Maximum Conviction (2012) Review

Maximum Conviction, or “MaxCon” as it will henceforth be known, is another in a long line of recent Seagal films where the title combines two words that sound tough, but that mean nothing and have little connection to the actual film. It’s also another in a troubling line of films with lackluster fight scenes. As Seagal ages, his onscreen battles have become increasingly choppy and marred by editing. While in his early years his fights were fluid shows of martial arts prowess, in “MaxCon” they are filmed almost exclusively from the mid-torso up, and cobbled together out of dozens of quick shots that only encompass a move or two before moving on. The end result comes across as a jumbled, awkward, disappointing slap-fight.

These editing issues don’t stop with Seagal’s hand-to-hand combat scenes either. Gunfights, of which there are many in “MaxCon”, play out like this: there’s a shot of a man, framed from the waist up, firing a machinegun to the right. The next shot is a mirror image where another man returns fire, his machine gun pointing left. With no other establishing shots, you can’t help but feel that the two sides are directly in front of one other, blasting away, hitting nothing. It’s like a talking heads version of a firefight. Seeing just a slice of the action like this eliminates much of the tension and sense of action, making these moments boring and dull.

Co-headliner Steve Austin, sans the “Stone Cold” moniker these days, has a few decent fights—he makes great use of a screwdriver—but his action relies more on brute force similar to wrestling moves than anything else. As far as the action goes, the highlight belongs to Bren Foster. That’s a strange thing to write because Foster is most known for his role on NBC’s venerable soap opera “The Days of Our Lives”. But he’s also a former Tae Kwon Do world champion, and a regular on Discovery Channel’s “Fight Science”. His big fight near the end of the film is the action apex of “MaxCon”, and according to the commentary from director Keoni Waxman and producer Bihn Dang, they filmed the whole sequence in just two hours.