Guilty Pleasure No. 111: Out for Justice (dir. by John Flynn)

Posted on April 17, 2026 by Arleigh

Out for Justice is the kind of movie that leans so heavily on its star’s ridiculous swagger that it stops being merely bad and ridiculous and becomes entertaining in a “can’t‑look‑away from the car‑crash” sort of way. It’s not a polished or especially sophisticated action film, but it has a rough, gleefully over‑the‑top energy that makes it a perfect guilty pleasure, the kind of early ’90s action crime movie that works less because of craft and more because of attitude, bruises, and sheer confidence.

At its core, Out for Justice is a revenge story so simple it barely bothers pretending to be anything else. Steven Seagal plays Gino Felino, a Brooklyn cop chasing the man responsible for his partner’s death, and the plot mostly functions as a chain of excuses to send him from one grimy neighborhood stop to the next, collecting broken noses and wounded pride along the way. That stripped‑down structure is part of the movie’s charm, because there’s no attempt to dress it up with complicated twists or emotional depth; it’s all forward momentum, all hard stares, all macho problem‑solving by fist and elbow.

One of the things that gives Out for Justice its off‑kilter charm is how every actor in the cast seems to have read the script as an invitation to extremes. Performances swing violently between scenery‑chewing over‑the‑top theatrics and barely‑there, almost sleepwalking subtlety, with almost nothing in the middle. Either you’re shouting, staring down suspects inches from their faces, or you’re slouched in the background mugging in silence. It shouldn’t work, but the sheer imbalance in energy somehow makes the film feel like a live wire instead of a flat ’90s programmer.

Nowhere is that more obvious than with William Forsythe’s villain, Richie Madano, who plays the role so far “out there” that it’s hard not to wonder if he was actually on a lot of coke like the character was written to be. He leans into every sneer, every twitch, and every unhinged stare until he starts to look less like a character and more like a walking drug‑induced nightmare. There’s a manic, unpredictable edge to his performance that makes him feel genuinely dangerous, even when the dialogue around him is pure tough‑guy parody. It’s a kind of commitment that could easily tip into self‑parody, but Forsythe owns it so completely that he ends up grounding the film’s madness instead of derailing it.

What really makes Out for Justice memorable is how fully it leans into Seagal’s absurd screen persona. He’s at his best here when he’s acting like a man who believes every room belongs to him, and that attitude gives the movie a weird, shameless energy that a lot of his later work lacked. Even when the dialogue is clunky or the Brooklyn swagger feels more imagined than lived‑in, Seagal’s self‑serious delivery turns the whole thing into a performance art piece of tough‑guy certainty. The film is unintentionally funny at times, but that only adds to the appeal, because it makes the movie feel even more like a relic from a time when action stars could be gloriously excessive without irony.

The action is the main draw, and this is where Out for Justice earns most of its reputation. The fights have that satisfying, bone‑crunching roughness that makes the violence feel tangible instead of slick, and the movie keeps finding excuses to escalate from intimidation to outright brutality. Seagal’s style here is less flashy than some of his contemporaries, but that works in the film’s favor because the choreography has a mean, close‑quarters edge to it. The result is a movie that often feels like it’s trying to win by sheer stubbornness, and honestly, that suits it perfectly.

There’s also a strong sleaze factor running through the whole thing, and that’s another reason it works as a “bad but good” movie. The neighborhoods feel dirty, the criminals are exaggerated to the point of cartoonish menace, and the film’s idea of atmosphere is basically to keep everything sweaty, smoky, and angry. Forsythe’s villain, in particular, leans so extravagantly into that sleaze that he ends up giving the film a properly nasty center. A lot of the supporting characters are basically there to be insulted, questioned, or thrown into a wall, but the movie gets enough mileage out of that rhythm that it never really becomes boring.

Still, there’s no reason to pretend Out for Justice is secretly elegant. The script is thin, the character work is mostly functional, and the movie often feels like it was assembled to move from one confrontation to the next as efficiently as possible. Some of the scenes drag, and the film’s macho posturing can wear thin if you’re not already in the mood for this kind of energy. It also has that peculiar Seagal‑era problem where the movie wants him to be a street‑level man of the people, but the character sometimes comes across more like a self‑mythologizing neighborhood warlord than an actual human being. That disconnect is part of the fun, but it is still a disconnect.

