Half-Baked Alaska

By RICHARD CORLISS

Steven Seagal comes to save Alaska but nearly destroys it. In On Deadly Ground, the art of moviemaking gets totaled too.

In his directorial debut, this ponytailed stud -- the most consistently successful action star worldwide -- kicks butt in the name of political correctness. He plays Forrest Taft, the usual genius renegade from the CIA who bonds with sacred Inuit spirits and works every woodland trick in the boy scout manual. He also thwarts an oil company run by evil Michael Caine. But first a few good guys must be beaten, kicked and de-fingered, all to give Forrest an excuse to cripple his enemies and blow up most of Alaska.

This is sadism with scruples. But in all his movies Seagal snacks on villains as if they were sunflower seeds. In Marked for Death he broke the lead villain's body -- snap! -- over his knee. In Under Siege, by far the snazziest of Seagal's films, he got to smash Tommy Lee Jones' head through a computer screen. Faced with a bunch of thugs in Hard to Kill, he used his fatal grace to dispatch all but the gang leader, then tossed his weapon aside to give the gun-toting goon a sporting chance. Talk about your Zen machismo; he lets the bad guys shoot first because he knows they can't shoot straight.

Director Seagal can't shoot straight either. The choppy pace and inane plot exertions make On Deadly Ground a $40 million vanity epic. At least Warner Bros., Seagal's sponsor, cut the star's climactic lecture on the environment -- antibusiness and boldly pro-plankton -- from a reported 10 minutes to just over three. It's fine to think an audience is stupid but not to leave it in a stupor. R.C.