As DEA soldier John Hatcher (Steve Seagal) heads undercover into a meeting of drug dealers, he asks Chico (Richard Delmonte), his frightened co-worker, "Since when did anyone accuse me of being sane?" It's unlikely anyone ever did make that accusation, as Hatcher goes about his business
with an obsessive vengeance that is anything but sane. His cover is blown during the meeting, leading to a violent bloodbath, which horrifies even Hatcher. He retires to his boyhood home in Chicago, feeling that he's lost his moral center and that the war against drugs is a lost cause. He visits
his old friend Max (Keith David) and they go to a bar, where a gun battle breaks out between local drug dealers and a new "posse" (a fanatic group of Jamaicans who engage in drug dealing for religious and political reasons). Hatcher battles a few from both sides before the riot is quelled. The
next day, some Jamaicans shoot up his home as they drive by, and Hatcher quickly abandons retirement to join Max in a battle against the villains. As Hatcher learns the Jamaicans would rather die than squeal, the evil leader of the posse, Screwface (Basil Wallace), breaks into the Hatcher home and
is about to murder Hatcher's sister Kate (Bette Ford), but flees with Hatcher's arrival. Hatcher now realizes that the only way to stop the posse is to kill Screwface. Teaming with Jamaican cop Charles (Tom Wright), who has been trailing Screwface for years, Hatcher and Max head for Kingston and a
battle with Screwface, a duel Hatcher seems to have won...but Screwface proves to be a cunning adversary.
While there are many problems with the film, including predictable plotting, second-rate dialog, and a deplorable depiction of Jamaicans, as a showcase for the martial arts skills of Seagal the film is quite entertaining. If anything, he's almost an even less verbal caricature of some of Clint
Eastwood's violent heroes. His odd multi-racial looks (he could easily play a European, a Japanese, or a Latin American), and his ponytail atop a football player's frame, give him an odd star power, and that power works to good advantage in MARKED FOR DEATH. His bone-breaking fight scenes are
better handled than they were in his HARD TO KILL, but here Seagal is something of a moralist as well, though his mild moralizing is quickly countered by the film's overall reactionary tone. Those bothered by crunching violence and plot lapses won't find much here to enjoy, but action fans will
find it delivers just about all they want from a film. (Excessive violence, profanity, nudity, drug abuse, sexual situations, adult situations.)
