Review of Under Siege (1992) by Shawn W — 16 Oct 2012

The storytelling proceeds well from start to the end without awkward stops and helps retain interest to what is happening. The movie is violent, but then, it's a military movie with a self-defense twist. The cook is a navy officer who proceeds to free prisoners and safe a million lives by preventing a nuclear disaster from occurring.

A few Aikido-moves can be seen, most distinguishably the throws which look like the Kote-gaeshi. There is also a lot of knife fighting, a martial art in itself, although the movements are so quickly accomplished that they are difficult to see. Rybeck also kicks, hits and mostly shoots his opponents. This is well filmed, and the fighting scenes seem to have some purpose when they take place.

The acting is way ahead of many Steven Seagal movies. Unlike many roles he has acted, Rybeck has a code of honor, and is a Navy Seal. He kills when he has to do so, not because he would do it for 'fun'. As usual, some of the lines are a bit awkward, like, there is a line in the movie where Rybeck says (after some violent scenes) to Erika Eleniak, that he also doesn't like guns.

Steven Seagal, Tommy Lee Jones, Colm Meany and many others do well in their roles. Without Tommy Lee Jones the film would be poorer. Erika Eleniak fit very well to her role. Some scenes left me with an impression that something was a little amiss, sort of, meaning that some scenes seemed improbable or un-believable, but that didn't tax the movie a lot. Interesting military action movie and among Seagal's best films.