Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.

Review #2552: Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.

Cast: 

Steven Seagal (Lieutenant Casey Ryback), Eric Bogosian (Travis Dane), Everett McGill (Marcus Penn), Katherine Heigl (Sarah Ryback), Morris Chestnut (Bobby Zachs), Nick Mancuso (Tom Breaker), Brenda Bakke (Captain Linda Gilder), Peter Greene (Mercenary #1), Patrick Kilpatrick (Mercenary #2), Scott Sowers (Mercenary #3), Afifi Alaouie (Fatima), Andy Romano (Admiral Bates), Dale Dye (Captain Nick Garza), Kurtwood Smith (Major General Stanley Cooper), and David Gianopoulos (Captain David Trilling) Directed by Geoff Murphy.

Review: 

"Films have a mind of their own, they are living entities. You discover them. I made a [Steven] Seagal film [Under Siege 2: Dark Territory] in America. It was a very dreary process and very highly contentious at the time - lots of arguments and stuff. There was a point during the editing where I observed this incredibly high energy beast emerging, and I didn't know where it had come from, because there wasn't any of that energy on the set. It seemed to grow out of the editing process. Whereas others, if you finish a shoot and think 'we've just shot a real beauty', then you're probably in trouble. Because they can jump up and bite you."

Yes, there was a second Under Siege movie. This was the seventh film with Steven Seagal as a star but the first one to come out after the ridiculously overblown On Deadly Ground (1994). You remember Under Siege (1992), right? The original script had been done by Matt Reeves and his college friend Richard Hatem, as they wanted to break into the market of spec scripts with action, with the script (with a working title of "Dark Territory", since, well, it refers to running track not controlled by signals) being described as "meant to be very much like a Die Hard movie". The market crashed for scripts, but it eventually was optioned and converted to what you see, with various script doctors such as Brian Helgeland delivering un-credited work. According to Chestnut, a good deal of the film was improvised, specifically when Seagal was on screen, which basically went, “Okay, this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to say this, I’m going to say this, then I’m going to do that and then you’re going to do that.” This was the last major production for its director Geoff Murphy, who had moved to Hollywood filmmaking after making films in his native New Zealand such as Goodbye Pork Pie (1981), Utu (1983) and The Quiet Earth (1985) that resulted in films such as Young Guns II (1990), Freejack (1992), and, well, this. He kept a busy profile with work in TV, smaller-scale stuff such as Race Against Time (2000) along with second-unit work on The Lord of the Rings. He died in 2018 at the age of 80. Made on a budget of $60 million (double the original), the movie was a mild box office hit, albeit not on the level of the original. Seagal's* next two films the following year were Executive Decision (a supporting role where he took a backseat plane ride to Kurt Russell) and The Glimmer Man. 

Is it unnecessary? Maybe. Is it not as good as the previous Under Siege? Mostly, yea. Is it worth it? Well, you know, I think so. I suppose this is where the apex of Seagal as a "star" has hit, complete with using a Apple Newton MessagePad 100 to really make this a high-tech thriller. But hey, a movie based in tension about trying to take a top-secret weapon looming in space with a hacker and multiple keyboards? This happened to be released a few months before Goldeneye, by the way. Sure, this is a movie that doesn't have the magic of two villains like before with Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey, but Bogosian, combined with the company of a cast that clearly is acting around Seagal, does hold the movie up enough to at least make the movie worth a check. Seagal, well, he mainly is there to lumber around and kick, with ounces of fun only really coming from seeing this guy seemingly try to hide the urge to say/do insane stuff when not engaged in the concentration of being the one-man army (okay, not always one-man, because Chestnut is there at times). He outruns a train crash, for God's sake. Bogosian saw Alan Rickman play a villain in Die Hard (1988) and decided, no I'm not kidding, that he wanted to play "a big, old fat villain in a big action movie". Sure, the end result had a bit of silliness due to the encouragement of Murphy to do so, but he apparently is quite satisfied with how it turned out with a crazed hacker wanting plenty of $ that quotes Louis Pasteur. And I agree with him! He is delightfully fun in this movie, managing to evoke menace with a jagged edge of wit. Then you have folks like McGill (a few years removed from being warmly cool in Twin Peaks*) trying to act tough (as one does when not being foiled by pepper spray) that amuses me greatly in his stature and the eventual result (nobody gets a long fight in this dojo). Chestnut provides a few chuckles as basically the Argyle equivalent that gets to trek across a train and throw people off helicopters while Heigl, well, there's always room to be a character in a different movie. It's an efficient movie for 100 minutes that fiddles in the ride of knowing what you are getting into with goofy scenarios (dropping people off helicopters, big ticking clocks) that you either appreciate or dismiss when it concludes. I liked it fine, and I'll accept the confusion over saying a movie with a middling lead does in fact work enough with the support under him to make it one to recommend. 

