Ian West’s review published on Letterboxd:
Seagal’s vanity project.
There’s a lot to take in here—a 90’s video store staple for me and my old man, On Deadly Ground Injects his trademark 90 minute Aikido ego scowlfest that he’d been honing for the previous decade with an unexpected melancholy mood, explosions galore, mysticism (oof), R. Lee Ermey, and environmentalism... lol.
This menagerie of different flavors feels like a culmination of everything he’d done at that point—spending that Under Seige money and concocting a 50 million dollar Seagal sandwich that he thinks is some sort of social statement... which is inept/brilliant considering it’s just a meat and potatoes action movie where shit blows up while he wipes out everyone, even innocent people. Casting Irvin ‘Empire Strikes Back/Robocop 2’ Kershner and Bart the Bear in your vanity project screams magnum opus... and even though he has better made/more entertaining films, theres something about this movie and it’s absurd final speech that I think about at least once a week.
I almost gave this a lower rating but I can’t... His characters name is ‘Forrest Taft’ lol.