Review of Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995) by James S — 02 Jul 2011

So the poor man's Die Hard returns for another outing with Steven Seagull reprising his role as the ass-kicking cook, Casey Rybeck. Although it's that rare of a creature, a sequel that is actually better than it's predecessor, it's still not very good, though compared to the likes of Hard To Kill, it's a freakin masterpiece.

Staying with the lone warrior against a bunch of a bad dudes on some sort of transport, Dark Territory supplants it's setting to a fancy passenger train upon which Seagull finds himself with his denim clad niece and a host of baddies who want to take over the world/make a lot of money by stealing a satellite weapon of mass destruction.

So just how thrilling is Die Hard On A Train? Not very, is the answer. Seagal is no Bruce Willis and Rybeck not nearly the character of John McClane and even though the script starts well and has some nice one liners which raise an occasional smile, it soon falters and heads quickly on a one way track to Boredomville. Given that one explosion would effectively end the movie there is little in the way of action scenes apart from the odd knife and gun fight for the audience to sink their teeth into.

Villian-wise, Eric Bogosian does his best but is over-shadowed by Everett McGill's Michael Ironside impersonation as the psycho muscle. Neither man is going to be joining Alan Rickman in the movie bad guy hall of fame.

Light comedy is supplied by the wise-cracking black side kick, a character almost completely pointless, while the government guys locked in a bunker in Washington lend nothing but whining to the movie.

Under Siege 2 does manage a spectacular finale which does it some good but trying to recall any other really stand out moments after viewing is something of a struggle. It's not offensively bad or anything and it could be argued that the film never sets out to be anything other than a dumb, fun action movie. It's just been proved that you can do dumb, fun action (The Running Man, Sudden Death, The Expendables, Commando) a lot better than this.