What keeps Out for Justice from becoming a throwaway is the confidence behind the nonsense. It feels like a movie made by people who believed that attitude could substitute for sophistication, and in this case, they were mostly right. The pacing may be uneven, the story may be paper‑thin, and the acting may veer into laughable territory, but the movie never loses its nerve, and that gives it a strange kind of integrity. It doesn’t apologize for being dumb, and that unashamed commitment is exactly why it has aged into cult‑status entertainment instead of disappearing into the pile of generic action forgettables.

That’s why Out for Justice works so well as a guilty pleasure. It’s violent, ridiculous, and very much stuck in its own macho time capsule, but those flaws are inseparable from the appeal. The movie’s “bad but good” vibe comes from the way it accidentally becomes bigger and funnier than it likely intended, while still delivering enough real action‑movie satisfaction to justify the ride. It’s the kind of film that invites eye‑rolling and cheers in almost equal measure, and that balancing act is what makes it such a durable little cult object.

In the end, Out for Justice is not a masterpiece, and it doesn’t need to be. It’s a bruised, swaggering, over‑confident slab of early ’90s action cheese that knows how to sell its own nonsense with just enough force to make it lovable. To borrow from film reactor EOM Reacts (who is hilarious, by the way), “This whole movie screams cocaine.” If you want clean storytelling or nuanced performances, it will probably frustrate you. If you want a hard‑edged, trashy, surprisingly watchable Seagal vehicle that embodies the “bad it’s good” spirit—including a cast that either chews every morsel of the scenery or fades into the wallpaper—Out for Justice hits the mark.

Also, be on the look out for a quick cameo of Kane Hodder (who played Jason Voorhees for many of the franchise’s many sequels) as a gang member and for Dan Inosanto (teacher to Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris) as a character named “Sticks.”

Previous Guilty Pleasures

A Movie A Day #38: Fighting Back (1982, directed by Lewis Teague)

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

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The time is 1982. The place is Hell on Earth, also known as Philadelphia. Crime is out of control and the police are powerless to stop it. When deli owner John D’Angelo (Tom Skerritt) and his wife, Lisa (Patti LuPone), confront a pimp named Eldorado (Pete Richardson), he rams his car into the back of their car, causing the pregnant Lisa to lose her unborn child. At almost the exact same time, John’s mother (Gina DeAngles) is mugged by two thugs who chop off her ring finger.

In the grand tradition of Charles Bronson, John decides to fight back. But he doesn’t go it alone. With his best friend, a police officer named Vince (Michael Sarrazin), John starts the People’s Neighborhood Patrol. The PNP is going to clean up Philadelphia, one street at a time. The media (represented by David Rasche) make John into a celebrity. The black community (represented by Yaphet Kotto) suspect that John and the PNP are guilty of racial discrimination. The Mafia wants to bring John over to their side. John runs for city council but he still has time to drop a grenade in a pimp’s car.

Fighting Back was one of the many urban vigiliante films to come out after the success of Death Wish. Fighting Back‘s producer, Dino De Laurentiis, also produced Death Wish but made the mistake of later selling the rights to Cannon. Fighting Back was not the box office success that either Death Wish or its sequels were, even though Fighting Back is actually the better movie. That’s because Fighting Back was directed by the underrated Lewis Teague. Teague does a good job of making Philadelphia look like a war zone and the scenes of vigilante justice are enjoyable but, overall, Teague takes a far more ambiguous approach to vigilantism than Michael Winner did when he directed Death Wish. As vile as Philadelphia criminals may be, John D’Angelo isn’t always that likable himself. When Kotto accuses John and the all-white PNP of being racially prejudiced, Teague suggests that he has a point. Tom Skerritt gives a good performance, playing John as a proud, blue collar guy who wants to do the right thing but gets seduced by his newfound celebrity.

