Exit Wounds

One can always count on Steven Seagal to act as the repository of yesterday's action-film clichés, and Exit Wounds is yet another case in point. Seagal plays Detroit cop Orin Boyd, a lone wolf lawman who gets in the middle of his precinct's losing battle against police corruption. Taking on a powerful but crooked cop named Montini (David Vadim)--who is busy making deals with a rich gangster (DMX)--Boyd soon sends fists and feet flying while Tom Arnold provides the comic relief. Director Andrzej Bartkowiak surely had less fun guiding Seagal through slow-motion fight sequences than he did Jet Li in Romeo Must Die, but as compensation he gets to work with the mesmerizing DMX, who looks as though he has leading-man possibilities. Plenty of gratuitous gore, awful cop banter, and miles of cleavage courtesy of Jill Hennessy, who plays Boyd's tough-as-nails boss. --Tom Keogh