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Newest - Highway to Hell - DREEEEEEW!
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Who Rocks Harder: Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme?
Jim Jenista
A more appropriate title for this installment of Who Rocks Harder? might be Who Kicks Higher?
or Who Does The Splits More Times In One Movie? These two fine martial art actors definitely deal
out fists of fury, but side-by-side which one has to play the sidekick?
Steven Seagal has an impressive Hollywood resume—actor, writer, director, producer, composer.
(No kidding, he composed “Love Doctor” for the film Ticker, a romantic romp between the commander
of a bomb squad and a terrorist-gang raising pandemonium throughout the city.)
Seagal did movies with DMX and Ja Rule! This cat has street cred.
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He’s got a long line of
classic titles in his catalogue, and as of April 2005, at least five projects in production. Steven isn’t
just all up and over on action, he’s an action factory!
This man is also a hero in real life. While Greenpeace was throwing away time and money lobbying
politicians in Washington, Steven Seagal went to the Alaskan wilderness with the aid of Eskimos and an
arsenal that violated five international treaties and promptly stuck it to the evil oil corporation by
blowing up an entire oil rig. Take that murderously corrupt CEO! Malcolm X would have loved
On Deadly Ground.
It is impossible to adequately gauge Seagal’s talent and general rockitude without mentioning
Under Siege, though. In my opinion this film is the barometer of the action movie genre.
Just listen to the plot: a cook on board the USS Missouri (an ex-Navy SEAL, this cook) must single-handedly
stop a group of terrorists that have commandeered the ship, except also with the gratuitous help of the playmate
that jumped out of a cake at the beginning. Pure genius! They just don’t come any better than that.
Now let’s have a gander at Monsieur Van Damme. In the action film community this guy is at the top of
the list of dudes who can do the splits. Like in the trailer for Timecop
They're doing an experiment to see if electricity will travel through
all three bodies when they form a complete circuit.
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(I think that’s the one)
where he jumps up and does the splits and then holds himself up across two kitchen counters!
Wow! The splits are awe inspiring when executed by this man.
Jean-Claude has (besides a mellifluous name) an array of remarkably diverse projects under his belt.
He entered the secret underground martial arts championship in Bloodsport, he trained to fight the
unbeatable kickboxer that paralyzed his brother in Kickboxer, and he fought in an underground league
to save his brother’s destitute family in Lionheart.
I wish I had been his best friend in 1989 because
a comment like “Hey, you should make a movie where you are forced to fight in a secret martial arts tournament
because you’re the world’s best fighter except peaceful, and the evil guy who needs to beat you to truly
claim the title has kidnapped your daughter” would have netted me a cool million for co-writing credits.
I wanted to be Jean-claude Van Damme before I saw this picture.
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Van Damme is a damme failure, on second thought. I never even saw it, but I felt pity for his whole family
after he starred in Street Fighter. And for some reason when Cyborg went to TV they called it
Masters of the Universe II: The Cyborg which I always put on, misled that I was about to watch a new
He-Man movie. Jean! Claud-eh! Why do you lie to me!?
Okay, so he did make that excellent flick where he played twin brothers separated at birth that have to fight
together to get revenge for their parents’ deaths. (That one is up there!) And he had an uncredited appearance
in Breakin’ which does kind of shine a good light on the Dammester, but
Steven Seagal Rocks Harder!
When I sat down to write this I had every intention of throwing it to Jean-Claude
Van Damme. Sorry buddy, but Steven Seagal left you the dust, probably at the point where
you jumped off the race track to do the splits--I’ll sign off with that insightful zinger.
You can drop me a line at jim@xtremewailing.com,
but I’ll probably be watching Commando to wash the current taste out of my mouth.
All editions of Who Rocks Harder?
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