered if it had someone other than Seagal if it would've been a lot better. I tried my best to see how many scenes Seagal did with the other stars, and it's possible it was none, and that any time we see Seagal with another star that he was edited in using Lucas-style alchemy--one that stands out in particular, when Seagal and Goss are in the interrogation room, and they bring in someone from Goss's unit who attacks Goss, and then Seagal gets the guy in some wrist locks to stop him. After that, Seagal and Goss sit back at the table, and it's possible it's the one scene they did together, but it's also possible Goss was added in after. There's also a fight Seagal has with UFC champ George St-Pierre, where I think neither actually fought the other, that they were shot at separate times and fought doubles. The Seagal double thing was so bad, that they gave his double a credit among the cast (which is not where he's listed on the IMDb credits). On that score, maybe the take isn't that this film is pretty unremarkable among the rest of Seagal's DTV filmography, but rather that it's amazing how remarkable this is at all considering how Waxman, Sacks, et al were able to Frankenstein this together with all the Seagal constraints involved.

We're now at 37 films for Seagal on the site, with I think three left: Gutshot Straight, which I've watched and just need to review; End of a Gun, which I'm waiting to be available on one of the streaming services, but may have to rent to see; and Clementine, which I haven't been able to find in English. Those together should get us to 40 for him, plus he has a couple new projects in development. According to the IMDb trivia, this was the last of his Waxman films, but on his filmography, they list it in between Contract to Kill and End of a Gun. Either way, after he does these three with Waxman that come out in 2016, his output slows down, only doing China Salesman in 2017, Attrition in 2018, and then seems like he gets back to his old self with General Commander and Beyond the Law in 2019, before the pandemic hits in 2020. This one feels like the worst of the bad Seagal, where it's obvious he's not in a lot of scenes with his costars, to the point that he may not even be doing the fights. Most of it is Seagal behind a desk in a leather jacket with his Chia Pet goatee saying things to Goss while he interrogates him like "I wasn't born on the fucking turnip truck, man!" and "I wasn't born at night, it was a bright, beautiful, fucking day," whatever that means. By this film, it's all almost become a parody of itself, but the results are there, as this is on Tubi with him front and center on the cover, set up perfectly for anyone browsing thinking this might be a fun Saturday night watch, and now Lionsgate gets another stream and a cut of the Tubi ad revenue.

 

It would be interesting to know if Luke Goss did a single scene with Seagal, or if that one time they're in the shot together he was CGI'd in Lucas-style. That's one advantage to having the younger guy doing the heavy lifting being a bald guy, he's easier to double in post if you need. Also, one of the advantages to being the heavy lifting guy in a Seagal film is you never know when Keoni Waxman's going to stop making Seagal films and will need someone to act in a new project, like he did when he tapped Goss to be in The Hard Way with Michael Jai White. This film had a lot of Bro Energy, with guys grimacing, pointing weapons, yelling military jargon at each other, etc., and that's where Goss's American accent makes him the Super Bro, like the rest of the cast were pulled from the decent clubs in Vegas on a weekend, but Goss was from a slightly more upscale one. He smokes cigarettes better than everyone else, he grimaces better, he holds guns better. The problem was, I don't think this needed more Bro Energy, it needed Brit Goss with his natural accent, maybe tossing out some British slang, or calling an eggplant an aubergine. One thing I hope is, with the current rise of the British actioner, people will want Goss to be an American less, because the films where he gets to be a Brit tend have a bit more flavor to them, and a movie like this that had a lot going against it due to the constraints that come when Seagal's involved needed all the help it could get.

This is now 11 films for Keoni Waxman on the site, of which 9 are Seagal films. The two of them did 10 total, the one I'm missing being End of a Gun, so the question will be after that one how many more we do. While he has a few that fit what we go for on the site, he has others like The Anna Nicole Smith Story that we probably won't cover. That number sounds low, but for directors on the DTVC, other than Pyun who has over 40, no one else has more than 15, so Waxman is right in there with some of the greats; on the other hand, as we do more from those guys, he may get left behind if he's moving on to projects that don't fit what we do here on the DTVC. I think that's okay though, his work as the Seagal Whisperer will go down in DTVC history as one of the great feats, and this film could potentially be his best work if this was made the way I think it was made. I literally could count on one hand the scenes Seagal had where he was in the same shot as his costars--and even those were suspect. The use of doubles, overdubs, creative angles, possibly even CGI to make it look like Seagal was interrogating Goss, or even better, fighting George St-Pierre if they weren't really fighting, is like Godfrey Ho level stuff; plus his action scenes were really well done, especially in spite of his constraints. I'd say he's cemented his legacy with us, but I'm still curious to see what he has in store next for us, or to explore some of his earlier work.

Finally, as someone who was a huge fan of the UFC in the mid-to-late 2000s, George St-Pierre was one of my favorites, so it was fun to see him here. Right before this he did Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which I haven't seen yet, and then played that role again in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV series, which I also haven't seen yet. He has a couple things in post-production right now, so it'll be cool to see how his career progresses. This is his fourth film on the site, the first two being Hector Echavarria TapOut films, and the third Kickboxer: Vengeance, so it looks like he's getting better parts. I think a buddy picture with Adkins directed by Jesse V. Johnson would be the best, maybe something where Adkins is sent to Canada to take down a criminal, and he has to team up with St-Pierre who's already working on taking him down. And what would be great is it could be shot in Canada, and actually take place in Canada, instead of Canada pretending to be America. How nice would that be?

Since I'm done talking about the current movie and pitching a new one, it's probably time to wrap this up. You can catch this on Tubi here in the States. Personally I think this is only for Seagal completists, or St-Pierre or Goss fans. Outside of that, it's better to skip it, but I appreciate the work done here to get this film over the finish line in as good a shape as it was.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4949290

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