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Pistol Whipped
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List Price: $24.96
Our Price: $19.99
Your Save: $ 4.97 ( 20% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Starring: Lance Henriksen, Samantha Ryan Maisano, Renee Goldsberry, Lydia Jordan, Fernando Chien
Directed By: Roel Reiné
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Sony
EAN: 0043396228337
Format: AC-3
Label: Sony Pictures
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Region Code: 99
Release Date: 2008-03-04
Running Time: 96
Studio: Sony Pictures
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Editorial Reviews:
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Steven Seagal muscles his way through Pistol Whipped, another brutal action flick. This time Seagal is a boozing, compulsive gambler forced by a mysterious stranger to assassinate mob guys and corrupt cops. Naturally, this makes it hard for him to be a doting father to his adoring young daughter. Pistol Whipped has some twists to its plot, but this is all moot--you either like Steven Seagal or you don't. If you do, this is one of the better of his straight-to-video oeuvre. Seagal's attempt to be tender is laughable, but the story isn't completely predictable, the supporting cast isn't bad (Lance Henriksen, Aliens, brings some elegant menace to the proceedings), and though the martial-arts scenes are brief, they're not as choppily edited as in some of his other movies. If you don't like Steven Seagal, you'll find his bloated, wooden presence as repulsive and hateful as it was in every other movie he's ever made. He has two expressions--squinty and scowly--and they're increasingly difficult to tell apart. His one cinematic quality is a lumbering menace, and for his fans, that seems to be enough. For them, Pistol Whipped has plenty of lumbering and scowling on display. --Bret Fetzer
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: "Let Me Ask You Something..."
Comment: Another great movie recommended by Sid the Elf!
Have been a fan of Steven Segal since he's been kicking but in the late 80's as slick Italian cop with attitude. This more recent movie takes a different direction with Segal's trademark attitude, and it surprisingly works.
First thing I noticed about this movie is that Segal looks awful! Looks like he's been in a real bad accident and had tons of reconstructive surgery on his face. But alas, this imitation of Elvis' famous I-Just-Died-On-The-Toilet bloated look is just time catching up with the actor. That and the frizzy hairpiece he's now wearing.
The movie itself is classic Segal: snapping arms, blurring punches, and a scowl that still scares. His most famous--if not most used line--of `Let me ask you something," is used more than 20 times in this movie. Count for yourself and see. We are also blessed with the guy most unlikely to bed a girl, as Segal snatches a girl from a bar. Putting on more than 50 pounds since his slimmer days, this gives us "average Joe's" hope for an unlikely future. And we also see Segal's tender side--a great change from the wife-beater we all know--as he tries to be a good father to his daughter, despite being a degenerate gambler who owes too many people too much money.
I was highly impressed with this movie, learning once again to trust Sid the Elf and their many reviews. Always a skeptic, I like to see for myself. Glad I did. Segal still has it, bloated-with-hairpiece or not!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wish I could've given it a better review...
Comment: ...unfortunately, "Pistol Whipped" is an incomprehensible kettle of kaboom. Unlike Segal's previous film - the tight and fun "Urban Justice" - this one has no discernible story, no explanation for who's doing what, done what, or why and has more plot holes than it would take to fill the Albert Hall.
I watched it with my wife (who, like me, likes Segal) and she had the same reaction: why were all these people doing this and who were they?
No answers were forthcoming...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Steve's A Gamblin' Fool
Comment: Who in their right mind could turn down movie with Steven Seagal called Pistol Whipped? Most folks I'm sure, but we're talking about people in their right minds. If you're like me, you're a glutton for the Seagal punishment. In Pistol Whipped he plays a disgraced cop who's turned to a life of booze and compulsive gambling(since Seagal only has one facial expression, it stands to reason he'd be a good card player). He's also divorced and not spending much quality time with his daughter(but he proves he'll kick your behind if you get in the way of his weekly visitation). One day he gets a proposition from Lance Henriksen, a powerful underworld type figure who goes by the name "Old Man". Old Man has paid Seagal's gambling debts and now employs Seagal to basically be a hitman in order to pay him back. The target is a guy doing under-the-table deals with North Korea and everybody attached to him. When Seagal's buddy(and stepfather of his daughter) ends up on the list, he decides he wants to get out of the whole thing. Turns out though that his buddy really is a schmuck and that Seagal might just be working for the good guys after all.
It seemed early in the film that this might have been an attempt to do something different with Seagal. Making him into kind of a loser character could have been a nice change, but as soon as we're shown his vices they almost immediately fade out of the picture, and he goes back to just being ol' Slabface Seagal again. Kind of a waste. Plus, the movie suffers from the same irritating crap that plagues mainstream action films. By this I mean those pointless moments where the camera has to speed up or zoom in real fast(usually accompanied by a loud "Whoooosh" sound) while Seagal is doing something terribly exciting like walking down a flight of stairs. And if you were a director who had access to Lance Henriksen, why would you use him in only like 2 or 3 short scenes? Henriksen can't help but be the coolest guy on the planet regardless of the film he's in. Why not use him more? I suppose they only had Lance for one day(or more like one hour) since his very few brief scenes are all in the same movie theater. It seems like Seagal is no longer trying to hide his weight from the camera, which is a good thing. He looked ridiculous when he tried covering it up, might as well go with it. A great Seagal moment comes when he asks a dying man if he'd like to be buried or cremated. The guy wants to be buried, but when he dies, Seagal shoves him in a hearse, blows it up and says, "Now you're cremated, Mo$#@&%$&ker!"
