STREET WARS - **

Directed by Wayne Rose. Starring Steven Seagal, Meghan Ory, Sarah Lind. USA, 2011, Certificate 15, Running time 87 Mins.

UK DVD release date 25th April 2011.

There are some things in life that you dread dropping through your letterbox, be that the credit card bill or this years council tax. Or the latest barrel scraping bollocks from Mr Seagal.

Hiding its true identity and masking itself as an action film (if the cover art is anything to go by), Street Wars is just another mash up of two episodes of True Justice, Mr Seagals not so hit US cop show. And watching it feels like no effort has been made whatsoever to try and make it feel like a real movie.

It gets two stars as the storyline in the first half is quite reasonable and touches upon a flood of poisoned drugs being sold in the clubs of Seattle which results in a girl collapsing and dying. Thus Elijah Kane (Seagal) and his band of undercover cops (in full uniform??) head off to trap the dealer and shut down the factory. The last part of the film loses the momentum and tells of how Kane and his crew are asked to mind a documentary maker and how the bad guys behind the drugs deal in the first half are coming after Kane.

It does have its moments, during the first episode we discover that Miller has emphysema and that his wife is really concerned about his health. As the story progresses we also discover that his wife is pregnant after she calls him at work. Kane then advises him that he should spend more time with them and as he heads home he finds his wife has left him. Now cut to the second part of the film and with the exception of one attempt to call her, nothing else is even mentioned about it. Such an interlude into this story was a welcome addition and whilst it would have been nice to see what decision he made, this was not even mentioned again.

It is also a step up from Deadly Crossing which was the first of these abominations, this has a better script, is acted better and you also get to know more about the characters. However what it doesn't do is have any sort of identity. There isn't enough going on for it to be marketed as any sort of action film and bar the occasional bit of blood there is nothing that warrants its certificate either.

A change of director may have helped Street Wars but above everything else it is just two very avergage US cop show episodes mangled together whereby the second one occasionally gives a nod back to what has gone before. The problem I have with it is that it isn't very good for starters, to say Steven Seagals name is plastered all over the front of the artwork is misleading as his screen time is quite limited as are any sort of fight scenes. Finally I find it all a bit of a lazy cash in on the part of Optimum with this cobbled together mess and maybe a bit of honesty about its original background as a TV series may not mislead people in the way the artwork and cover notes do.

Street Wars is not something I will be revisiting again and the True Justice series is something that is being rumoured to have been picked up for UK television, my advice to you if this is your cup of tea is to wait it out and save your money.

Disc Extras : Scene selection. Audio set up. And a trailer. How generous...

Kris Keogh.