Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Nico Toscani is an Italian immigrant, American patriot, ex-CIA agent, aikido specialist and unorthodox Chicago policeman. He is as committed to his job as he is to his personalized brand of justice—expert and thorough bone-crushing.
Above the Law is Steven Seagal's debut feature, notable mainly for introducing his aikido-heavy fighting style to mainstream audiences. The plot is a fairly generic CIA corruption thriller with Vietnam flashbacks and drug lord conspiracies that never fully cohere. Seagal's acting is stiff even by action-star standards, and the supporting cast is serviceable but unremarkable. Cinematography is workmanlike Chicago location shooting with no distinctive visual flair. The ending is abrupt and anticlimactic, failing to pay off the thriller elements adequately. Novelty gets a modest bump because Seagal's aikido style was genuinely fresh for 1988 action cinema, distinguishing it from the era's Stallone/Schwarzenegger mold, but the film as a whole remains a modestly entertaining, below-average action thriller.