FU&D! Original Review - Under Siege 2 - 2/4 guns
Casey Ryback is back in this sequel, but on a train and not a battleship. The movie is actually better than can be expected, and the action is great. The setup with the niece and the train, and the wacky bad guy work, although I do miss the battleship and all the cool weapon systems. When the train gets taken over by terrorists, it's up to Seagal to free the hostages and stop their nefarious plot to blow up Washington DC!
The action is pretty intense, especially in the sequence where Seagal is trying to catch up with the train in a pickup truck. There are also some great fight scenes.
I, for one, think the knife-fight at the end of the sequal is even better than the original. Did you see how bloody that bad guy's face got?! Cool. It sorta reminded me of the final fight scene in Out For Justice.
It's also good to see Admiral Bates, Captain Garza (the awesome Dale Dye) and even the shady CIA operative Breaker back in the sequel. Overall, this is a strong two guns movie, and definitely worth renting on a slow night. However, fans of realism, beware! Seagal outruns an oncoming diesel engine in one of the movie's more ridiculous sequences.
By the way, and this is more of an afterthought, I was hoping someone could clear up a little thing that's been bothering me. Casey Ryback is a Chief in the first movie, which is the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer in the US Navy. In this movie though, he is referred to as "Lieutenant" by the driver who drops him off at the beginning and he is later described as a "SEAL team captain" by Penn. While it is possible he received a battlefield commission or left the SEALs to go to OCS and be commissioned as an officer in the time between the first and second movie, it is unlikely he would hold two different military ranks. Also, it is my understanding that in the US Navy only the captain of a ship is a captain (as opposed to the US Army, Air Force or Marines) so he couldn't really hold that rank. It may just be that Penn is wrong or that he simply means Ryback commands a SEAL platoon. If someone has an answer for me, please let me know.
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