You know, the first debate of the 2016 Presidential Election reminded me a lot of the 2001 action movie Exit Wounds, starring Steven Seagal and DMX. Have you guys seen Exit Wounds? What a great movie that is. I mean, it’s not a “good” movie, for sure, but it is also very great. Steven Seagal plays a renegade cop who gets sent to the worst part of Detroit because his boss has had it with his reckless shenanigans, and when he gets to his new precinct, his new boss sends him to an anger management class, where he meets a local radio DJ played by Tom Arnold, because Tom Arnold is also in Exit Wounds.
So Seagal is in Detroit running around doing Seagal things — punching bad guys in the throat, saying things like “I have an idea” and then revealing his idea is punching more bad guys in the throat, etc. — when he meets DMX’s character, a local drug dealer named Latrell Walker. This brings up an important point: We really almost let DMX become a movie star. Like, we, as a society. He starred in three movies in the late ’90s and early ’00s, sandwiching Exit Wounds between Romeo Must Die and Cradle 2 the Grave. All three were directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak and produced by Joel Silver, who should get some sort of award for the whole thing. Imagine waking up one day and saying to yourself, “I should make a series of martial arts movies that all co-star rapper and ATV aficionado DMX,” and then having the juice in Hollywood to get it done. What a rush that must have been. I bet they could physically feel the power coursing through their veins the whole time they were on set. Like gods among mortals.
Wait! I got sidetracked before I even got to the best part. Exit Wounds, the movie starring Steven Seagal and DMX, also contains my single favorite twist in any movie ever. You won’t even believe it.
DMX’s character keeps going to visit this guy named Shaun Rollins in jail and Seagal can’t figure out why, so he starts poking around into this “Latrell Walker” character, who is very mysterious and does not appear to have much in the way of personal history. And it turns out there’s a reason for that. And that reason is because DMX is not really Latrell Walker, but a billionaire computer expert named Leon Rollins, who decided to embark on his own secret undercover mission — enlisting the help of Eva Mendes and Anthony Anderson, because Eva Mendes and Anthony Anderson are also in Exit Wounds — to clear the name of his brother, the aforementioned Shaun, who was framed for a drug deal by a group of corrupt Detroit cops that are in the unit Seagal has just been assigned to.
Let’s pause here to make a few important points:
- The title of this movie is Exit Wounds, which I glossed over a bit early on. It has this title because it is based on a book of the same name, but I want you to really appreciate the phrase “Exit Wounds.”
- There is a movie titled Exit Wounds that stars Steven Seagal and DMX.
- DMX’s character in Exit Wounds is a secret billionaire computer genius vigilante.
- No one puts two and two together that there’s a man in jail who has a billionaire computer genius brother and this man keeps getting visited by another man who looks a lot liked noted billionaire computer genius Leon Rollins but swears he is a drug dealer named Latrell Walker.
- Whoops, I forgot to tell you that the reason Steven Seagal got demoted was because he saved the Vice President from an attack by violent members of a right-wing militia, but in doing so he killed all of the militia members against specific orders. I love this movie so much.
- Unrelated, but picture DMX on the cover of a tech magazine wearing glasses and a Steve Jobs turtleneck.
- The movie Exit Wounds is about a secret billionaire computer genius vigilante played by DMX teaming up with a renegade cop played by Steven Seagal to end police corruption in Detroit.
That’s kind of incredible, right? Like, that’s a movie that exists. I know because I’ve seen it multiple times. What a country. Anyway, I suppose this is where I should confess that I didn’t actually watch the debate and I just wanted to trick my editors into letting me talk about Exit Wounds for a while. Mission accomplished.
