Steven Seagal picks good topics and he takes good positions on them, but this film is like most of his others in failing on the level of craft. I don't know why this keeps happening to someone whose martial arts experience obviously taught him about the importance of precise execution and continuous refinement, but in any case this film is sloppy. Sometimes it's as simple as parallel action whose locations aren't clear, or too-familiar action scenes, or very slow staging of the obvious, like the initial seizure of the children. More importantly, it's careless or shallow thinking about the characters and their relationship to each other: the villains are pure psychopaths, the kids are pure innocence, the trafficking is simple kidnapping from a crooked orphanage - nothing beyond the matinée B-movie level of white/black hats is made concrete. There's something stubborn and unnecessary about Seagal staying on this mediocre level.
Review of Out of Reach
