Just to be clear, we're NOT talking about Seagal's oversized beer gut.
Belly of the Beast is a 2003 action movie directed by Ching Siu-tung, starring Steven Seagal and Byron Mann. It is one of the many direct-to-DVD action films Seagal has made in the early 2000s, although this one have significantly higher production qualities and better action scenes, mostly owning to having a veteran Hong Kong action choreographer as its director.
Steven Seagal plays Jake Hopper, a retired CIA agent-turned-businessman and single parent to his daughter Jessica Hopper. A decade earlier, an assignment in Thailand goes wrong when Jake's partner, Sunti (Byron Mann) unintentionally shoots and kills an innocent woman, where he then subsequently resigns from the agency to become a Buddhist Monk. But when Jessica is kidnapped by a group of Islamic fundamentalists during a vacation, Jake have to seek Sunti's help and rescue Jessica.
This film provides examples of:
- The Atoner: Jake’s partner and sidekick, Sunti, accidentally shot an innocent woman during the duo’s Action Prologue, and spends the next decade regretting his actions, including quitting the CIA and resigning himself to being a Buddhist monk in a temple.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Jake and Sunti in the final battle against Jantapan’s soldiers.
- Barefisted Monk: Sunti, who besides being a capable CIA agent, is also a monk who is trying to repent himself for accidentally committing a murder a decade ago.
- Behind the Black: Jake somehow misses the Thai cops surrounding him during the train station shootout until they move on camera.
- Blatant Lies: After being arrested during the train station shootout, Jake brushes off the accusation of killing several men by saying "You know that's not true", even though a good dozen police officers saw him gunning down people.
- Bottomless Magazines: During the train station shootout, Jake's pistol clearly runs out of ammo (after already firing far more shots than it could realistically hold) but he just fiddles with the slide then fires it another thirty or so times.
- Dead Sidekick: Sunti doesn’t survive the final battle, having sustaining too many gunshot wounds while holding off a whole platoon of Jantapan’s soldiers.
- Deus ex Machina: After Jake's killed everyone who could possibly lead him to his kidnapped daughter, an unnamed woman steps in front of his car and makes eyes at him, getting him to follow her. Once they're alone, she strips to the waist and washes her chest to reveal a hidden message tattooed on her chest about where his daughter is. The woman is never mentioned before or since and has nothing to do with the plot except to tell Jake where his daughter is.
- Dutch Angle: Used in the scene where Jake kills Jantapan; the camera focuses on Jantapan collapsing dead, and then closes up on Jake, and in both scenes the camera tilts by thirty degrees to show the impact of the scene.
- False Flag Operation: Jantapan and his men are the ones who orchestrated the kidnapping of Jessica and Sarah and put the blame on Abu Karaf so that the army would wipe out his competition.
- Femme Fatalons: Fitch's bodyguard, Lena, uses her razor-sharp nails as her preferred weapons.
- Hollywood Voodoo: Jantapan, besides being a corrupt military leader, is also a practitioner of voodoo, having an amulet that curses his enemy, and a shaman assistant which helps him cheat in the final battle by briefly taking over Jake’s body. Luckily, Jake have the support of the Buddhist monks Sunti is in league with, and the Buddhist magic is powerful enough to repel the voodoo powers, killing the shaman and helping Jake regain advantage in battle.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Sunti, The Lancer to Jake, who can fight almost as well as Jake and assists Jake in the final battle by holding off hordes and hordes of Jantapan’s soldiers, killing dozens by himself while Jake deals with Jantapan.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: Fitch’s fate. Jake puts a bullet in him while he’s in the middle of making a threat towards Jake.
- Leap and Fire: Jake does this multiple times in the film, especially during the trainyard shootout where he dives out from behind a set of wooden walls, firing away as he does, killing several mooks before landing on the ground.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: Seemingly enforced during the scene where Jessica Hopper’s abduction. She is with her friend Sara, and two unnamed male friends while on the trip, and when they’re abducted both the males gets killed seconds later while Sara and Jessica survives the entire movie.
- The Mole: Fitch secretly works as Jantapan’s informant.
- Papa Wolf: Jake, who gets out of his retirement to go on a Roaring Rampage of Rescue after Jessica’s abduction.
- Punched Across the Room: Jake does this in most of his fight scenes, although given he’s an aikido practitioner most of his punches are more like "a really rough push". This is notably how he defeats and kills Jantapan in the final battle.
- Shoot the Bullet: A variation, in the final battle Jantapan ambushes Jake with his bow and arrow. Jake shoots his arrows out of the air, and they decide to drop their ranged weapons and settle it with close-range combat.
- Storming the Castle: The movie ends with Jake and Sunti directly assaulting Jantapan’s mansion hideout, killing their way past legions and legions of his mooks to save Jessica and Sara.
- Transvestite: Fitch’s personal bodyguard, Lena, is a transgender fighter who kills his/her enemies by scratching.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: During the plank warehouse fight, Jake and Sunti are ambushed by four machete-wielding, highly acrobatic Elite Mook enemies. Jake kills two of them, Sunti kills the third, and the fourth one seems to have vanished for no reason whatsoever.
- You Shall Not Pass!: While Jake is busy fighting the Big Bad, Sunti essentially goes full One-Man Army against all his minions to keep anyone from interfering. It costs him his life, but he succeeds.
