Submerged - review

Jedi2k5

New Member
Hello

I have just been on IMDB.com and looked up Submerged, if you look at the messages board at the bottom of the page, there is a review of a screening a guy went to.

He readily says that he is not an SS fan, but enjoyed the film.

Just thought I'd let you know.

Keep the Faith
 

Littledragon

Above The Law
Jedi2k5 said:
Hello

I have just been on IMDB.com and looked up Submerged, if you look at the messages board at the bottom of the page, there is a review of a screening a guy went to.

He readily says that he is not an SS fan, but enjoyed the film.

Just thought I'd let you know.

Keep the Faith


Cool, that sounds good, we will see how the film turns out to be. Thanks.
 

Serena

Administrator
Jedi2k5 said:
Hello

I have just been on IMDB.com and looked up Submerged, if you look at the messages board at the bottom of the page, there is a review of a screening a guy went to.

He readily says that he is not an SS fan, but enjoyed the film.

Just thought I'd let you know.

Keep the Faith
Thanks for the info. :) Is this part of the review you read at the site?

Just watched `Submerged` (back to original title) at a crew
screening.Although I`m not a fan of Seagal`s films ( his music tho is SUPERB..check out his CD songs from the crystal cave..ace blues guitarist with cajun/ska/dance..)but have seen a few and this is one of the better.Plot.. SS as Chris Cody drags his team of mercenaries to S America to find and destroy a renegage scientist who`s developed a mind altering drug.Vinnie Jones reprises his role from `lock stock` but is very watchable & he gets his share of one liners, plays the psycho-sniper `Henry`.Good performances all round. The action scenes work very well & theres even a cameo from the director.Fast paced with up to the minute special effects.Nice twist at the end! Watch it before you judge it, you may be surprised..should be out in next couple months...
There are plenty of explosions and very well done too!
Its definitly an action movie, with some weird flashbacks but nothing like `Hellraiser`
I`ve been told that Sony will be puting it out

If it's the same as you found, there was a thread on this about a month ago by Nick. In case you're interested in seeing the other comments, here's the link. If it's different than the one you read, maybe you could copy and paste it here so everyone could see it easily? Thanks! :)

http://www.steven-seagal.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5454
 

suziwong

Administrator
Staff member
Region 1 DVD news !

Submerged R1
Posted Tuesday, March 29th, 2005


Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has announced the release of Submerged on R1 DVD from the 31st of May.

Chris Cody (Steven Seagal), the free-world's most “independent” anti-terrorist agent, is going down under - not to foreign ports but submerged, under the sea, where waves of deceit are set to torpedo his command… permanently. Summoned from his military prison cell, he’s promised Presidential pardon – but with a hitch. An American Ambassador has been assassinated - by the U.S. Secret Service – and now the C.I.A. wants Cody to uncover and terminate this deadly operation, but they don't tell him the truth. Cody ends up overpowered and trapped beneath the waves. . . but hardly out of his depth.

The disc will feature a 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, the only extras will be bonus trailers.
Posted by Phil Hinton

-----------------------------------------------------------------

For your information

suzi
 

Mason

Well-Known Member
Jedi2k5 said:
Hello

I have just been on IMDB.com and looked up Submerged, if you look at the messages board at the bottom of the page, there is a review of a screening a guy went to.

He readily says that he is not an SS fan, but enjoyed the film.

Just thought I'd let you know.

Well that only prooves that it may do well with a much larger audience. :) :cool:

Jedi2k5 said:
Keep the Faith

Thats pretty hard these days with all the crap thats going around. But I'll try & do so.
 

Shirak

New Member
Here is Submerged Reviewed By Vern.

Boys--

I wish I could review a new Steve Seagal picture for you fellas every day, but unfortunately he only comes out with them every 5 months. Looks like you ran my review of INTO THE SUN (click to read Vern's comments on that particular movie) last New Year's Eve, and now after nearly half a year of stumbling through life an empty shell, going through the motions, a movie called SUBMERGED will end the drought later this month. Harry, I assume we'll be seeing this one on your DVD preview. You got ****in SPLASH and NATIONAL TREASURE on there man I don't see how you can justify dismissing this one. Not that I'm recommending this piece of ****, except to the most dedicated Seagalogists.

