Under Siege 2 [import] [DVD] [1995]
Friday, July 30, 2010 8:28Posted in category Katherine Heigl
Under Siege 2 [import] [DVD] [1995]
The success ofUnder Siege made a sequel mandatory according to Hollywood’s rules of maximum revenue, and as sequels go, this one’s not half bad. Steven Seagal returns as former Navy SEAL and skilled chef Casey Ryback, who’s trying to spend quality time with his niece on a cross-country train trip. But as luck and action-movie formulas would have it, the train has been hijacked by a demented genius (Eric Bogosian) who is using the train as a moving platform to seize computerised control of a top-
Rating: 
(out of 21 reviews)
List Price:
Price: £9.99
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
H. Baker says:
July 30th, 2010 at 8:42 am
Review by H. Baker for Under Siege 2 [import] [DVD] [1995]
Rating:
Here we are again movie fans. A hardcore violent action film with all the hardcore violence removed just for UK audiences. Some ***SPOILERS*** follow (but let’s be honest. This is a Steven Seagal film, so you know what happens.)
Here’s roughly what’s missing:
***Spoilers***
*Ryback slashing a guys wrist with a knife.
*We don’t see the close up of the henchman that Ryback kicks off the train roof being dragged along for a while before going completely under the front.
*The part when Ryback uses a makeshift bomb – we don’t see the burning mercenary bump into another guy and set him on fire aswell. They stagger around for quite a few seconds before Penn decides to shoot one of them rather than use a fire extinguisher.
*Ryback kicking the guy shot by the flare gun out of the train door.
*Ryback breaking both of the next mercenary’s wrists has been cut out.
*On the cliff-face when Ryback is hanging on to the rope, we don’t see him smash the guy’s face into the rock.
*When mercenary (Peter Greene) is about to shoot the porter and Ryback intervenes, we don’t his head being forced back so his neck breaks.
*The shot of the knife sticking out of the mercenary’s neck when Ryback is in the hostage carriage should be longer.
*When the mercenary challenges Penn and says “I say it’s time to cut and run” the brutal death that follows is missing some shots.
*Ryback breaks another mercenary’s arm in a fight after he discovers the grenade set to go off in the corridor.
*UK version is missing the close up shots of the knives Ryback and Penn use before they fight.
*We also don’t get the sound effect of Penn having his neck broken.
*The reason Dane falls from the helicopter is that Ryback closes the door, severing all of Dane’s fingers. This is completely missing in the UK print of the movie.
***End Of Spoilers***
All in all, a total of 2 mins is missing from this DVD. It is available uncut on region 1, so do yourself a favour and get a multi-region player. A Multi-region is a worthwhile investment if you’re an action movie fan since nearly all action films in this country are cut at the behest of the BBFC (True Lies, Eraser, Commando, Cliffhanger, Tango & Cash, Under Siege, Marked For Death, On Deadly Ground, Nico, Lethal Weapon 2, Lethal Weapon 4, Die Hard with A Vengeance….all cut in the UK, and the list goes on.)
Aaron C Reskew says:
July 30th, 2010 at 8:56 am
Review by Aaron C Reskew for Under Siege 2 [import] [DVD] [1995]
Rating:
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.
Steven Stewart says:
July 30th, 2010 at 9:30 am
Review by Steven Stewart for Under Siege 2 [import] [DVD] [1995]
Rating:
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.
Inspector Gadget says:
July 30th, 2010 at 10:06 am
Review by Inspector Gadget for Under Siege 2 [import] [DVD] [1995]
Rating:
Since 2001 Seagal has been quite happy to let his film career crash and burn while sings the blues and does all his strange little things in his personal life (have you ever tasted his wine or his energy drink?). But there was a time in the 90s when his name guaranteed you an hour and a half of broken bones, severed limbs, bad guys in agonizing pain and a showdown with a head villain who stands no chance against the awesome hurricane force that is Steven Seagal.
