Page 1 of 3
Stone Cold Steve Austin and Steven Seagal come together - well, somebody had to review it....
Anchor Bay / 98 Minutes / 2012 / Rated R / Street Date: November 6, 2012
I’ll come right out and say it: Maximum Conviction is maximum badass. You’re not going to believe me when I tell you who stars in it, but this movie is cool. Steven Seagal and Stone Cold Steve Austin are the stars of this film with fists flying and guns blazing! Take this review with a grain of salt because, as I’ve said previously, I LOVE Stone Cold Steve Austin. I cannot be unbiased about a movie he is in and I’m not ashamed of that at all. Based on who is in the movie, I’m assuming everyone reading this has already made up their minds about it as well. I will say this - the movie isn’t even good enough to have its own Wikipedia page… yet.
I haven’t seen a Seagal movie since I was in high school (that was a very long time ago), but I can’t imagine anything he’s done since then would be better than this. Granted, I probably wouldn’t have had any desire to see this movie if it weren’t for Steve Austin. I’m clearly not a Seagal fan but this reminded me of what I loved about him in my youth: he kicks ass and barely breaks a sweat doing it.
Cross (Seagal) and Manning (Austin) are two former black ops specialists sent to decommission an old prison. An easy job becomes much more difficult as two female detainees become the centerpieces of an attempted break-in. Traitors from the Marshal's office along with men on the inside try to get to these girls, while our heroes do everything they can to stop them. Once they figure out who these women really are, they learn it’s a much larger problem than they had anticipated.
After Cross leaves for the night, Manning is left to deal with a faulty trash compactor and a garbage truck driver until he realizes the garbage truck is full of men involved in the invasion. After an explosion gets them out of the truck, they go on the move looking to kill him. Spoiler alert: this doesn’t end well for them. And that’s why I loved this movie. They have the guns, and Austin has his hands, knives, chains. He uses all of them rather than just shooting everyone (although he does a lot of that, too).
Cross is alerted of the problem and comes back to the prison, where he immediately starts taking bad guys out left and right. Everyone knows he’s there due to the security cameras, but no one can do a damn thing to stop him.
The plot twist is pretty obvious from the beginning, so there’s really nothing shocking there. However, seeing a hot girl kick some ass is always a welcome surprise. The climactic end finds Cross in a fist fight with the main antagonist who, while getting his face bashed in, keeps coming back for more. Gotta love his can-do attitude!!
As one would imagine in a movie with these two Steves, the acting isn’t the best. And that’s putting it lightly. It’s not just them, the cast around them is a bunch of no names, but that is to be expected with a film like this. However, if you’ve seen the other movies Austin has done, he is clearly getting better with each role. Yes, I understand I’m the only person who has seen all of Austin’s movies, but that doesn’t make it any less true. He’s very believable in the fight scenes, the delivery of his humorous lines is done well, and it’s easy to see he works hard to be better. Seagal is just as he ever was. I don’t mean that as a compliment.
Okay so the movie isn’t great. The dialogue isn’t the best and the plot is pretty simplistic. But I think it is good for what it is: an action movie in which Seagal and Austin beat the crap out of everyone. It’s pretty obvious this is what the director and producers were going for.