Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)- * * *

Directed by: Geoff Murphy

Starring: Steven Seagal, Eric Bogosian, Katherine Heigl, Morris Chestnut, Peter Greene, Jonathan Banks, and Everett McGill

Casey Ryback (Seagal) is (ry)back in this sequel where the ex-Navy SEAL chef has to save the day again. In the last outing, it was a ship. Now it’s a train. When Ryback and his niece Sarah (Heigl) board a train heading from Denver to L.A., they naturally think they’re going to take in the sights and relax. 

Unfortunately, a psychopathic techie named Travis Dane (Bogosian) and his cadre of goons has commandeered the train. They’re using it as a mobile command station so they can hijack a satellite named Grazer, and ask for a billion dollars or else the Pentagon, and perhaps the whole east coast, will be obliterated. But the baddies didn’t count on one thing: the guy who’s “just a cook”, Casey Ryback. 

Teaming up with one of the train’s porters, Bobby Zachs (Chestnut), the two unlikely allies then proceed to take down the goons, slowly making their way to Dane. But will they save the hostages, Ryback’s niece, and a large swath of America itself? Find out, as you relive the ultimate Kitchen Nightmare!

Much like how a young Kevin McCallister must have felt in Home Alone 2 (1992), Casey Ryback must have thought, “I’m under siege…again? What are the odds?” Or maybe he’s under siege all the time and these are just the two instances we know about. Maybe he’s tired of being under siege all the time. While we could go further into a discussion comparing Macaulay Culkin and Steven Seagal and all their surprising similarities, just think about how Speed (1994) was on a bus, and Speed 2 (1997) was on a ship. As hijacked train movies go, the good news is that Under Siege 2 is better than Derailed (2002). The bad news is that no movie can hope to compare with the majesty that is Hostage Train (1997).

Seagal is backed up with a nice ensemble cast – Bogosian gets to ham it up as the diabolical baddie with the sweet typing skills, a young Katherine Heigl looks a lot like a young Candace Cameron (it was the heyday of Full House, after all, although to our knowledge DJ never threw a grenade at anybody), and Morris Chestnut puts energy into his sidekick role. 

Other B-movie names that you know and love, such as Peter Greene, Kurtwood Smith, Nick Mancuso, Brenda Bakke, and Patrick Kilpatrick fill out the supporting cast well, and it was especially welcome to see a pre-Breaking Bad Jonathan Banks in there. But only Seagal gets a triumphant musical swell when he first shows up on screen. 

90’s fans will especially appreciate the fact that people smoke indoors, even the most high-tech government computers look like someone using Mario Paint, and Seagal is armed only with an Apple Newton. Well, that and several guns, knives, grenades, and his fists and feet. But the Newton does play an important role in the plot, and this was back when most people didn’t hold Apple in very high esteem. 

Of course, all this great 90’s nostalgia has a flipside. If it’s possible, the movie has gotten stupider over time. What you remember fondly from back then may have soured in the intervening years. The dialogue is so repetitive, you could start watching at any point because the characters are constantly recapping what went on before, or restating what’s happening at that moment. And never mind the fact that a group of baddies take time out of their busy hijacking schedules to shoot a bunch of luggage with their machine guns. Why they felt the need to do this remains puzzling.

Under Siege 2 was notoriously cut to ribbons in the UK, so make sure to never buy any UK DVDs of the film. Watching a Seagal movie with the violent bits taken out is a bit like eating unflavored mush. Although it must be noted that while we are against the censorship, the BBFC director at the time was quite prescient and perspicacious when he commented that he didn’t like the “sadism” of Seagal’s violence. We’re impressed that he picked up on Seagal’s sadism so early on. We can only wonder what he would have thought of out-and-out sadistic crud like Kill Switch (2008).

Seagal n’ Smallwood only contribute one song this time around (usually they do at least two), “After the Train Has Gone”, and they even managed to rope in Gregg Allman for it. As for the movie itself, it remains watchable, but darn stupid. But, then again, if you wanted to watch something that wasn’t stupid, you wouldn’t be watching Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. The cast, the silliness, and the 90’s nostalgia make this train coast for the first 80 minutes or so, but then it starts to run out of steam. 

