Steven Seagal is promoting his latest action film, Maximum Conviction, where he stars along with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. They play ex-Black Ops agents defending a secret government prison from a small army of mercenaries, led by Michael Pare, trying to extract one of the inmates against their will.
You haven’t done too many team ups with other action stars before Maximum Conviction. I was wondering how this came together.
"Well, somebody said just take a look at this script, and this story, and I liked it. They said Steve [Austin] wants to do it, and I met him and liked him, and thought that we could be a good kind of team together. That’s sort of how it turned out. We had good chemistry together, and I thought it worked out great."
Had other opportunities to work in similar team up projects arrived at your doorstep before this?
"You know, they did offer me Expendables and stuff like this. I’m sure that there have been offers in the past, and some I would make and some I wouldn’t make."
In this film, Tom Steele doesn’t put a lot of faith in the government, and I’ve noticed that that’s a recurring theme in a lot of your movies. Are you still passionate about that? Is that an issue for you?
"I have faith in the military, you know I have faith in special forces, I have faith in our police departments, but it depends on… You say, 'the government.' It depends on what the regime is, who’s in power at the time.
You’ve done so many action movies of so many different stripes. Do you have any favorite action sequences or fight scenes from any of your films that you feel is you at your best?
"Gosh, it’s probably a few. I did like the action [in] Marked for Death, some of the sequences in that. Then in Out for Justice, the bar scene. Those are the scenes that pop to mind right now.
What makes a good action sequence in your eyes?
"Well to me it’s something that’s realistic, that is not contrived, and is not kind of p*ssy, and something that people haven’t seen over and over again, you know?
You haven’t directed a film since Fire Down Below. What would it take to get you back in the director’s chair again? Or have you lost interest?
"No, I haven’t been directing, and what would it take? […] If I had a great story and an offer to direct it, I would direct it."