"At 20,000 fathoms the only creature more dangerous than a biological mutant is...man"

That's the tagline for SUBMERGED according to IMDB, and it makes a good point. There are no biological mutants in the movie, there are only a bunch of dudes. But a bunch of dudes (i.e. "man") are MORE DANGEROUS THAN A BIOLOGICAL MUTANT! Imagine how scary a movie could be if it was all about... man.

Actually, I guess the movie used to be about "biological mutants" which would've been new territory for Mr. Seagal, who has never faced a sci-fi or horror threat other than voodoo attack in BELLY OF THE BEAST. But at some point they dumped the premise of mutants-on-a-sub and turned it into MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE ripoff. Now it's about terrorists using mind control to turn American soldiers into assassins. They are triggered by a series of weird images (a windmill in front of a red sky, a woman standing on a cliff, a naked CGI chick) which makes for an unusual opening credits sequence for a Seagal picture, at least.

First the movie pulls a DIRTY DOZEN, or at least a xXx2. Seagal and his "crew" are some kind of super badass special ops types who are in the joint because of some incident where they stopped a terrorist plot described by one character as "another 9-11... except at sea." Seagal gets a funny entrance, shackled, walking slo-mo with JOONK JOONK JOONK rock guitars. The ****in Man needs these guys to kill the terrorist that's doing this mind control thing, so they offer them a pardon and $100,000 each. There's really no time to develop these supporting characters so instead they just freeze them and write their name, military unit and specialty on the screen. (This same technique was used to introduce the bad guys in OUT FOR A KILL, but that time it also specified hobbies.)

One positive thing: one member of the crew is Vinnie Jones. He's the most notable actor in a Seagal movie in several years. The days when Seagal could get a Michael Caine or an Eric Bogosian to be in a movie are long gone, so this is a pretty big deal. They don't really give the guy a character to play, but he does what he does. It's nice to have at least one guy with some sort of presence in these straight to video movies.

Then it pulls a SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, or at least that's probaly what they were thinking when they removed frames and shook the camera around. But the scene is just some soldiers out in a field, and there's exploding goats. I would explain it if I knew how but this is apparently one of those Seagal pictures that you have to watch 2 or 3 times before you really *get* it, so you'll have to wait.

Then it's UNDER SIEGE on a submarine (DIE HARD on a boat on a submarine). Or you think so, for about ten minutes. But they get out of the sub and it blows up, and it's less than an hour into the movie. So forget about 20,000 fathoms. At sea level, there's only one thing more dangerous than a biological mutant or man... a terrorist with mind control.

As always there's some funny parts and weird touches in the movie. One part, Seagal is in the middle of what he calls "a full scale riot", but he tries to look inconspicuous by hiding behind a newspaper! And nobody says anything about it, but a character finds some kind of important mini-disc in a dead guy's pocket, hidden inside a Julio Iglesias CD. Also, there's a scene where Seagal changes that old classic of slo-mo running away from a huge, fiery explosion to jogging slo-mo away from a small, sparky explosion.

That shows you how much care and effort Seagal is putting into this picture. It's sad because even though his movies keep getting worse, he usually seems like he's giving it a shot. This time I got the feeling he just didn't give a ****. I look forward to the DVD so I can use the subtitles and figure out what the hell he's mumbling about. One scene, I swore he said, "Get the president out the cages" but there was no president in a cage. He has weird lines like "There's some sick **** up in heah, alligata" that makes me wonder if his character is supposed to be cajun or something. I wonder if he knows my man Chance Boudreaux from HARD TARGET? ("What kind of a name is Chance?" "Mah momma took won.")

He did this same thing in OUT OF REACH but I was still surprised how many of his lines were obviously dubbed in this one. At least half of the time he seems to be dubbed by somebody else. Or sometimes it seems like it might be Seagal's voice, but recorded at the peak of the worst flu of his life.

