End of a Gun has Seagal as some kind of former DEA/CIA/whatever who one night in Paris/Bucharest finds Jade Ewan being hassled by her jerky boyfriend. He of course insinuates himself, gives the jerky boyfriend some slap chop routine, and next thing you know there's a shootout and the boyfriend is dead. Thing is, the boyfriend works for a drug kingpin and had an obscene amount of money in the trunk of his car, and said car has been impounded by the French police in Bucharest. As the drug dealers try to find a way to get the money, Ewan uses her ample feminine wiles to convince Seagal to get it first, which he's all too happy to do. But can he trust her? And what will happen when the drug dealers find out and come for him? It'll probably end in some kind of showdown in an abandoned factory, right?
This is every bit the 2010s Keoni Waxman-directed Seagal actioner you'd expect it to be, only with a twist. The twist is, spoiler alert, Seagal doesn't get the girl. And there's even a hint--only a hint, Seagal wouldn't allow us to have more of that--that the girl really isn't interested in him. How can you not be into Seagal though? Between the chia pet goatee, the fake Cajun accent, and the frequent doubles, what's not to like? But we're at a stage now where I've watched and we've reviewed all of these Seagal DTV efforts--I still haven't reviewed The Onion or Clementine, but you know what I mean, this kind of movie, we've now done them all--and when you find something unique about one, it's hard not to hold onto it like grim death. And that may also explain why this one is kind of harder to get than a lot of the others, Seagal took a look at it after the fact and was like "I don't like how it looks like Jade Ewan wasn't into me." These films seem to have a kind of charm in spite of themselves though, right? And out of the seven films he had released in 2016, this one might have more time with him standing than the other six combined, so there's that too. All that said, this is a fun time killer in that 2010s Seagal DTV kind of way, but you should only go out of your way to watch it if it's the last one for you, like this is for me.
We're now at 39 films for Seagal as we celebrate his 71st birthday. His output has slowed down considerably, but he does have two films in pre-production according to IMDb, so perhaps we'll have more in the near future--plus I can finally do The Onion film to get him into the 40 Club too if neither of those films happen. And if they don't, what is Seagal's legacy? Starred in some of the best late 80s/early 90s actioners, and then went on to have one of the goofiest DTV action careers--and this film is indicative of all of that. There's something fascinating about it all, isn't there? And I think it's for that reason that no one on the site other than Dolph and maybe Willis moves the needle the way Seagal does. Action fans have come for the awesome, classic early stuff, and have stuck around to watch the car wreck that is the newer stuff. And they aren't serious car wrecks either, they're like you hear the squeal of tires outside, then the crash, and then yelling, because some asshole wasn't paying attention and crashed into someone else at an intersection. No one's hurt, and ultimately it's just a matter of cooler heads prevailing and the parties involved trading insurance information, but in the meantime, I just need to look out my window and watch what's happening, which I guess is why I need to come back to these Seagal films time and again, I'm just drawn to the whole alchemy of goofy and former glory.
Why is my one shot of Jade Ewan obscured by this man's back? Because that man's supposed to be Seagal, but, as we know, he never does his reverse shots. The thing with Ewan, is she's stunning, complete with an English accent that would make any American straight male like Seagal putty in her hands, and there's really nothing wrong with that, but as we also know, Seagal can't have it seem like someone is getting over on him. The movie tries to split the baby on that, by having her double-cross him, but him act like he figured on that, but he wanted to help her anyway, or whatever, which of course no one is buying. Before Jade was in this, she was in the British pop group The Sugarbabes, who I remember having a hit here in the States with "Hole in the Head," but it looks like Ewan wasn't in that iteration of the group. She's currently on a Netflix show, Luis Miguel, where she plays Mariah Carey. I haven't seen any of that show, but here I thought she did well as an actor--maybe too well when acting opposite Seagal, or opposite his double, like she was in this scene--so I can imagine she's probably good in that show too.
This is the last of the 9 Keoni Waxman/Steven Seagal films we had to review, so it's almost like the end of something with that, isn't it? From 2009 when he and Seagal did The Keeper, until 2016's Cartels (I believe it was their last collaboration--it was one of these 2016 movies) Waxman almost worked exclusively with Seagal, the one exception being Hunt to Kill with Stone Cold Steven Austin and Gary Daniels. Maybe it's not Scorsese and De Niro, but this collaboration has been one of the most fascinating in DTV history. We always joked that Waxman is the Seagal whisperer, because he seemed to do the best at working around all of the things Seagal expects out of his movies. By the same token, it has to be tiring, and after Cartels in 2016 he hasn't worked with Seagal since. I've been using the word "fascinating" a lot in this review, but these 9 Waxman/Seagal films leave behind a fascinating legacy. The 2010s were about turning the DTV film world into assembly line productions, kicking out cookie-cutter movies with known names on the tin to get as many streams and rentals as possible; but these Waxman/Seagal films, though they were as much a part of starting and establishing that trend, they also give us something a bit more. Between the goofiness and the benign car wreck quality of what Seagal's career has become, there's a sense that Waxman is trying to not only work with Seagal, but also almost highlight the goofiness and benign car wreck quality in his own subtle way. I don't know if he's doing it on purpose, but, again, it's just fascinating.
Finally, with this probably being the last Seagal post on the site for some time, I figured I'd do one final paragraph on him. When I started the site in 2007, Seagal DTV was something I was just getting into, but even then, in a short period between 2003 and 2007, he put out 13 DTV films, all of varying levels of quality. You had absurd moments, like him playing a professor in Out for a Kill and decapitating a man by throwing a samurai sword at him from a second story window; but also there were some pretty solid moments, like The Foreigner and it's Le Samourai vibes. Over the 39 films of his we've reviewed, we've seen Seagal's accent become more Cajun'y, his goatee more chia pet-ish, and his ratio of sitting to standing tilt further to the side of the former. Through it all, Seagal's films always provided fun content for the site, whether the film was good or bad. He's the first of the big names that we're nearing completion on, and as we do the same with Dolph, Van Damme, Gary Daniels, et al, this will free up more posts for names like Fred Williamson who we've been trying to catch up on, or names like Frank Zagarino who we've just gotten started on. Also, while we may not be reviewing much more Seagal here on the site, expect more of him on the DTVC podcast, so if you're not subscribed, make sure you are so you catch all our upcoming episodes.
And with that, let's wrap this up. Right now RedBox streaming is the only way to get this free, and I think that's the way to go. It's really for Seagal completists only, but being a Seagal DTV completist is a lot of fun, so why not?
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2268433
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
Well done on completing the full Seagal. You are now a true Seagalogist! Don't go out of your way for Clementine - I did - and it's one of the toughest slogs I've had to sit through.
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