Better acted than Death Wish and smarter than The Exterminator, Fighting Back is an underrated vigilante gem.

Fighting Back is also known as Philadelphia Security and Death Vengeance.

Shattered Politics #31: The Godfather (dir by Francis Ford Coppola)

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“I got something for your mother and Sonny and a tie for Freddy and Tom Hagen got the Reynolds Pen…” — Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) in The Godfather (1972)

It probably seems strange that when talking about The Godfather, a film that it is generally acknowledged as being one of the best and most influential of all time, I would start with an innocuous quote about getting Tom Hagen a pen.

(And it better have been a hell of a pen because, judging from the scene where Sollozzo stops him in the street, it looked like Tom was going all out as far as gifts were concerned…)

After all, The Godfather is a film that is full of memorable quotes. “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.” “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” “It’s strictly business.” “I believe in America….” “That’s my family, Kay. That’s not me.”

But I went with the quote about the Reynolds pen because, quite frankly, I find an excuse to repeat it every Christmas. Every holiday season, whenever I hear friends or family talking about presents, I remind them that Tom Hagen is getting the Reynolds pen. Doubt me? Check out these tweets from the past!

[tweet https://twitter.com/LisaMarieBowman/status/411891527837687810 ]

[tweet https://twitter.com/LisaMarieBowman/status/280387983444697088 ]

That’s how much I love The Godfather. I love it so much that I even find myself quoting the lines that don’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things. I love the film so much that I once even wrote an entire post about who could have been cast in The Godfather if, for whatever reason, Brando, Pacino, Duvall, et al. had been unavailable. And I know that I’m not alone in that love.

But all that love also makes The Godfather a difficult film to review. What do you say about a film that everyone already knows is great?

Do you praise it by saying that Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan, Diane Keaton, Marlon Brando, John Cazale, Richard Castellano, Abe Vigoda, Alex Rocco, and Talia Shire all gave excellent performances? You can do that but everyone already knows that.

Do you talk about how well director Francis Ford Coppola told this operatic, sprawling story of crime, family, and politics? You can do that but everyone already knows that.

Maybe you can talk about how beautiful Gordon Willis’s dark and shadowy cinematography looks, regardless of whether you’re seeing it in a theater or on TV. Because it certainly does but everyone knows that.

Maybe you can mention the haunting beauty of Nina Rota’s score but again…

Well, you get the idea.

Now, if you somehow have never seen the film before, allow me to try to tell you what happens in The Godfather. I say try because The Godfather is a true epic. Because it’s also an intimate family drama and features such a dominating lead performance from Al Pacino, it’s sometimes to easy to forget just how much is actually going on in The Godfather.

The Godfather tells the story of the Corleone Family. Patriarch Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) has done very well for himself in America, making himself into a rich and influential man. Of course, Vito is also known as both Don Corleone and the Godfather and he’s made his fortune through less-than-legal means. He may be rich and he may be influential but when his daughter gets married, the FBI shows up outside the reception and takes pictures of all the cars in the parking lot. Vito Corleone knows judges and congressmen but none of them are willing to be seen in public with him. Vito is the establishment that nobody wants to acknowledge and sometimes, this very powerful man wonders if there will ever be a “Governor Corleone” or a “Senator Corleone.”

Vito is the proud father of three children and the adopted father of one more. His oldest son, and probable successor, is Sonny (James Caan). Sonny, however, has a temper and absolutely no impulse control. While his wife is bragging about him to the other women at the wedding, Sonny is upstairs screwing a bridesmaid. When the enemies of the Corleone Family declare war, Sonny declares war back and forgets the first rule of organized crime: “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.”

After Sonny, there’s Fredo (John Cazale). Poor, pathetic Fredo. In many ways, it’s impossible not to feel sorry for Fredo. He’s the one who ends up getting exiled to Vegas, where he lives under the protection of the crude Moe Greene (Alex Rocco). One of the film’s best moments is when a bejeweled Fredo shows up at a Vegas hotel with an entourage of prostitutes and other hangers-on. In these scenes, Fred is trying so hard but when you take one look at his shifty eyes, it’s obvious that he’s still the same guy who we first saw stumbling around drunk at his sister’s wedding.

