The Stranger is Steve Austin's second movie that has been released straight-to-video. In this movie, Steve's character is a man with no name or memory that is being hunted by both the Russian mob and the FBI. As he puts the pieces of his life back together, he finds that vengeance is a dish best served cold...Stone Cold.
The Acting
Steve is not asked to do much more than to kick butt in this movie. He does that just fine. Unfortunately, his character is an amnesiac that doesn't remember who he is or why he is being chased. Because of this, his character lacks any sort of emotional depth. Unlike in Damage, where you felt sympathy for his character, Steve does not get a chance to broaden his acing chops.
The movie also features Adam Beach (Flags of Our Father) and Erica Cerra (Eureka). All the actors do a solid job with their roles and the acting is the best part of the movie.
The Action
One of the major problems with this movie is the ludicrous fight scenes. While most action movies require you to suspend your disbelief during the fight scenes, the absurd nature of many of the fights in this movie make that task impossible. As an example, there is one scene where Steve is being held by several members of the Russian mob while being whacked with a giant pipe in the ribs. While we know that Steve is some type of super spy, we are never explained where he got his Superman-like powers to just shrug off these shots and beat up everyone like nothing just happened to him.
The Plot
As I complained about in Damage, this movie also does a poor job of giving us a reason to hate the antagonist. The reason for that is because we don't know who the bad guy is in this movie until the final few minutes.
Whereas Damage did a good job of giving us a reason to root for Steve's character, we have no rooting interest for Steve until the final few minutes of the film when we finally figure out what happened to him and his family.
There was one very annoying thing in this movie, the flashback sequences. Some of them were seen several times and in addition to not knowing what they were about for most of the film, these sequences just served to distract from what was going on in the movie at the time.
Overall Recommendation
If you spent this weekend watching the Steven Seagal straight-to-video block of films on cable this weekend then you may enjoy this film. However, if you are not a fan of these types of films then you won't like this one. I am a fan of these types of movies and think this one was pretty poor. If you are in the market for a Steve Austin straight-to-video release, I would pick Damage over this one. While this movie wasn't a horrible way to spend an hour-and-a-half, it is not something I would recommend spending your money on.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.
