It's been quite awhile since I saw my last Steven Seagal film, so maybe that's why I enjoyed Kill Switch a little more than most other viewers. Watching bad guys pay a heavy price for their crimes falls under my definition of entertainment, and Seagal just absolutely beats the crap out of any loser dumb enough to get in his way -- and he doesn't waste any time getting down to business. In the opening scene, some sicko has wired explosives to a woman's chest, and the bomb squad has only a few minutes to figure out which wire to cut. Somehow knowing that the perpetrator is watching from a room across the street, Seagal's character bursts in on him and subjects him to some rather intense interrogation. It's just a foretaste of the violence to come later in the movie.

The story, which Seagal wrote himself, isn't all that bad -- especially given the pretty obvious fact that parts of that story didn't make it into the studio's final cut. The product description, for example, describes Seagal's character, Detective Jacob King, as "one of the most celebrated homicide detectives in the country." That certainly didn't come through in the film; as far as I could tell, he was just a Memphis detective (with perhaps the weirdest pseudo-Southern accent I've ever heard) who tends to go into rogue mode during his investigations but always ends up getting his man. There also seem to be some holes in the subplot involving the less important of two murderers, but it's the ending -- unexpected and potentially confusing -- that strongly suggests that you the viewer are correct in thinking you must have missed something pretty important earlier in the film.

Of course, you don't watch a Seagal film for the storyline; you watch it for all of the butt-kicking action sure to come your way. If the plot holds together in any sort of concrete manner, that's just a bonus. (Speaking of bonuses, Kill Switch also features the great Isaac Hayes -- playing a coroner -- in one of his final film roles.) Kill Switch definitely serves up plenty of action, as Jacob has to go through a lot of different people to get his hands on a serial killer before he claims another victim. Subplots come and go (and I must say the inclusion of Holly Dignard as an FBI special agent sent to observe and evaluate Jacob's rather unconventional style of crime fighting is one that was never truly developed), but Seagal's action scenes (with or without a stunt double) are still worth the price of admission.