 

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

song of the day!

*If one goes by what Heigl said or Jenny McCarthy said about auditioning (link here), it was definitely a strange experience being around Seagal.

*I'm still in the second season. We shall see about the movie. Also, he ruled in Licence to Kill.

Half Past Dead.

Review #2473: Half Past Dead.

Cast: 

Steven Seagal (FBI Agent Sasha Petrosevitch), Morris Chestnut (Donny Johnson "49er One"), Ja Rule (Nick Frazier), Nia Peeples ("49er Six"), Tony Plana (Warden Juan Ruiz "El Fuego" Escarzaga), Kurupt (Bernard "Twitch"), Michael "Bear" Taliferro (Joe "Little Joe"), Claudia Christian (FBI Special Agent Ellen Williams), Linda Thorson (Judge Jane McPherson), Bruce Weitz (Lester McKenna), Michael McGrady (Guard Damon J. Kestner), Richard Bremmer (Sonny Eckvall), Hannes Jaenicke (FBI Agent Hartmann), with Mo'Nique (Twitch's Girl), and Stephen J. Cannell (Frank Hubbard) Written and Directed by Don Michael Paul.

 

Review: 

You might know that Steven Seagal was a star at one point in time. Above the Law (1988) utilized him to his strengths in, well, kicking the crap out of people, even if he already had ideas of being a filmmaker too. His fifth film as a star in Under Siege (1992) was probably his peak, mainly because he was surrounded by people who looked like they wanted to be there for what could've easily been just "Die Hard on a boat". He finally made his presence known as a director (a bad one) with On Deadly Ground (1994), a movie that was beyond absurd in its environmental message in the face of having so many bodies all around the place. He then did a sequel to Under Siege in 1995 before having one noted supporting role in a movie with Executive Decision (1996) before starting to get into doing direct-to-video work such as The Patriot (1998) or stuff that didn't even get a US theatrical release such as Ticker (2001). Exit Wounds (2001) paired him with DMX in what was thought to be a "comeback movie", although it was this last venture with Warner Bros. At the end of all of this is Half Past Dead (2002), the 11th and final theatrical movie with Seagal as the key star, and it is the only one that was rated PG-13. No, seriously. He has made one theatrical movie in America since* this film with Machete (2010). Half Past Dead was directed by a first-timer in Don Michael Paul. The actor-turned-director/writer wrote the script for the film, which was his first theatrical script since Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991). He would go on to such vaunted works as Who's Your Caddy? (2007) to go along with a litany of movies for the video market (Jarhead 2, three Tremors sequels, Kindergarten Cop 2). Half Past Dead was not a hit with audiences even with just a budget of $25 million. Two years later, Seagal added music to his "forte" with an album of music that had "pop, world, country, and blues music" in it. The less said about his ties to other countries, the better.

