Steven Seagal appears to be a graduate of the Chuck Norris School of Acting, where he majored in kicking, with a minor in wearing goofy ponytails.

I imagine classroom acting exercises at that institution would have gone something like this:

Instructor: “Steven, I want you to imagine you are a mighty oak tree. As an oak tree, how do you feel?”

Seagal: “I feel like kicking someone.”

Instructor: “Excellent!”

I don’t mean to imply that, as an actor, Seagal lacks range. In “Fire Down Below,” we get to see his many moods. He runs the whole range of emotions from brooding with menace to brooding thoughtfully to brooding happily.

Few actors can pull off brooding happily.

In the movie, Seagal is EPA agent Jack Taggert. He goes undercover as a missionary worker in the back woods mountains of Kentucky to investigate the illegal dumping of toxic waste. (Side note: Since when do EPA agents get to carry guns?)

Supposedly, the area’s water supply is being poisoned. This is really bad news, even though over the entire course of the movie we only see one dead fish and one sick boy. The boy doesn’t even seem all that sick, just kind of bored.

Of course, a good villain can make or break an action picture. “Fire Down Below” doesn’t have a decent villain, it has Kris Kristofferson.

He’s a big-city business tycoon making big money dumping barrels full of toxic waste in old coal mines. The problem is he’s not the least bit interesting as a bad guy. He’s dull.

Most of Kristofferson’s dialogue is along the lines of “you fucked up” or “I’m still alive, asshole.” Ooooooh- scary.

The rest of the cast is your typical mix of small town hick cliches. There’s the friendly preacher, the red-neck pool players, the dim-witted man who isn’t as dumb as you think and the beautiful outcast.

The latter serves as Seagal’s love interest in the story even though she has a dark secret. The town shuns bee-keeping Sarah because years earlier they believe she killed her father.

What really happened is she took the fall for her demented brother Earl, who killed their father after he caught Earl molesting Sarah. Oh, those wacky hillbillies!

Ultimately, you don’t go to a Steven Seagal movie for the acting, plot, dialogue or character development. You go for the action.

Here, the action sequences are few and far between. The fight scenes are all your typical, seen it before set ups with one martial arts guy facing a half dozen or more bad guys.

When, exactly, are the bad guys in these movies going to figure out if they all attacked at once, rather than one at a time, they could probably win?

“Fire Down Below” doesn’t work as an action movie because it is so dull it is mind-numbing. In fact, I was so bored, time actually seemed to stop on several occasions.

Which proves Einstein’s theory of relativity. Time is not a constant, but moves relative to the placement of Steven Seagal in dull movies.

2 stars out of five.

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Mike Milik is a senior in advertising from West Des Moines.