MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Above the Law’ Not Above Lots of Violence

The violence in the new cop thriller “Above the Law” (citywide) is so nonstop that, after a while, it becomes almost reassuring. In the movie, if you walk down a street, you can bet a dozen guys with machine guns will encircle you and start blasting away. Even if you drop by the neighborhood church, somebody will probably blow it up before the end of the mass. The film is like a symphony that’s all fortissimos and agitatos --with one more hawk-eyed Eastwoodian hero, striding through mayhem, calmly and lethally dispatching all comers.

This hero is newcomer Steven Seagal as Nico Toscani--and Nico is so well-connected, he seems like a one-man action movie consortium. He’s an ex-Vietnam War Green Beret and CIA trouble-shooter who’s now a Chicago cop specializing in martial arts. To top it off, many of his relatives are in the Mafia. He doesn’t talk; he seethes. His whisper jabs, his brows meet in a menacing crouch.

Is this guy tough? Toward the end, after being tortured for hours, and shot up with truth serum by a leering Henry Silva, Nico tears loose his bonds, runs a screaming drug czar onto his car hood, rams the car through the wall of the parking lot and drops the dealer to the street, many stories below.

For lighter relaxation, he waylays an FBI agent named Neeley (Nicholas Kusenko), marches him at gunpoint to the police warehouse to check on stolen C-4 explosives, then drives out to Lake Michigan and forces him to strip and jump in the lake.

“Congratulations,” mutters the nettled Neeley, “You just made Public Enemy No. 4.”

“I wanna be No. 1,” seethes the unflappable Nico.

“Above the Law” is a somewhat schizophrenic movie. On one hand, director Andrew Davis packs it with excitingly grimy Chicago atmosphere, and the actors, Seagal included, give it a terse, hard-bitten energy. Davis, who’s almost good enough to be called a modern action specialist in the Siegel-Karlson league, is particularly skilled at loading up the edges of his scenes, like the way he uses the quick, oddball snatches of anonymous crowd dialogue he uses to fill his climaxes.

But the movie has the same problem as Davis’ Chuck Norris vehicle, “Code of Silence.” Starting in the semi-realistic framework of the ‘70s cop movies, it veers off into ‘80s action movie cloud-cuckoo land: the paranoid one-against-a-hundred cliches of the average Schwarzenegger-Stallone heavy-pectoral snow job.

Seagal is actually an aikido specialist, and his fights have snapping authority. But, by the climax, when he’s putting away whole armed gangs single-handed, reality snaps like the bad guys’ spines. The film’s stabs at verisimilitude are undercut. It’s dealing with potentially fascinating subject matter: the CIA-drug smuggling link, domestic political assassination, Latin American refugees, police corruption. But the overloaded superman heroics, with Nico Toscani taking on the the drug underworld, the FBI, the CIA, and his own police department, makes the rest of the story look preposterous by association.

Seagal is not only the star and co-producer of “Above the Law” (MPAA rated R, for sex, language and copious violence). His martial arts backgrounds inspired the script--which, despite its political daring, is mostly standard-issue action stuff.

But, while Seagal has a certain charisma--exuding self-possession and quiet danger in the fight scenes--the movie’s rock-solid balance comes from Pam Grier as his partner, Jax. Grier, one-time sex queen of early ‘70s blacksploitation actioners, has been seen too little lately, but she’s evolved into an actress of force, warmth and depth, ideally suited to this kind of gritty milieu and film. Maybe it’s time someone put her back at a movie’s center.