(And, of course, it’s impossible to watch Fredo in this film without thinking about both what will happen to the character in the Godfather, Part II and how John Cazale, who brought the character to such vibrant life, would die just 6 years later.)

As a female, daughter Connie (Talia Shire) is — for the first film, at least — excluded from the family business. Instead, she marries Sonny’s friend Carlo Rizzi (Gianni Russo). And, to put it gently, it’s not a match made in heaven.

And finally, there’s Michael (Al Pacino). Michael is the son who, at the start of the film, declares that he wants nothing to do with the family business. He’s the one who wants to break with family tradition by marrying Kay Adams (Diane Keaton), who is most definitely not Italian. He’s the one who was decorated in World War II and who comes to his sister’s wedding still dressed in his uniform. (In the second Godfather film, we learn that Vito thought Michael was foolish to join the army, which makes it all the more clear that, by wearing the uniform to the wedding, Michael is attempting to declare his own identity outside of the family.) To paraphrase the third Godfather film, Michael is the one who says he wants to get out but who keeps getting dragged back in.

And finally, the adopted son is Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall). Tom is the Don’s lawyer and one reason why Tom is one of my favorite characters is because, behind his usual stone-faced facade, Tom is actually very snarky. He just hides it well.

Early on, we get a hint that Tom is more amused than he lets on when he has dinner with the crude Jack Woltz (John Marley), a film producer who doesn’t want to use Johnny Fontane (Al Martino) in a movie When Woltz shouts insults at him, Tom calmly finishes his dinner and thanks him for a lovely evening. And he does it with just the hint of a little smirk and you can practically see him thinking, “Somebody’s going to wake up with a horse tomorrow….”

However, my favorite Tom Hagen moment comes when Kay, who is searching for Michael, drops by the family compound. Tom greets her at the gate. When Kay spots a car that’s riddled with bullet holes, she asks what happened. Tom smiles and says, “Oh, that was an accident. But luckily no one was hurt!” Duvall delivers the line with just the right attitude of “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!” How can you not kind of love Tom after that?

And, of course, the film is full of other memorable characters, all of whom are scheming and plotting. There’s Clemenza (Richard S. Catellano) and Tessio (Abe Vigoda), the two Corleone lieutenants who may or may not be plotting to betray the Don. There’s fearsome Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana), who spends an eternity practicing what he wants to say at Connie’s wedding and yet still manages to screw it up. And, of course, there’s Sollozzo (Al Lettieri, playing a role originally offered to Franco Nero), the drug dealer who reacts angrily to Vito’s refusal to help him out. Meanwhile, Capt. McCluskey (Sterling Hayden) is busy beating up young punks and Al Neri (Richard Bright) is gunning people down in front of the courthouse. And, of course, there’s poor, innocent, ill-fated Appollonia (Simonetta Stefanelli)…

The Godfather is a great Italian-American epic, one that works as both a gangster film and a family drama. Perhaps the genius of the Godfather trilogy is that the Corleone family serves as an ink blot in a cinematic rorschach test. Audiences can look at them and see whatever they want. If you want them and their crimes to serve as a metaphor for capitalism, you need only listen to Tom and Michael repeatedly state that it’s only business. If you want to see them as heroic businessmen, just consider that their enemies essentially want to regulate the Corleones out of existence. If you want the Corleones to serve as symbols of the patriarchy, you need only watch as the door to Michael’s office is shut in Kay’s face. If you want to see the Corleones as heroes, you need only consider that they — and they alone — seem to operate with any sort of honorable criminal code. (This, of course, would change over the course of the two sequels.)

And, if you’re trying to fit a review of The Godfather into a series about political films, you only have to consider that Vito is regularly spoken of as being a man who carries politicians around in his pocket. We may not see any elected officials in the first Godfather film but their presence is felt. Above all else, it’s Vito’s political influence that sets in motion all of the events that unfold over the course of the film.

The Godfather, of course, won the Oscar for best picture of 1972. And while it’s rare that I openly agree with the Academy, I’m proud to say that this one time is a definite exception.