director
Andrew
Davis
screenwriter
J.F. Lawton
producers
Arnon Milchan
Steven Reuther
Steven Seagal
cinematographer
Frank Tidy
music
Gary Chang
editors
Don Brochu
Robert A. Ferretti
Dov Hoenig
Dennis Virkler
cast
Steven Seagal (Casey Ryback)
Tommy Lee Jones (William Stranix)
Damian Chapa (Tackman)
Troy Evans (Granger)
David McKnight (Flicker)
Lee Hinton (Cue Ball)
Patrick O'Neal (Captain Adams)
Gary Busey (Commander Krill)
Bernie Casey (Commander Harris)
Erika Eleniak (Jordan Tate)
Colm Meaney (Doumer)
Michael Des Barres (Domiani)
Nick Mancuso (Tom Breaker)
Dennis Lipscomb (Trenton)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 103m
u.s.
release: October 9,
1992
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
|
In
Under Siege, a scrappy, disrespectful, but ingenious working-class
guy finds himself isolated in a room while terrorists outside
blast everything in sight. With only his wits and some firearms,
the man runs around picking off the terrorists and formulating
brilliant strategies. We might as well just call this Die
Hard 3, but what the hell. The man, a former Navy SEAL turned
Navy cook, is Steven Seagal, who tosses a mean kitchen knife
and can build a bomb from scratch in about the time it took you
to read this sentence. So we don't worry too much about him.
In the original Die Hard, Bruce Willis cut himself up
trying to walk barefoot across a floor littered with broken glass.
Steven Seagal would just eat the glass. Then he'd probably
fart it back out at his enemies, killing them.
That's about all he doesn't do in Under Siege, yet the
film does represent a change of pace for him. His past few movies
(Hard to Kill, Marked for Death, Out for Justice)
have been posturing urban nonsense, with Seagal chucking people
out windows and disarming burglars in package stores. Here, he
spends the whole film in enclosed quarters, with the ocean under
his feet, and so he's forced to use his head as something more
than a place to hang his ponytail (which, incidentally, has been
snipped for this movie). Delivered from the back alleys and crack-dealer
plots of his other films, Seagal seems ready for a smarter breed
of action-adventure movie.
Under Siege unfolds aboard the USS Missouri (actually
the decommissioned USS Alabama), a battleship on its final tour
of the Pacific. With only a skeleton crew manning it, the Missouri
presents a nice target for the terrorists, who take over the
ship under the pretense of a surprise birthday party for its
captain (Patrick O'Neal). The second-in-command (Gary Busey),
who's in cahoots with head terrorist Tommy Lee Jones, shuts Seagal
in the meat locker after Seagal decks him (Busey figures that
placing Seagal under formal arrest would screw up the plan).
So there Seagal sits, getting cold and pissed, until he escapes
the meat locker and gives his fans what they paid for. Hi-yaaa!
Not that Seagal has a Bruce Lee death shout. His Aikido dazzles
the eye -- he breaks limbs with amazingly fluid, looping motions
-- but his facial expressions suggest a man eating cold cereal.
This guy just doesn't seem ... into it. Demolishing his
opponents with skull-powdering kicks and lightning-fast chops,
Seagal has the blandly attentive pout of a kid playing pinball.
(If I could do what he does, I'd look a lot happier about it,
wouldn't you?) He does not have, to be sure, a lot of oomph in
his acting. But he does have a solid screen presence (any actor
who can break your face holds your attention) and a way of looking
mildly amused by the fools who dare to start shit with him. That's
about all he needs.
Seagal, it turns out, is only as good as his director. Under
Siege reunites him with Andrew Davis, who directed Seagal's
impressive debut, 1988's Above the Law (he also directed
Chuck Norris' best movie, Code of Silence). I consider
Davis a superior, overlooked craftsman on a par with John McTiernan
(Die Hard) and Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games), two
other guys who have no identifiable "style" but make
exciting, meat-and-potatoes adventures distinguished by spatial
and narrative clarity, varied compositions, and beautifully smooth
action sequences that flow into each other like the panels of
a great comic book. It's easy to gush over a Scorsese or a De
Palma, but guys like Andrew Davis, with his solid, invisible
technique, bring respectability back to the action genre. Watching
Under Siege, you don't feel as if maybe you should've
waited to catch it on video.
As for the Seagster, he forfeits the film to his co-stars. Gary
Busey, a dependable character actor who's built a macho video
cult of his own, feels secure enough to play his one big scene
in drag; the moment makes almost no sense, but how many movies
offer Gary Busey in a trampy dress? And Tommy Lee Jones, playing
a psychotic ex-CIA operative in Gene Simmons drag, takes Under
Siege to a different atmosphere. He brings a bored yet frightening
authority to lines like "If you resist, we will kill
you and the man next to you." You might ask, What's
this Oscar nominee (for JFK) doing in a Steven Seagal
movie? Answer: Having a king-hell good time. "He's a professional,"
says Jones, admiring Seagal's handiwork on a pair of unfortunate
terrorists. Under Siege shines brightest when the real
pros -- Davis, Busey, and Jones -- are at work. |