There is plenty of satisfaction to be had here. No, not as a good movie, I mean the satisfaction of seeing a bloated, lazy, arrogant Steven Seagal fall off the lowest bar possible when it comes to "action star", complete with barely even having a close-up of Seagal. This is delightfully pathetic, managing to evoke a sense of feeling like a ripoff of any action movie that just pops up in your head. To add on to this, apparently, some unused aerial shots from The Rock actually does show up in the movie. Being painfully generic is one thing, being painfully generic with a star having the charisma of a rotted potato is another. There is absolutely nothing to Seagal in this film to latch on for interest, unless you count him wearing a durag for, um, some reason. The near-death experience the character suffers at the opening doesn't really come into play, honestly, because Seagal just drifts through scenes with the same blank expression. It isn't a story of revenge or even a story of finding one's place after suffering trauma, nah, it is just a guy who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time that is totally not a regurgitation of Die Hard and The Rock (did I mention the movie is set with a restored Alcatraz? It goes right up with a plot about a guy wanting to get the secrets of a doomed man of where he buried valuable gold). His fight scenes seem more like the work of creative cutting with stunt doubles than an actual physical presence. Chuck Norris in his fifties probably had more fitness than Seagal, so where's that excuse? Chestnut seems mildly invested in getting to play a villain in it for the paycheck that probably isn't too different from an actor in it for the paycheck, which is a nice thing to say in a movie where Peeples and her getup of leather (someone watch The Matrix or certain magazines, hmm?) and eyeshadow probably serves as the one attraction worth watching for the whole movie in terms of curiosity. Ja Rule appeared in a handful of movies in the 2000s that probably were fun to do (Assault on Precinct 13 [2005], for example) alongside having a rap career. In that regard, being in this film to try and play buddy with Seagal (a'ight is said a handful of times to make that clear) is not nearly as embarrassing as being the future co-founder of the doomed Fyre Festival, to put it mildly. Stephen J. Cannell appeared in one film as an actor when not doing work on TV, and it was this one. Your guess is as good as mine. By the time the movie ends its pursuit of, uh, retribution and gold, you will have learned that a "generic" action movie can be a blessing when compared to bad action movies like this. As a whole, Seagal was reaching his fifties when doing stuff like this and it shows pretty clearly for a movie that is too bloated, too under-cooked and too tired out to be anything other than a piece of crap fit for laughter.

Overall, I give it 4 out of 10 stars.

Bring on the sixth year of bad movies to celebrate Thanksgiving Week, hell yea. Next one up: The Nutcracker in 3D (2010).

*On a probably unrelated note, the following year after Half Past Dead, Segal had to take the stand because a bunch of mobsters from the Gambino crime family were brought in by one Julius R. Nasso to try and threaten Seagal after the dissolving of their partnership.

*For whatever reason, someone actually transcribed the dialogue of the film into text form here: Half Past Dead Script - transcript from the screenplay and/or Steven Seagal movie

Boyz n the Hood.

Review #1640: Boyz n the Hood.

Cast: 

Cuba Gooding Jr (Jason "Tre" Styles III), Ice Cube (Darren 'Doughboy' Baker), Laurence Fishburne (Jason 'Furious' Styles Jr), Morris Chestnut (Ricky Baker), Nia Long (Brandi), Angela Bassett (Reva Devereaux), Tyra Ferrell (Brenda Baker), Redge Green (Chris 'Little Chris'), Regina King (Shalika), Whitman Mayo (The Old Man), with Dezi Arnez Hines II, Baha Jackson, Donovan McCrary, Nicole Brown, and Kenneth A. Brown (age 10 of Tre, Doughboy, Ricky, Brandi & Chris) and Jessie Lawrence Ferguson (Officer Coffey) Written and Directed by John Singleton (#545 - Shaft (2000))

Review: 

"I was a smartass film student who thought he knew everything about movies. When it got green-lit is when I got scared."

