$hubes

6/10

There were a lot of complaints (on other sites) about this not being a true Steven Seagal movie....and it ISN'T. The poster art blatantly uses Seagal's photo, along with Vinnie Jones, and both are "bit players" here. Seagal is some kind of "crime boss" (very little is known or revealed about his character) and the same is true for Vinnie Jones' character: both of them are supporting roles with VERY LITTLE screen time. However, that does **not** make for a bad movie; in fact, I was pleasantly surprised by this. When I realized (thanks to some very in-depth and scathing reviews on other sites) that Seagal and Jones were only supporting roles and had very little screen time, I almost blew this one off, but - like another reviewer - I'm determined to watch every movie that has Steven Seagal in it...and I figure if I can sit through _The Onion Movie_ I can sit through pretty much anything. So I went ahead and gave this one a watch and thoroughly enjoyed it. George Eads ( _CSI: Crime Scene Investigation_ ) plays the lead role, carries it quite well. Others have complained that, although Ted Levine was advertised, he didn't have a lot of screen time, but I disagree with that; granted, it took awhile before he showed up, but he **did** become a central figure in the story, and as he always does, he played his part beautifully. Stephen Lang also added a unique character to this panoply of unique characters, and overall, the whole story was definitely worth watching. You can't really call this _"a Steven Seagal movie"_ because it simply ISN'T. It's a good movie with Steven Seagal in it, but this is not your basic Steven Seagal D2V martial arts flick. On the contrary, I found _Gutshot Straight_ to be a very entertaining story with a great blend of actors. If I had a complaint, it was only that there were a couple of scenes that were too dark to really follow what was going on...and they were important scenes (especially as one was a scuffle between "Jack" - Eads' character - and "Lewis" - Ted Levine's character.) This was (again, just my opinion) a fairly important point in the story, but took place at night and the lighting was way too dark to really follow what was happening. There were a few loose ends that could've been tied off, or LEFT off altogether, but they didn't detract from the story. Bottom line (again): I was very pleasantly surprised with this one, and not sorry at all that I spent a mere 88 minutes watching it. If you're a Seagal fan, don't skip this one just because he's a bit player here. This was a good story, and his presence did add to it.