I never really like the first Under Siege [Blu-ray]. I found it to be too low key and slow and after enjoying such brain-free fare as Marked for Death and Hard to Kill in my youth I had come to expect a tougher movie than the what we were given (though the tyrannical BBFC cut the film to shreds and denied me what I wanted to see). I was dismayed at the lousy 15-rating and not even Erika Eleniak’s boobs could cheer me up (she’s blonde-not my thing).
Flash forward to July 1995 and the awesome poster for Under Siege 2 started showing up in cinema lobbies. It featured the impassive one clinging to the side of a burning train hurtling through the countryside and featured, quite frankly, the best subtitle of any sequel ever ‘Dark Territory’. This time it was rated 18 which meant I could look forward to all the blood and gore that the first Under Siege lacked. Obviously I couldn’t see this film in the cinema, being only 15 and all, so I had to wait until the video came out in early 1996. By that point the BBFC (those people from the dark-ages again) had censored every last bit of red stuff to the point where it could be shown on the friggin’ Disney Channel if it weren’t for the swearing.
I would have to wait until 1999, when I bought the uncut US version on DVD, to see the film in it’s entirety. And when I did it was like watching a brand new movie.
Casey Ryback, now the head chef of the Mile High Cafe in Denver, had retired from the Navy but still works for the government doing the odd secret mission here and there. When his brother is killed in a plane crash he takes his niece Sarah (the lurvley Katherine Hiegl) on a trip to LA on the Grand Continental, but that particular train just so happens to be hijacked by crazed computer genius Travis Dane and his band of menacing mercenaries featuring dead-eyed Everett McGill and the sleazy Peter Greene. He has a beef with the government and is only too happy to use his skills to blow the Pentagon off the face of the Earth and collect a nice paycheck from the Saudis.
Luckily for Ryback, he was momentarily absent when the hostages were rounded up as he nipped into the kitchen to bake a cake. He teams up with naive porter Bobby Zachs (Morris Chestnut, bringing life to an otherwise ordinary sidekick role) and begins his skulking, lurking mission through the shadows and voids of the train to pull the brake and free the hostages. Do these nasty people really think that they stand a chance against Ryback’s awesome power and apparent invincibility? Sit back and watch them get annihilated with a variety of improvised mêlée weapons and other gruesome tools.
The train is a better setting than the boat. This time instead of a plain black backdrop we’ve got lots of pretty scenery and the constant forward motion of the loco gives the movie a nice momentum. Basil Poledouris’ score soars miles above Gary Chang’s bland notes of the first one and it honestly ends up being one of the best scores ever and a perfect example of how action music ought to be. And don’t worry about this one being slow as the first. Under Siege 2 is edited so quickly that coherence is almost lost. You have to pay quick attention and perhaps watch the film a few times just to catch everything.
The comic-book nature of the plot, the cliffhanger feel of the ever-escalating mayhem and cartoonish villains might normally result in a campy movie but Under Siege 2 is as hardcore and sadistic and mean-spirited as the come. That’s probably the reason the BBFC chose to cut it, claiming that it featured ‘gloating and pervasive violence’. Well, I never found it to be that evil, just entertaining. Which is why I don’t like narrow-minded institutions telling me what I can and cannot watch.
No one could possibly have a bad time watching this film (unless it’s the UK version) and if you’ve had enough of Shane Meadows doing pretentious black and white stuff or Keira Knightely in a frock to last you a lifetime then the brainless and breathtaking action of Under Siege 2 is just what you need.
The Blu Ray features a 1.85:1 1080p transfer that is a vast improvement on the DVD. The sky is bluer the explosions are more colorful and the depth of the photography has a lot more clarity. Unfortunately Warner have only given us a regular Dolby Digital soundtrack, which is strange since they gave Eraser [Blu-ray] [1996] [US Import], The Gauntlet [Blu-ray] [1977] [US Import] and Outbreak [Blu-ray] [1995] [US Import] brand new Dolby TrueHD remasters. A real shame, but the sound design of the film is lively enough to satisfy anyway. Only a bunch of trailers are included as extras.
Anonymous says:
July 30th, 2010 at 10:28 am
Review by for Under Siege 2 [import] [DVD] [1995]
Rating:
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!!!!