If anybody should look up to a director that made their mark while they were young, John Singleton would be a good choice to start with. The Los Angeles native made nine feature films before his death at 51, but his first feature certainly rocked the doors for audiences in its time. He grew up inspired by films like Star Wars (1977) and the works of Steven Spielberg to go with study at USC School of Cinematic Arts (choosing filmic writing over computer science) - one influence that does come across is Stand By Me (1986), since both involve emotional coming of age stories (and one other moment near the credits, but see for yourself). By the time he graduated, he already was signed by the Creative Artists Agency, and Columbia Pictures eventually came calling. Singleton noted that one of the questions asked by the school was pitching one's own ideas for a film and this was one of the pitches, for which Singleton based it on his experiences growing up in L.A. (such as his experiences growing up with his mortgage broker father after his mother sent him to live with him at 11), complete with filming there. In the era of films with hits like Hollywood Shuffle (1987) and Do the Right Thing (1989), it would only seem sensical for Columbia Pictures to desire a hit of their own to ride the wave with audiences. He wanted to do the film his way, with nobody else in mind to direct (because of his perspective of you know, actually living in the area), noting the fact of someone directing a neighborhood film without being from the area with Colors (1988), which took the perspective of white police officers in South Los Angeles when dealing with gangs. Ultimately, while Singleton's subsequent works may not have reached the heights raised by his debut work, he managed to make important distinctions in cinema - he was the youngest director to ever be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and he was also the first African American director to be nominated for the award (he also received a nod for Best Original Screenplay). 

You bet this was a film beyond the headlines. Singleton wanted to make a film with authenticity that turns the coming-of-age story on its head with hard-hitting realism that proves to be quite sobering and relentlessly consistent - a year later, Los Angeles would go through a serious of riots only a year after the release of this film (after the acquittal of officers that had beaten Rodney King during an arrest that happened right before this film was released, and Singleton would do a documentary on television about the riots 25 years later). Released with the tagline "Increase the Peace", it shows the danger of cyclic violence without bashing one's head with anything too obvious or false in notes that also deals with other aspects of life within urban streets, such as the nature of masculinity and prejudice. Singleton would later refer to himself as the first filmmaker from the hip-hop generation, using the aesthetic to cover a culture that made it into all of his films. There would be a variety of films involving what one would call the hood film that would come out in the wake of this film (such as South Central (1992) or ones with comedy such as Friday (1995), which Singleton encouraged Cube to write), but there is still something powerful about this feature that three decades cannot diminish. Wrapped in all this is a tremendously talented cast, one that makes these characters come alive with energy that makes a worthy composition about life in the neighborhood come across in all of its layers - it works as a drama, but there are moments too with these folks that makes one crack a smile to go with the gasps.  The film was the first major role for Gooding Jr (who believe it or not actually started in breakdancing before moving focus to acting) alongside Long and Bassett, and it was also the debut role for Cube (known for his rapping with N.W.A. before moving into solo performing) and Chestnut (who naturally came into acting through TV fare like Freddy's Nightmares). The unifying force for 112 minutes in terms of its time spent with the youth and growing teenage folks turns to Fishburne, who provides the best performance among everyone with crisp influence, one that is conscious in his confidence that resonates deeply from the first few moments on screen; there are a variety of highlights one could list, such as a scene in Compton and neighborhoods being taken advantage of, but the scene with a silent Gooding Jr and Fishburne, staring at the choices made and not made for the climax that hits just as hard. In that sense, Gooding Jr makes a quality lead to follow along with, curious in his surroundings with responsibility with perseverance alongside tension that doesn't get swept away. Cube carries his part well, brash but always on the moment for what needs to occur with perspective and timing. Chestnut fills well with potential, smooth in his balance of family and life beyond the field that makes a worthy rapport with Gooding Jr count until that key moment near its end, which results in an impactful sequence for shock without being exploitative. Long and Bassett each fill their time spent with Gooding Jr in key necessities that spark maturity and curiosity, while Green, Gobert, and Sykes fill the edges with useful timing, although Ferguson will likely stick with you in his own way with bitterness with just two scenes as the only cop figure in the film. As a whole, the film establishes itself quite quickly in an engaging and sobering atmosphere that keeps itself in perspective with regard to youth and responsibility that muses on issues that still seem prevalent today with violence that makes for a usefully entertaining feature. For a debut, it is a tremendous one, and for its era it is an enduring one for Singleton and the stars and moments that came from it.

Next Time: 1992 seems like an interesting year to do some films with, so we will start with the first one up in release with a first-time director in Juice.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.