Fire Down Below



After On Deadly Ground, there came Fire Down Below. However, it's far mellower and less heavy-handed than is that film.

In the peaceful Appalachian hills of eastern Kentucky, toxins are being dumped into abandoned mines, causing environmental havoc, but the locals, mindful of their jobs and the power of the mine owners, can do nothing. Environmental Protection Agency CID agent Jack Taggart (Steven Seagal) is sent to investigate, after a fellow agent is found dead, probably not by accident. The EPA has received an anonymous letter from the town of Jackson, Kentucky, and Taggart goes there undercover to continue his colleague's investigations. It turns out that the Hanner Coal Company is responsible for the dumpings, and that it doesn't like Taggart nosing around. Thus, it sends some of its goons to go and rough him up...

As per usual, the critics hated it, and it was yet another financial failure.

Includes cameos by country music performers Randy Travis, Mark Collie, Ed Bruce, Marty Stuart and Travis Tritt, and country-rocker and member of The Band Levon Helm.

Not to be confused with the unrelated 1957 film of the same title.

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 * Anticlimax: There isn't really a big final action sequence. Something happens that proves the owner of the coal company is guilty, and Seagal goes to Viva Las Vegas to shoot him in the leg with nary any opposition, and then Seagal goes back to Jackson to be with the love interest.
 * Ax Crazy:
 * Dark and Troubled Past: The residents of Jackson avoid Seagal's love interest because she's suspected of having murdered her father. Three guesses as to whether she actually did, or whether it was some brute involved with Hanner Coal Company...
 * Green Aesop
 * Technicolor Science: Some barrels of toxic waste get shot and bright neon-green slime squirts out.