Under Siege |  | Director: Andrew Davis
Actors: Steven Seagal, Gary Busey, Tommy Lee Jones, Erika Eleniak, Colm Meaney
Studio: American Broadcasting Company (ABC)
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
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Rating:  94 reviews
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 2
Picture Format: Array
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 102 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.2 x 0.6
MPN: WARD12420D
ISBN: 0790732238
UPC: 085391242024
EAN: 9780790732237
Theatrical Release Date: October 9, 1992
Release Date: August 20, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A SHIP IS TAKEN OVER BY A FORMER HIGH LEVEL MILITARY HITMAN, IN ORDER TO BLACKMAIL THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT AND PROTECT HIMSELF FROM BEING TAKEN OUT. LITTLE DOES HE KNOW THAT THE SHIPS COOK IS A FORMER GREEN BERET WHO WILL STOP AT NOTHING.
Amazon.com
Steven Seagal can consider himself lucky if he ever makes a better movie than this one, which was appropriately dubbed "Die Hard on a battleship" when released in 1992. Seagal handles the heroic duties with his usual wooden efficiency, but the movie's greatest assets are a punchy script and the scene-stealing performances of Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey. The two play leaders of a terrorist group who take over the venerable battleship USS Missouri during its final commissioned voyage. They're crazed psychotics who seize control of the ship's nuclear arsenal, but they don't know that Seagal--as the ship's cook, no less--is a former Navy hero, lurking in the shadows and waiting to spoil their nefarious scheme. Director Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) helms the action with skillful style, and as the cheesecake stripper who proves handy with a hand grenade, Playboy Playmate-turned-actress Erika Eleniak gives Seagal another reason to strut his macho stuff. Under Siege is hormonal hokum for gun-happy viewers, but as action movies go, this one's a definite guilty pleasure. --Jeff Shannon
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 94
 Middling fun August 18, 2009
One-Line Film Reviews (Easton, MD)
The Bottom Line:
Under Siege is one of those not-actually-good action movies that's smart enough to keep its tongue in its cheek and deliver some goofy dumb fun alongside generic action sequences and a paint-by-numbers plot; don't let anyone tell you it's a good movie, but watch it if you like stupid action.
2.5/4
This Seagal Flick Took The Cake June 21, 2009
Craig Connell (Lockport, NY USA)
This was a fast-moving Rambo-style action flick (good guys never get hit despite 10,000 rounds of ammunition fired at them) that was very popular.
Some think it is Steven Seagal's "best movie," and I wouldn't argue with that..
"Under Siege" probably was more popular than the normal Segal action flick because of several aspects: 1 - the interesting story featuring the "lowly cook" (as Seagal described himself in this film) beating a bunch of terrorists taking over a U.S. Navy vessel; 2 - the over-the-top villains portrayed by fun-to-watch actors Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey, and 3 - the fabulous looks and body of Erika Eleniak, who pops out of a cake topless in a sight that every guy who saw this film remembers.
The first part of this movie is far better than the second. It gets out-of-control by the end, as most of these action films do with the violence overdone. However, watching the three leads, and ogling Eleniak, always make this film fun to watch. Now that it is out on Blu-Ray (with a good price here at Amazon), it may be time to check it out again on this format.
 Steven Seagal's action classic now on Blu Ray at a new low price!!! April 24, 2009
Jason Pumphrey (Falls Church, Virginia United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Under Seige is now available on Blu ray at a new low price,this is one of Steven Seagal's best films,the PQ,and sound is great,the only extra is a trailer fir the film!!! It's "Die Hard" on a battleship!!! A great Blu Ray for the price!!! A+
Guilty Pleasure March 25, 2009
Jonathan Perry
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm sorry, but I just LIKE this movie. Not the best-looking Blu-Ray, but respectable looking/sounding.
