Wait, it gets better. The hero, renegade EPA agent Steven Seagal, finds that a Kentucky town is being destroyed by illegal toxic dumping. He suggests that the townspeople organize and fight the villain, a chemical tycoon played by Kris Kristofferson. (For once, the choice of villains isn't politically correct, it's just correct.) But Seagal can't get anywhere because the tycoon has bought off the police force. As for the local minister, he won't say anything because the tycoon gives his church money--and Kris' goons sing hymns in the congregation.

As for the singing, many major-label country artists turn up in cameos, almost always on the side of evil. Mark Collie and hit songwriter Alex Harvey play hired muscle. Travis Tritt shows up just long enough to sing for the bad guys. (The good guys hire Marty Stuart.) Let's see...the entertainment industry, the church, the police, and the government are all in the pocket of ruthless conglomerates, which use them to quash any kind of protest. Forty-five years ago, the people making this movie would've been blacklisted.

It was smart of Seagal and company to camouflage this bombshell as a routine action flick, but I wish they hadn't done such a thorough job. Apart from its politics and a couple of bone-jarring chase scenes, Fire Down Below is strictly business as usual, with characters and dialogue out of a '50s Western. There's also the obligatory mention of Deliverance, the only movie about the South anyone in Hollywood seems to remember. Natural talents such as Marg Helgenberger, Levon Helm, and Harry Dean Stanton transcend their stock roles, and Kristofferson is chiseling a late-career niche as a suave bad-ass, but many of the other actors (like Stephen Lang) aren't so lucky.

Seagal himself remains a curious presence. In his best movie, Under Siege, he used his tapioca voice, impassive features, and telescopic stare to great comic effect. You knew he could handle the action; you didn't expect him to be such a hilarious success as a Navy chef turned commando. In the awful On Deadly Ground, he was a humorless, self-righteous pain; with his stiff movements and jowly scowl, he could've been an Easter Island statue carved of Spam. Here he's somewhere in the middle. The contemptuous way Seagal swats a wimpy villain with a boxing glove--as if the guy isn't even worth slugging--is great. When he delivers his big message in church, though, he sounds like he's extemporizing a speech from jumbled note cards.