On Deadly Ground

Mystical martial artist/environmental agent takes on a ruthless oil corporation.

• Director:Steven Seagal
• Genre:Action / Adventure / Thriller
• Runtime:98 minutes

Cast

Steven Seagal : Forrest Taft
Michael Caine : Michael Jennings
Joan Chen : Masu
John C. McGinley: MacGruder
R. Lee Ermey : Stone

Steven Seagal plays Forrest Taft, a specialist in dealing with oil drilling-related fires. At a site of an oil-well fire, Taft is told by his friend and rig-foreman Hugh Palmer (Richard Hamilton) that Aegis Oil, his employer, is deliberately using faulty preventers on a new refinery in Alaska and is covering up the fact. Forrest refuses to believe it at first but while fighting the fire, discovers that the preventer is in fact faulty. He tells Michael Jennings (Michael Caine), the rude, foul-mouthed and ruthless CEO of Aegis, but is instantly rebuffed and told that the fire was caused by Hugh’s carelessness and nothing else.

Later that evening, at a bar, Taft runs into Hugh, who tells him to go to Aegis 1, the new super-rig/refinery to get the answers. After Hugh leaves, Taft takes on 15 oil roughnecks then challenges their leader, Mike (Mike Starr) to a hand-slap game, which Taft easily wins. Meanwhile, back at Aegis, Jennings is making a self-indulgent commercial to convince people he is an environmentalist when he is in fact quite the opposite, saying that animals “stink” after petting one. He then makes it very clear that if Aegis 1 isn’t running in 13 days, he’ll lose the oil rights to the Eskimos, costing him countless billions in revenue. He is told that Hugh is planning to reveal the faulty preventers to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. He immediately orders Hugh dealt with by his henchmen MacGruder (John C. McGinley) and Otto (Sven-Ole Thorsen).

At Aegis 1, Taft discovers the truth about the preventers and the fact that the shipment of new ones has been delayed at least 90 days. Jennings is alerted to Taft’s accessing information by MacGruder, who volunteers to “deal with that problem” as well. Jennings tells MacGruder to deal with Hugh Palmer first.

Back at Hugh’s, Hugh is downloading all his notes onto a disk and erasing his hard drive just as MacGruder and Otto arrive. They first want Hugh to go to Jennings’ press conference and take full responsibility for the fire the other day. Hugh refuses, so they then tie him up and warn him that they will torture him to get his notes. Despite this, Hugh still refuses, so Otto breaks two of his fingers and then drills into his leg with a pipe cutter while MacGruder tears his cabin apart in search of the notes. Hugh is finally tortured to death, having refused to tell Otto or MacGruder anything. Read more

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