Seagalogy: A Study of the Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal

This is for the movie fan who will see everything. Who knows that the cinema is more than the Oscars and the BAFTAs and the Sight and Sound every-decade critics poll. Who will happily watch Howard’s End or Citizen Kane or Secrets and Lies, but who will ALSO stay up late to watch Steven Seagal whack the crap out a bunch of lowlife scumbags and send them flying through windows, over cars and off the edge of cliffs. Usually in slow motion.

Steven Seagal doesn’t really make good movies. A lot of them are pretty poor Straight-To-Video efforts. (Or even once, hard as it is to believe, downright pretentious: On Deadly Ground, his self-directed ode – yes, really - to eco-terrorism.) But they’re Steven Seagal films and you know what you’re going to see and they’re as essential an element of Cinema as any award-winning masterpiece.

Vern, the author, gets this so completely that reading his book is like meeting a fellow movie nut and feeling an instant rapport. Each chapter is dedicated to a single Seagal film, studies the plot and the characters and places it within the proper context of the Seagal oeuvre. Yes, that’s a joke, But it’s an affectionate joke. Vern may make you laugh – actually he makes you laugh a lot – but he’s not being mean. (At least, I don’t think he’s being mean; Steven Seagal may beg to differ.)

Seagalogy is what going to the movies is all about.