My Review of "Out for Justice"

Out for Justice is an action movie that came out back in 1991. I have heard of Steven Seagal and have never seen any of his movies. This was one of the recommended movies to check out first. Admittedly, I had my hesitations but it turned out to be way more entertaining than I thought it would be. You have to watch it while knowing that its over exaggerations were a product of its time. Though, these over exaggerations were kind of what kept this movie so entertaining.

The movie starts out with our main protagonist Gino, doing some sort of investigative work as a police officer. They're supposed to be tailing some drug dealers but he notices a man beating on a woman. He decides to break from the job that he's doing to save the woman from the beating. This is basically to cement how morally just Gino is. Gino will do this in the most brutal manner that he can think of.

This also helps makes the audience aware that everyone in this neighborhood knows one another. Though this movie is set in New York, all of the events are centered in a predominantly Italian neighborhood. It's riddled with crime and run by an Italian organized crime group. Again, everyone knows each other whether it be police officers or criminal. This is sort of like a small little village. There are also unwritten rules governing this small neighborhood as well. Everyone abides by them, and we all kind of know them too.

Everything pretty much catalyzes when Gino's partner and best friend is murdered in cold blood. Worse of all, they broke the unwritten rules. It was done in broad daylight in front of his wife and kids. Gino, being the no nonsense cop, demands justice right away.

He finds out that the culprit was an old neighborhood thug named Richie. Richie is basically out of control because he happens to be addicted to drugs. The drugs have really gotten to him and he's basically on some rampage through the city. His actions are so severe that there are multiple groups after him. If Gino doesn't get to him, there's also the cops and the organized crime group.

For the most part this story works pretty well. The pacing of the movie is pretty good up until the ending. There's a lot of weird storytelling close to the end of the movie. Even though they had so many groups coming after Richie, this movie was still able to keep me on track of what's going on. That's a tough feat to do when you have so many players on the field at one time.

What really entertained me was the no nonsense attitude of Gino and the gratuitous violence he provides his victims. I guess in terms of fight choreography it's not the best but the ideas are so fun. At certain times it feels like Gino is some sort of monster in a horror movie that's stalking his prey. His victims are the tough guy bad guys who are as dumb as idiot teenagers in horror movies.

The action even amps up as the movie progresses. The first few scenes don't really involve any firearms even though we know they have them. Later on in the movie it's a full out fire fight and anyone can get killed from the wildest things. It truly has to be seen to believed. They are so ridiculous that they border on the lines of comedy.

Again my only gripe about this movie is probably how they tried to close the story off. It seemed more like a convenient way of closing out the story and a little bit more lazy than I expected. This movie would never be greenlit in today's modern times. There are definitely some questionable elements but then again there are a few that still hold true today.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this movie. Way more than I thought I would have when I initially heard about this one. I'm sure you might find this surprisingly entertaining as well. It's not a movie for everyone. You're going to have to like over the top action movies in order to enjoy this. Thankfully I do like over the top action movies. Despite this, I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. I may watch it again but I'll have to be in a special mood for this to happen.