Where to watch Kill Switch
2 Stars
A troubled detective travels to Memphis in order to track down a pair of serial killers.
Liam Neeson’s career exploded when he appeared in Taken, a Steven Seagal movie with an Oscar-nominated actor. So Neeson is making films that a decade before would have starred the Aikido master with the ponytail, while Seagal continued his descent into the straight-to-DVD world of cinema. It’s impossible to compare the golden era Steven Seagal movies with the mostly dreck output from the 2002-2017 period of his career.
Kill Switch belongs in the upper middle section of Seagal’s post-theater run. The story and screenplay are credited to the star, and this would be commendable if the narrative is competent. Instead, Kill Switch is interchangeable from an episode of Seagal’s True Justice TV series, which would run from 2011-2013 and features a lot of similarities with this project. The frantic editing style, which normalized Segal’s limited participation, chops up the brutal action.
Two unrelated villains occupy the plot; neither registers as a threat to the big guy, and one is inconsequential to the overall story arc. The movie ends with an epilogue showing Seagal returning home to a wife and family that goes unmentioned and contradicts all of his actions throughout the film. Judging Kill Switch on coherence isn’t the point. Does it deliver the goods? Occasionally, but it’s also a frustrating reminder that Steven Seagal gave up on his audiences long before they gave up on him.
Directed by: Jeff King
Written by: Steven Seagal
Starring: Steven Seagal, Isaac Hayes, Holly Elissa, Michael Filipowich