Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The sequel that just had to be made, 16 May 2005
Anyone who has seen the original Under Siege movie will know that Casey Ryback is a cook who has a few other skills, specifically unarmed combat, explosives usage, weapons deployment, counter-terrorism, espionage and so on. In case anyone still hasn't caught on, he's a former Navy SEAL team leader.This film sees him on a train with his niece, taking a well-earned break. Unfortunately also on the train are some pretty bad guys who decide to take the train hostage so they can hijack some extremely powerful US military hardware. One of the bad guys is the scientist who developed the system and who faked his own death. As you might expect, Ryback takes a pretty dim view of the proceedings and sets about killing the bad guys. In the meantime the US military is trying to figure out how to get its killer satellite under control before it wipes out Washington DC and most of the Eastern US. Much violence follows with Ryback unsurprisingly coming out on top with his clothes barely ruffled and only a few hairs out of place. It's not the most believable movie but, let's be frank, you don't buy a film like this for the realistic plot. It's a great movie - I watched it twice in two days.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
FAST-PACED, EXCITING, NON-STOP ACTION, 30 Dec 2000
By A Customer
Steven Seagal plays Casey Ryback in the sequel to the disappointing film of 1992. The simple yet slightly unbelievable plot is that some terrorists have hijacked a luxurious train and our using it as a base for their ugly plan. They have stolen the control codes to a lethal laser weapon satellite system in space that has the capability to wipe out a destination anywhere in the world. If the Americans do not pay up, then the passengers on the train will die and the US Eastern Seaboard will go up in smoke. Little do they know that a certain ex-Navy SEAL is on the train on vacation with his niece and is prepared to fight! The action scenes are brilliant, right from the beginning. The fight on the side of the cliff, the cocktail bomb scene, and the finale on the helicopter are all brilliant and exciting. There is nothing to the acting, Seagal portays Ryback's tough character as the knowing hero excellently. This is a top film with spectacular bits all the way through. BUY IT NOW!!!!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Getting The Job Done, 1 Sep 2006
Go figure: Under Siege 2 was driven purely by contractual obligation. It's also superior to Seagal's previous effort, On Deadly Ground, an abomination he also directed and produced.
Being the most successful Seagal film at the time (and subsequently, ever) Under Siege could not get away without a sequel. The producers follow a tried and true method: they just make the same exact movie all over again. Once again, Seagal dispatches a team of highly trained yet bumbling terrorists. Instead of a battleship it's a massive train that gets taken over by terrorists with a master plan to kill a lot of people and make a lot of money. In other words, Die Hard on a train. Eric Bogossian plays yet another insane former CIA resource running amok, having stolen a top-secret satellite thingee that can fire laser beams from space and cause earthquakes. Or something like that.
It's up to Seagal, as Casey Ryback (former Navy SEAL who, according to the niece/hostage whom with he's travelling, has 'medals so secret he can't show to them anybody') to bump off the terrorists one by one. Dressed entirely in black in order to hide his expanding waistline, Seagal does it all: shoots, stabs, blows up, punches, kicks and maims a team of bad guys led by Everitt McGill, another arch bad guy who actually wants to fight Seagal because 'he scares me'. Seagal himself gets shot, falls off a train, falls off a cliff, and outruns a speeding train. He even gets in a plug for the first PDA, the Apple Newton, which saves the day while Seagal breaks necks and shoots ears off.
I enjoyed this one immensely. Eric Bogossian is perfect as the loony toons leader of the pack, another guy who plans to blow up half of America for a lot of money (not wondering what his money would be worth after that).
Seagal utters about 100 words in this film, another direct correlation to the quality of the film. The less Seagal says, the better. The more bones he's breaking, baddies he's shooting, and bombs he's making out of the contents of a wet bar, the better. No preaching, no Zen philosophy. At one point he tells his sidekick, a scared porter hiding in the luggage car, "I'm gonna get through my bag of tricks, and we are going to rescue those hostages." Then he stares into the distance, doing that crazy eyebrow thing in what is supposed to represent grim determination in the face of grave danger.
Whatever. The movie is brisk at under 100 minutes, the direction is sharp and economical. The bad guys are evil. They die violently, including a female assasin who gets dropped out of a helicoptor and bounces off the side of a train with a loud, satisfying *thunk*. Fingers get chopped off, necks are broken, people get thrown off moving trains, and Seagal makes a constipated face as he settles into a martial arts stance that suggests he's going to rip his pants. Plot holes? Sure, like who's driving the train after Seagal shoots everyone in the locomotive? Seagal even takes a sniper bullet but ignores it, as if he only deals with serious wounds. ('This ain't being shot.') His black blazer is in great shape at the end despite the fact that he's been dangling off the side of cliffs, crawling on top of trains, getting shot, etc.
It's completely acceptable on a slow night. Incidentally, Basil Pouledouris' score is not bad.
Also note that Morris Chestnut, playing Seagal's 'sidekick', would go on to play the villain in a later and much worse Seagal outing (Half Past Dead) which is a high or low, depending on your pov.
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