Urban Justice starts as Los Angeles cop Max Ballister (Cory Hart) is shot & killed in an apparent drive-by gang related shooting. Max's father & all round hard as nails ex-cop Simon (producer Steven Seagal) is obviously upset about his son's premature & violent demise & decides someone is going to pay. Simon rents out a dump of an apartment in a gang controlled neighbourhood & sets about beating the crap out of every lowlife, drug pusher & gang member around until he gets the information he wants. Eventually he finds out who killed his boy, he gets himself tooled up with lots of guns & sets out to kill the shooter & anyone who gets in his way...

Known as Renegade Justice here in the UK this was photographed & directed by Don E. FauntLeRoy who again teams up with washed-up action star Seagal for the third time after the pair had previously made the equally terrible Today You Die (2005) & Mercenary for Justice (2006),well it seems that it's third time lucky for FauntLeRoy & Seagal as I have to say I thought Urban Justice wasn't too bad an effort at all & certainly a lot better than most of the straight-to-video/DVD abominations Seagal has starred in over the past few years. The script is a fairly routine action revenge thriller, it's nowhere near as gritty as say a vigilante thriller like Death Wish (1974) or as exciting as some of Seagal's earlier bigger budget films like the two Under Siege flicks but for what it was & what I had expected I was pleasantly surprised. The plot is your basic 'one man army' seeks justice & revenge after someone he is close to is murdered as Seagal is pitted against the drug dealers & gangs of Los Angeles who are rather stereotypically all black & carry guns. The scenes of Seagal & these gang members facing off trying to look & sound cool as they try to out swear each other are quite funny. There's plenty of fights, shoot-outs & bad language to keep one entertained & pass the time but the story is predictable & if I am honest pretty weak.

In these politically correct & overly sensitive times it's interesting to note that the black character's make several racist slurs against Seagal (calling him a 'white boy', etc.) & the other Caucasian character's yet not one single racist or derogatory term towards a black character is uttered by a white one. The action is mostly confined to some rather good fights, this is Seagal of old breaking arms, kicking, punching & generally hurting the bad guy's. There's several shoot-outs too with a particularly gory one at the end. There's an attempt at a car chase but on a limited budget it doesn't look that great. I wasn't keen on some of the choices made by the makers, in particularly the use of slow motion at points that seem totally random. Apparenty Urban Justice almost got a theatrical release.

With a supposed budget of about $12,000,000 this has pretty good production values & is well made. The acting is average really, Seagal mumbles his way through his part as usual & I think it's looks like he's lost some of that weight & he's more believable in this as a result.

Urban Justice is not any sort of masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination & isn't even in the top five Seagal films but it did pass ninety odd minutes harmlessly enough & entertained me in the process. Much better than I had expected & the best film Seagal has made in years.

Simon Ballister (Steven Seagal) has certain skills. He arrives in L.A. to investigate the death of his son LAPD Vice cop Max. He was double-crossed and gunned down. There is a war between the Hyde Park Gang led by El Chivo (Danny Trejo) and the East Side Gangsters led by Armand Tucker (Eddie Griffin). Simon rents a room in the area where his son was killed from Alice Park (Carmen Serano).

This is a run-of-the-mill Steven Seagal action movie. He's hand fighting a lot. I don't think he's doing much moving nowadays. He never really had the stunt action credential. There are some car chases and some fun fights. Eddie Griffin and the gangsters are borrowing a playbook from the 90s. At least, he's not shooting in Toronto although non-descript New Mexico as L.A. may not be that much better. This is strictly for Seagal fans. You get exactly what you expect.

That says a lot actually, because I have disliked a lot of them. Urban Justice may have some clichéd characters, a derivative plot, a really lagging pace particularly in the middle, mediocre acting and some jarring dialogue. However, while hardly high art the photography and editing are a step above other Seagal films, same with the soundtrack and sound effects. The action is short but decently choreographed and has a tinge of excitement, the direction is not incompetent as it can be and while Steven Seagal himself is not great he is not as lazy and unintelligible as he can be. All in all, one of his better recent releases, but could've been better. 5/10 Bethany Cox