The Movie:

In this latest straight to video action film to star Steven Seagal, the aging Akido master plays Simon Ballister, whose son was a cop recently killed in the line of duty. When the L.A.P.D. writes it off as a random shooting and doesn't effectively follow the incident with much of an investigation, Ballister takes it upon himself to avenge his son's death and bring his killers to justice.

With his mind set on vengeance, Ballister packs it all up and moves into the heart of Compton. While this might not be the safest idea for most middle aged white dudes, Ballister is a former special forces agent who is not only handy with a gun, but deadly with his fists! In short, he can handle himself. At any rate, it doesn't take Ballister long to get involved in a brawl with a few local gangsters. This puts him on their radar and before you know it they're gunning for him while he's gunning for them. Ballister is grossly outnumbered and the gang has ties to the police that Ballister didn't know about but he's fueled by vengeance and won't go down without a fight.

As predictable as you'd probably expect it to be, Urban Justice is pretty much a by the numbers affair that brings nothing new to the action genre at all. The characters are all clichés and stereotypes and the dialogue is contrived and at times it sounds pretty forced. That said, those who have seen Seagal's recent DTV output will be happy to know that he does bring more to the film this time around than he has for the last few years. Gone is the horrible dubbing (a few of his efforts featured someone else performing his dialogue!) and there aren't nearly as many obvious stunt doubles or stand-ins seen in the action scenes. In fact, the action scenes are actually pretty good and surprisingly violent. Seagal shows more enthusiasm here than he has in his last five films combined and while that still places him firmly in the Chuck Norris School Of Non-Acting, it's nice to see him at least put in some effort.

A few moments of humor (mostly related to Eddie Griffin's supporting role) lighten things up now and then but for the most part, for better or worse, this film is played straight. It does hurt the film when Seagal starts speaking like an urban street thug, as he's just not the least bit convincing when he does this, but when it's time for the shoot outs or the hand to hand combat scenes the film does rise to the occasion. Plenty of bones are broken and squibs aplenty provide no small amount of controlled carnage. There's no doubt that middle age hasn't been all that kind to Seagal but he carries himself better here than he has in his other recent endeavors and Urban Justice, while far from a great film in any way, is enough of a return to form that his fans should enjoy it. It's not original, it's poorly written, and there's no suspense whatsoever but Seagal does show up and look cool in a 'Fat Elvis' sort of way while busting a whole lot of heads.

Video:

The 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer on this DVD is decent, but a little too far from perfect for such a recent film. Color reproduction looks good and flesh tones look lifelike and natural but there are some mild compression artifacts noticeable in the blacks throughout the film and grain is a little heavier than you'd probably expect. Print damage isn't really a problem, you might notice a speck or two on the image but that's about it, though some edge enhancement does creep its way into the frame. Urban Justice is certainly perfectly watchable but there's room for improvement here.