April 10: Seagal vs. Von Sydow — One is a laughable martial artist. The other is a beloved acting legend. You choose whose movie you watch; it’s both of their birthdays.

“That’s for my wife. Fuck you and die!”

Steve Seagal movies are not subtle.

They are blunt-force trauma wrapped in a silk kimono and topped with a ponytail that defies the laws of physics.

LAPD Detective Mason Storm (Seagal) got too close to the truth. The wrong shady politician got tipped off, and some dirty cops blew their way into his house, killing his wife and putting him in a coma for seven years. During that time, he’s cared for only by Andy Stewart (Kelly LeBrock), a nurse who apparently thinks the best way to revive a comatose patient is to let kittens walk all over him. Keep in mind that at this point in the movie, Seagal looks like White Jesus and is super sweaty. 

Lt. O’Malley (Frederick Coffin) is the real MVP here, keeping Storm hidden and legally dead” while he rots in a hospital bed. When Storm finally wakes up—recovering through acupuncture (this is during the Japanese phase of Seagal and shoutout to Bad Movie Bible for pointing this out), herbs, and sheer ego — O’Malley is there to reveal he’s been raising Storm’s son this whole time. Is O’Malley going to die just to provide more revenge grist for the mill? You know it. No one survives being Steven Seagal’s best friend.

The final boss is Senator Vernon Trent (William Sadler), who ends the movie with a shotgun in his mouth before it is directed at his groin. This comes after Seagal spends ninety minutes barely selling for anyone. Even after being riddled with bullets earlier in the film, Mason Storm treats a coma like a minor case of the Mondays.

Seagal did not get along with director Bruce Malmuth (the ring announcer for The Karate Kid and the director of Nighthawks), saying, “I think it’s a miracle that this guy can put one foot in front of the other.” Whatever happened to Malmuth’s cut of the film, Warner Bros. demanded the movie be heavily cut and re-edited to a 90-minute running time to maximize how many times a day it could play. There’s a legend that an alternate ending was also filmed, in which Storm kills Trent and says, “Take that to the bank.” He also supposedly set the big bad on fire inside a fireplace.

More potential IMDbs: “When it came time to film this scene, Seagal, director Bruce Malmuth and several of the producers got into a spat, leading to Seagal storming off set and into his trailer, upset. It was William Sadler himself who suggested Storm shoot at his groin and miss, making an insulting comment about his small genitalia. The producers liked the idea and sent Sadler to Seagal’s trailer to pitch it, feeling that he would not have listened to them if they had brought it to his attention. Seagal liked Sadler’s idea, returned to the set, and they filmed this ending instead in just a few hours, putting the matter to rest.”

This movie’s original title was Seven Year Storm. Warner Bros. changed it. But Seagal gets marketing. His line “I’m gonna take you to the bank, Senator Trent… the blood bank,” wasn’t even in the original script. It was all ad-lib and ended up in the trailer.

I would put this on the “good” side of the Seagal equation. There’s a lot of him cracking bones and cracking jokes, usually at the same time. It also reminds you that at one point, Seagal was married to LeBrock and for that, we should respect him. A little, I guess.

It also follows the Cobra playbook of going totally overboard in a convenience store. That’s how you do an action movie: put the hero in a situation we’ve all been in, let him decimate some jobbers, and never — ever — let him show weakness. Seagal lives up to the title; he doesn’t just survive a coma, he treats it like when you wake up with your arm still asleep.

Hard to Kill was remade twice in Turkey as Cheetah Ram and Shastra.