“Stone Cold” Steve Austin: Former 6-time WWF World Champion. 3-time Royal Rumble winner. King of the Ring. Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s #1 wrestler twice. WWE Hall of Famer. “Sheriff” of Raw. Podcast host. Arguably one of the most popular wrestlers of all time. Star of movies such as The Condemned, Hunt To Kill, and some other movies you’ve probably never seen. All-around badass.
Steven Seagal: Martial artist. Akido instructor. “Actor”. “Producer”. “Screen writer”. “Musician”. Star of “Steven Seagal: Lawman. Reincarnated Buddhist. Energy Drink sponsor. BFF with Vladimir Putin. Star of movies such as Under Siege, Above The Law, and over 25 direct-to-DVD movies. All-around ass.
Following the end of his in-ring career, Austin has ventured out into the acting world with mixed results. With the sheer frequency of movies that Seagal is able to shart out in any given year, it was only a matter of time before the two came together.
With all the craziness that is Steven Seagal and his track record of, um, less than stellar movies that have come out in, the last 20 years, you really have to wonder how he keeps making movies.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Maximum Conviction is a 2012 action movie starring Stone Cold Steve Austin and Steven Seagal. One looks like he’s carved out of granite and the other looks like he’s a partially-chewed gummy bear. I’ll let you guess which one is which. As an FYI, for some reason, Seagal speaks with a sort-of Cajun accent in this movie. Shrug.
Seagal and Austin play two “black ops” operatives by the names of Cross and Manning, respectively. Apparently they went to the WWE school of “No one has first names”.
The “Men With No First Names” are tasked with shutting down a secret prison and transporting prisoners to another facility. Sounds easy enough, but Manning doesn’t seem too pleased.
I wouldn’t be too happy if I had to clean up after this guy, either. It looks like he sweats milk chocolate.
Nothing gets chocolate out. See?
Despite the prison being shut down, two female prisoners, Charlotte and Samantha, are brought in until they can be transferred elsewhere. One of the prisoners is Samantha Mendez (Steph Song). Right. If her last name is Mendez, then I’m Kamala Muta Hassan.
At least Paul Diamond put a mask on when he was part of The Orient Express. No way you could tell he was a donut-eating, curling-loving, moose-riding Canucklehead.
By the way, have any of you seen “Caged Heat”? Just asking. For a friend. For research. Where’s Blade when you need him?
When another prisoner becomes unruly, Cross does his best “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan impression and beats him with a 2×4. Too bad he didn’t use the trash can that Duggan found the WCW TV title in.
By the way, which one of the martial arts includes using a bell-clap?
After his prisoner beating, Cross leaves the prison to run an errand. Possibly to make a snack run.
Manning on the other hand, has to deal with the prison’s garbage. He’s joined by possibly the shadiest character this side of Snidely Whiplash.
I mean look at that facial hair. Clearly he’s evil. And possibly part-rat.
While Manning deals with Puke “The Dumpster” Droese and Cross is (presumably) face-deep in a personal pan pizza, a group of mercenaries led by Chris Blake (Michael Pare) pose as Marshals and take over the prison.
Things go from bad to worse when one of the prison guard turns out to be a traitor and kills two of his fellow soldiers. That dastard!
Manning fights his way through the mercenaries with a mixture of ingenuity and bad special effects.
And boiling water to the groin area. Too bad we don’t have Jim Ross screaming “Hot crotch! Hot crotch! Hot crotch!”
Austin 3:17 says “I just stabbed you in the face”. Oh how I wish WWE made shirts that say that!
You see this picture that looks like someone melted a bag of Skittles all over the screen? Yeah, that happens a bunch of times. I guess they were going for realistic surveillance footage. Realistic must be Seagalese for “blurry and vomit inducing”.
Speaking of Seagal the Hut, Cross returns to the prison (full of Snowballs and Ring Dings) and he came with help.
He brought the members of
D-Generation X! Break it down!
As Manning fights from one side of the prison and Cross from the other, Blake makes his way to his true target: Samantha.
Blake is after Samantha because, and try to stay with me here, she is a CIA courier and has secret information implanted with her body. That secret information means a lot of money for Blake and his men. Classic CIA, amirite? Sounds like the CIA is taking a page from the WWE.
Wait, I’m thinking of the wrong type of implants.
Both Manning and Cross start to close in, fighting off both escaped prisoners and the mercenaries with their adorable guns. It’s so teeny! Pew pew!
In another twist, Charlotte is also working with Blake. Dun dun dunnnnnn! She is actually able to beat up not only the same prisoner that Cross fought, but Manning (aka former World Champion Stone Cold Steve Austin!) as well.
As Charlotte tries to bring Samantha to Blake, Cross engages in an up-close gunfight with Blake that can only be described by this picture from Naked Gun 2 1/2.
Oh, and remember those rainbow-colored blurry shots from before? How about some black and white shots while we’re at it?
At the same time, Manning, along with the other men that Cross brought in, fights off the rest of the mercenaries. If you play Whitesnake’s “Is This Love” during this scene, it actually quite romantic.
This one-liner though is pretty far from romantic. I guess it’s better than chanting “What?!” at a corpse.
Samantha, meanwhile, is able to fight off Charlotte and kill her. Seriously. Caged Heat. Anyone?
Cross dukes it out with Blake in a little hand-to-hand combat. Her look of confidence says it all.
Probably doesn’t help that he looks like someone dressed a kielbasa in G.I. Joe clothing.
Through his unique combination of fighting skills, weapons expertise, and girth, Cross is able to defeat Blake by, and I’m not kidding, throwing him into those lasers that trigger bombs to explode. Perfect.
With the bad guys defeated, Cross and Samantha ride off into the sunset while promising Manning that they’ll do it again someday. Manning looks thrilled at the proposition.
And that’s the end to the tale of Maximum Conviction.
Words were said. Things happened. Guns were shot. Explosions, uh, exploded. Lots and lots of people died. Steve Austin was pretty much the same old Stone Cold we know and love just with a few more swear words. Seagal was Seagal in all his bewildering glory.
The movie was more tolerable than expected, but that is probably because there is minimum Steven Seagal in it. In fact, that should have been the movies selling point. They could have called the movie “Minimum Seagal”. Probably would’ve helped move a few more copies out of the $2 bin at the local convenience store.