Color me shocked: this is two Steven Seagal "later" direct-to-video movies that have actually been fairly decent and not at all difficult to watch. I think someone on Rotten Tomatoes may have pegged it when they mentioned (regarding Seagal's _Urban Justice_ ) that Seagal seems to have accepted the fact that he's not as young as he used to be, and he's willing to assume character roles that reflect that. In _Pistol Whipped_ , Seagal plays an aging, washed-out, washed-up, down-on-his-luck gambling addict with a tendency towards alcoholism...until a fire gets lit under him and he rediscovers his passion for family and friends. The storyline wasn't half-bad (unoriginal, I know, but at least it was nothing ridiculous or incredibly bad) and Seagal pulled off his character fairly well. He actually managed to **seem** slightly vulnerable here…something that I've not seen in a Seagal character yet. And I've been on a mission to watch every single movie he's put out, just because. (Yes, I'm a glutton for punishment, but I'm on a mission.) It was interesting to see Lance Henreksen here, although I would've liked to see him play a more central role. I guess the one thing that was slightly off-putting to me (moreso even than some of Seagal's other movies) wasn't sub-par acting, or a bad storyline, or an implausible character (something that is common to Seagal's movies) but - believe it or not - just the firefight in the cemetary. There was simply SO MUCH going on in so many places that it was really hard to follow who was doing what, when, and where, and how did all this happen... A small thing to critique but in a Steven Seagal movie, if that's the WORST one can complain about, that's pretty amazing, right? The fight scenes are clearly Steven Seagal himself - not some skinny double that can only be seen fighting from the shoulders down - and, for the second movie in a row, Seagal didn't have some weird voiceover doing his lines for him. This was all Steven Seagal, doing his own fight scenes and speaking his own lines. Now, like I said about _Urban Justice_ , this is no _Above the Law_ or _Hard to Kill_ but it IS a decent Steven Seagal movie...and that's kind of a breath of fresh air after all the stinkers he put out. Like _Urban Justice_ , I would recommend this to Seagal fans. He's not the young, skinny, cocky strutting Seagal of old (he _did_ go back to sporting a ponytail, albeit a short one) but at least he's not hiding behind stunt doubles and oversized jackets to hide his weight. And the movie itself was definitely worth watching.