When you are backed against the wall. With no exit in sight, you might ask yourself "What am I willing to do for survival". Am I willing to lower my standards? Extinguish the flames of my ego? Am I basically willing to prostitute myself for survival?
Steven Seagal has become a true King of the Direct to Video Market. He is a ruler of endless plains of DVD's. There's no one that can quite compare to him. Van Damme and Snipes seem mere peasants.
That being said, so far we haven't truly saw the desperation in his eyes until this movie came along. How low can he go you asked? The answer came along in the form of this Film.
With the plot being similar to Manchurian Candidate you ask yourself "Is this going to a Tribute, Parody, or Direct Copy?". I am not sure how I can answer. Let's see what metaphor I can think of. We can make a comparison to quicksand. It sucks you in to it so quickly you just never had the time to assemble all the pieces. But wait that's quite not right. It's more like mud. It's a mess that is being pushed aside with you two feet. But there's an endless amount of it. You will never quite be able to make a path for yourself in time. There's hack writers who write tripe like Wild Things 2 and 3 or even Single White Female 2: The Psycho. But whoever wrote this Film, like Seagal is the King of his trade. Congratulations on giving me a headache. Maybe they conspired with pharmaceutical companies. Bad Film = Headache = Advil = Money For Both.
But we don't see Steven's Films for the Plot do we? They used to be decent a long time ago through, hack even great with Hard to Kill. But we come to expect different things with time. We come for the Fight Sequences. This brings me to my next point. If you have Seagal aboard your Project why would you only use him for Two Fights?
We will never know the answer, but are these two fights at least good? How can I answer the question without hurting your feelings? I simply can't. I can only be bold. What do you expect from twenty second fight scenes with almost no choreography? It's basically twenty seconds of Slap Fighting which is a new martial Arts Form introduced by Steven in the last five years.
The first one had so much potential. You have Gary Daniels as the opponent facing Seagal. But what does the Director decide to do? He intercuts it with a terrible fight scene happening in some other quarter of the submarine. And the length... I frowned, I sighted, and I shook my head. Side to side not up and down. I should time it but I don't believe it’s longer than say twenty seconds. Was it supposed to top the knife fights in Under Siege 1 and 2? Well you failed. And that's the other thing. It's a knife fight. I fell in love with the previous ones, couldn't you put some thought in to it. Being lazy equals terrible results. The main question is. Was he doubled? I am not sure. I can't be bothered to check. There were enough far away shots who knows. Plus the terrible lighting.
The second fight was especially great said I sarcastically. Not only was it a few seconds longer but it had Stevie doubled every second shot. Basically every shot not showing his face. Must be hard business flailing your arms about to non existent choreography. The insurance company must have come in and said "This is way too dangerous Mr. Seagal."
I should stop wasting my time Reviewing something that belongs in a garbage bin. What can I give a movie like this? Steven looked physically sick. He was sitting for the majority of the movie. And in some scenes his face just made me look away. It was an awful sight. His voice was dubbed throughout the majority of this gem of a Film. I love the walkie-talkie scene. He couldn't even say a single line. And the fights which can usually save a terrible Film were clear-air echo's.
I will give it 1/5 just for the two decent car scenes and the fact that the shoot outs actually looked somewhat gruesome compared to his other Direct to Video Films. Anthony Hickox has done four good Films in his lifetime. Three of them I loved as a kid and still enjoy. They are Waxwork 1 & 2 and Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat. The last is Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth. I recall him writing Waxwork in just a few days. He probably followed the same formula with this project just to have drivel highlighting numerous pages of paper. What a waste of good paper. Whatever he had to offer with his previous projects isn't found here.
I try to be open-minded, non-biased, not influenced by other Reviews, positive, and most of all have faith in Seagal. It's becoming a real task now through. He is officially the King of the corner. Prostituting himself from one Film to another. What makes one do this? In his case Money. In most cases "money".