Explosions So Big, They Nearly Block Out Steven February 8, 2009
Mike Schorn (APO, AE United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's taken me a while to review "Under Siege", even though it's one of the first Steven Seagal movies I ever saw. I suppose the delay was necessary because I was interested in giving it a fair chance: when I first saw the movie, I was aware that it was Seagal's most successful and most famous picture yet but I didn't really like it too much, but was nonetheless determined to realize why it received the acclaim it did. I think I finally figured it out: it was big simply because it was Seagal's first big movie. That sounds kind of redundant and unexplanatory, I know, but by the standards of his previous "Above the Law", "Hard to Kill", "Marked for Death", and "Out for Justice", this one's huge: battleships, submarines, fighter jets, helicopters, nuclear weapons, and explosions galore had no place his previous films but are commonplace in "Under Siege". I'm not trying to downplay his earlier stuff, of course - most of it is significantly better than his $156 million blockbuster, here. Make no mistake: "Under Siege" is a great action movie by the standards of its time...but for those of us reared on the no-nonsense carnage of Seagal's trademark features, this represents a step down the ladder.
The story: Casey Ryback (Seagal) is a quick-witted cook of the USS Missouri battleship who's won the favor of both the captain and the crew but also the contempt of the unstable Commander Krill (Gary Busey, "Lethal Weapon", "Predator 2"). Shortly before the throwing of a surprise party for the captain, Ryback is locked in a freezer for striking Krill, and is therefore spared immediate detection when the party turns out to be a hijacking by a group of vicious mercenaries organized by Krill and led by ex-black ops agent William Stranix (Tommy Lee Jones, "The Fugitive", "Men in Black"). After escaping from his chilly prison and enlisting the help of a beautiful but naïve young stripper (Erika Eleniak, "Baywatch"), Ryback must utilize his uncanny talents in weapons and martial arts to stop the terrorist plot of stealing nuclear missiles and launching an attack against the US.
Yes, it's a movie in the mold of "Die Hard", but as far as rip-offs go, this one's pretty good: there's certainly enough action in the form of explosions (as small as microwave bombs and as large as helicopters and submarines going up in flames), gunfights, and the various slicing and dicing of human body parts by the knife-savvy Ryback. I always considered Seagal to be a martial artist at heart, but he seems quite at ease in the role of a human bulldozer: never before had a character of his been quite as invincible as Casey Ryback, whose hand-to-hand lethalness stretches to the ability of being able to tear a man's throat out of his neck with his bare hand. Not only that, but his resourcefulness could give MacGyver a run for his money: cocktail bombs are a given, but in between seeing him defuse a nuclear warhead with only a potful of boiling water and understanding vulgarities delivered in Morse code, you really begin to wonder where the man's limits are.
That's where the film's faults start: Seagal's characters have always had a tendency to be well-rounded and take minimal beatings, but Casey Ryback's level of omnipotence is enough to take the tension out of any situation. By the time the movie is halfway over, you know that nothing and nobody on the ship is going to stop him, even if a mercenary has him dead-to-rights with a submachine gun. While Seagal and director Andrew Davis ("Above the Law", "The Fugitive") have a knack of delivering satisfying comeuppances against their bad guys, (SPOILER!) it's less fulfilling to see the eventual deaths of Krill and Stranix after it's been made clear that they don't stand a chance in hell to begin with...especially since Stranix is a much cooler character than Ryback to begin with.
Indeed, even though it would be another year before Tommy Lee Jones would win his Oscar, his comedic/threatening/disturbing portrayal of the government agent gone insane should have been enough to garner acclaim, but it's definitely enough to make him one of the top villains that Seagal has ever faced. The acting, as a whole, is a step above the general level that most action flicks swim at: in addition to Tommy Lee, Busey's trademark gravelly voice has never sounded better, Eleniak stretches her skills to the limit with more-than-passable results, the underrated Patrick O'Neal ("The Kremlin Letter") is honorable as the doomed captain, and even supporting stars Andy Romano ("Pump Up the Volume"), Nick Mancuso ("Ticket to Heaven"), Colm Meaney ("Deep Space Nine") and the rest do well in their roles to show up the theatrically-challenged Seagal. While no one's ever expected award-winning performances from the aikido master, his overly arrogant demeanor makes him more dislikable than many a villain in this movie, and with the possible exception of the satisfying verbal confrontation between him and Stranix, this may very well be the worst performance of his pre-DTV career.
Still, "Under Siege" has it where it counts, and that's the high-octane brawn that puts it up there with other big-name action vehicles of the time like "Speed", "Passenger 57", and lesser "Die Hard" sequels. While it's mandatory for any fan of Steven's to keep his explosion-prone opus in their collection, consider your audience carefully when deciding whether to use this film to introduce a friend to Seagal. As for me, I'll watch it a couple times in the year, just to keep his other films in perspective.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 94
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