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett 

Under Siege (1992)

Under Siege (1992) - * * *

Directed by: Andrew Davis

Starring: Steven Seagal, Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Busey and Erika Eleniak

When a team of baddies led by the diabolical William Strannix (Jones) takes over a battleship, the USS Missouri, with the goal of stealing the Tomahawk missiles contained onboard, things don’t look good for the crew of the ship or the stateside higher-ups. When a helicopter carrying SEAL Team 5 sent to save the ship doesn’t make it, Strannix appears to be on the verge of accomplishing his mission. He just didn’t count on one thing: Casey Ryback (Seagal). Ryback is the self-described “lowly, lowly cook” on the vessel, but the truth is that he’s a highly-trained SEAL himself with more than enough know-how to singlehandedly bring down the evil plans of the bad guys. Tagging along with Ryback is Jordan Tate (Eleniak), Playboy’s “Miss July ‘89” (which Eleniak was in real life as well). Hey, if you fall asleep in a giant cake you’re supposed to pop out of, strange things happen. Will Ryback stop Strannix and his plans for world domination? You probably already know the answer…

Under Siege is mainstream Hollywood action that even people who are not typically action movie fans have seen. It was wildly popular at the time, despite the fact that it’s the first Seagal movie to break with the “Three Word Title” tradition. Seagal re-teamed with Above the Law (1988) director Davis – who also directed Chuck Norris in Code of Silence (1985) – and the results have that glossy, professional Hollywood sheen to it that even action movie “noobs” will find palatable. The fact that Davis’s next film was The Fugitive (1993) makes sense; it’s a natural extension of the groundwork laid down with Under Siege.

Most of the street-level grit found in the early clutch of Seagal titles such as Out For Justice (1991) is missing here, presumably in a bid to garner a larger audience. It seems to have worked, even though Seagal’s viewing public was already pretty darn huge at the time. While the movie does lose a bit of steam towards the end because it doesn’t have to be as long as it is, all in all Under Siege is solid. It’s nothing to go wild about, but it’s like the USS Missouri itself: big, solidly built, steady, and professionally cared-for. To Under Siege’s eternal credit, it’s not a submarine slog, bogey slog, ship slog, or any other kind of slog, which it easily could have been. It’s simply what we call a “DieHardInA” movie, which were everywhere in the 90’s. It seemed every time you turned around, terrorist bad guys were taking over buildings, ships, nuclear plants, water treatment facilities, PathMarks, Waldenbookses, CompUSA’s or any other kind of structure that holds human beings. For a more in-depth look at the 90’s DieHardInA trend, please see our review of Sudden Death. In that case it was a hockey rink, in case anyone needed reminding.

One of the main reasons Under Siege stays afloat (sorry) is the cast. First off, we have our old buddy Seagal, who is actually pretty likable here and you do root for him. He’s backed up by the spunky Eleniak as his sidekick, and on the baddie side we have Tommy Lee Jones, who of course is excellent as the evil Strannix, and he has Gary Busey as his sidekick. Now that’s a power-team if there ever was one. Colm Meaney as another bad guy adds color, as do other incidental characters played by familiar faces such as Bernie Casey, George Cheung, Nick Mancuso, Andy Romano, and Dale Dye, among many others. Interestingly, Tommy Lee Jones gets into a knife fight with Seagal in the climactic battle, and Jones also played a knife expert in The Hunted (2003), and those to date are the only two TLJ movies on Comeuppance. Overall, by our standards at least, the violence is relatively toned-down. Sure, Seagal tears somebody’s throat out and shoves another guy into a circular saw, but somehow it all feels more muted than usual.

Under Siege was perhaps the peak of Seagal’s Hollywood career and is not bad by any means. It’s a bit mainstream for our personal taste but if you’re trying to get a non-action fan into action movies, this is a good and easy way to break them in to the genre.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett