Fire Down Below

In an uncertain world, there's something strangely reassuring about the films of Steven Seagal. In Fire Down Below, he plays the same character--with the same wardrobe, facial expression and humorless self-importance--he has played a dozen times before. This time around Big Steve's a righteous EPA agent investigating toxic waste dumping in rural Kentucky, breaking bones without breaking a smile. And like almost every Seagal film which has gone before, there isn't a moment of real human excitement or tension through all the explosions and martial arts mayhem, because Seagal himself is a caricature (giving us a body of work as numbingly predictable as any in film history). Even an unpleasant incest subplot and a squinting contest between Seagal and villain Kris Kristofferson can't squelch the sense of deja vu. Not recommended. (S. Renshaw)