Pistol Whipped is the typical Seagal actioner, and it does have a few good moments here and there, but it's not one of the more memorable ones. Urban Justice was actually more fun.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wait a minute, Steven Segal plays a fat, washed-up drunk? Yeah it's a stretch but Sid took a chance.
Comment: Why was the title of this film Pistol Whipped? Is it because you feel like you were repetedly hit in the head with a heavy metal object when you are through watching the movie? Maybe. It certainly didn't have a lot to do with the movie itself. It could have been called Pistol Snatched because Segal did his move where he grabs a gun that's pointed directly at him and disables it. So, at this point, the use of a gun in a Segal movie means nothing. It actually is more advantageous to not be armed. Sure, right. This is the same film in which Segal-who seriously looks like a panda bear at this point-hooks up with a smoking hot chick and has an even smoking hotter ex-wife. The point is that you have to know going in that this movie makes no sense. Absolutely none whatsoever; so don't try to figure it out or you'll end up cross-eyed with a blistering headache. Just sit back and bask in Segal's warm, glowing warming glow.
Segal stars as Matt(no last name given at all how great is that?) who is a degenerate gambler who never won. He's also a fall down drunk who has ballooned to roughly 415 since his days as a rouge cop. See, Segal used to play rouge cops, now he's playing washed-up rouge cops. Just like he used to be a movie star, now he's a washed-up movie star. So, our main character spends his days drinking cheap whiskey right from the bottle and eating Manwich straight from the can. Frankly, Sid was not sure if this part of the film was scripted or if they just shot a day at Segal's house. Then the thought dawned on us: if it wasn't scripted, Segal wouldn't have had clothes on.
Stealing a page straight from the Death Wish 3 playbook, Segal was offered to have a favor done for him if he killed someone. So, in order to have his gambling debts wiped off the books, Segal had to kill the coach from He Got Game, who was playing a mafioso. He also set the all-time record for saying "honest to God" 328 times in his only scene in the film which lasted like 6 minutes. Good times. Obviously Segal kills him, but this time he did it fashionably. Segal meets up with the coach at a restaraunt, and clearly couldn't just take out the mobster without taking out his henchmen too. One of those henchmen got a fork through the hand. That's right, Death Ring style, baby! That's like an instant 3 stars anytime someone reminds Sid of the legendary Denton Vachs. Now the people who agreed to pay Matt the panda's debt don't let up and force Segal to kill more poeple. Shocker!
They want Segal to kill his ex-wife's new husband who is a cop. Supposedly, the guy is dirty, but we don't see that. We only see that he's great with Segal's daughter, including the touching scene when Segal can't spend the day with his daughter and the step-father berates Segal for being too drunk to hang out with the girl...again. Hilarious even if it wasn't the case (Segal was being forced to go on a hit assignment that day). But, then we see the stepdad kill the priest(don't ask, it's not important just know that stepdad is a baaad man). And, the movie wraps up with a showdown at the priest's funeral. It was Segal vs. the stapdad. Sid must say, this was one of the better shootouts in recent memory. Of course, Segal won. The cool part about the ending was Segal asked Stepdad, "Do you want to be buried or cremated?" before he killed him to which Stepdad answered, "Buried." Then, Segal blows him up and says, "You're cremated now, m'f'er!" Awesome!
We, Sid the Elf, know that it may seem like we were very negative about Pistol Whipped. No, it is not true. Pistol Whipped was the special kind of movie that the more things sucked about it, the better it was. If you know Sid, you understand. Anyway, this was completely due to the genius that is Steven Segal. The man stared in and produced this beauty. This saved the film because if Segal wasn't in charge of himself, he couldn't have talked like his illegitamate brother, Biggie Smalls, for the entire movie. He would have been ordered to redo his lines so you wouldn't have to turn subtitles on to watch the movie. He wouldn't have saved the production all that money on lights because any shot of Segal with his face in proper light would have made any viewer vomit. He didn't have to lose weight, as no other producer alive would have allowed him to be filmed boated and waddeling around the set. Like we said, we loved Pistol Whipped. It's the cinematic equivilent of drinking heavily. You're confused throughout, you might not remember much, you may well vomit, and afterwards you feel hungover. But, did you enjoy the experience? Absolutely. Would you do it again? For sure. So, on the word of us, Sid the Elf, get a fifth of Pistol Whipped and turn it up. It always goes down smooth.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Seagal's Back and Badder Than Ever
Comment: Seagal's latest, Pistol Whipped, is better than Into The Sun and Urban Justice in my opinion. There is absolutely no dubbing, Seagal does all his own aikido (and there's loads of it), and it's a surprisingly well-written and competent action movie. It also stars several big name actors like Lance Henriksen and Arthur J. Nascarella (he's been in a million movies). Seagal tones down the southern drawl and does some of the best acting of his career. This film really shows that Seagal listens to his fans and is trying to improve. It's easily up there with his early classics.
Oh yeah, and the ending one-liner is his best ever.
4 arm snaps out of 5
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