There's a little more gore than in recent Seagal pictures, but the same small amount of action. Just alot of shooting, a couple fake looking models exploding and a car chase that Seagal's not even in where a car crashes into a watermelon truck. Seagal's aikido looks completely unimpressive, but Vinnie Jones has one good fist fight.

There's a couple lame bad guys. The terrorist is some guy from A KNIGHT'S TALE, and his sidekick is a skinny dude who looks like Cameron Diaz when she dressed up as a man in CHARLIE'S ANGELS. Then there's a crooked federal agent type, he was apparently in HELLRAISER PART 2 and I'm pretty sure he was that poor sap of a boyfriend who was hiding behind a curtain watching the perverted doctor make out with a ressurected bloody skinless chick.

Speaking of HELLRAISER sequels, the director of SUBMERGED is Anthony Hickox, who did part 3. The one where Pinhead hangs out at a dance club. At least it's a director I heard of before, but he has the same problems as Michael Oblowitz and other low quality directors of Seagal pictures. I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but I think the digital editing they use now days has caused some bad habits for some of these ****ers. In the old days you had to actually cut the film up and tape it all together and it was a big pain in the ass. Now you don't have to do that so these guys figure, ****, every time it goes to another scene, I might as well throw in ten little flashes of random closeups, some fast speed, some black and white freeze frames, some backwards motion, some meaningless white flashes. Top it off with some computery sounds and thunderclaps and ****. I don't know if there's a name for this type of showboat editing, if not I propose "Avid farts" or "digi-rhea". It's kind of like if as soon as newspaper publishers switched to computers, they started using a different wacky font for every headline and every column. Like the guy with the sunglasses said in JURASSIC PARK or DUEL or one of those movies, just because you CAN do it doesn't mean you SHOULD.

What I'm trying to tell you editors is NOBODY WANTS TO SEE AVID FARTS. I don't know what somebody told you but it doesn't make it seem like a real movie, guys. It makes it seem like another TV show about a psychic that solves murders. And that sub has already merged. So stop it.

Now, I know alot of you Hollywood types read The Ain't It Cool News, so I got a question. I am a big fan. I enjoy all Seagal's pictures, even this one. But this is one of the worst and least entertaining. And it makes me wonder: why is it that Seagal can't get a good director anymore (not including Ching Siu-Tung)? Does nobody at all want to work with him? Does his producing suck? Does his non-cooperation (like not dubbing his own lines) just make it impossible to shoot a movie competently? I mean I know we're talking no budget straight to video ****, and the guy is not at his peak. But as an idealist and a believer in Striving For Excellence, I figure it is still POSSIBLE to create a better Seagal picture than this. I mean, MARKED FOR DEATH had a lower budget and was even from the director of HALLOWEEN 4, still managed to be way better. Isn't there some young, tasteful filmatist out there that figures, what the hell, I can make a Seagal picture? If there was, would all their better instincts get overruled and ruined by rewrites and improv and short schedules and Avid farts?

Also as long as I got you here, Hollywood, I got a completely unrelated question. The question is WHY THE **** did New Line Cinema abandon the title SNAKES ON A PLANE? When I heard that Ronny Yu was making a movie about snakes on a plane, and it was called SNAKES ON A PLANE, I thought that was about the best thing I ever heard. Then Yu left, but Samuel L. Jackson, joined, and regardless, I figured it was still about snakes on a plane so you couldn't lose. And I'm sure it's still about that but somehow with the generic title PACIFIC AIR 121 there's just no magic anymore. I mean, anything or nothing could happen on Flight 121. Who cares. But when it's SNAKES ON A PLANE you know what you're getting.

What are you thinking, New Line? You got a title so pure and perfect it might as well be a poem. It doesn't even matter what the movie is, if it has that title. And you threw it out like it was Troy Duffy. When are you gonna get another chance to call a movie SNAKES ON A PLANE? Not soon.

I propose that Mr. Seagal take advantage of New Line Cinema's error and come out with BEES ON A PLANE. Story by Vern. This one's about some terrorists manage to get a suitcase on board a plane that opens to release genetically altered super killer bees. "Another 9-11... except with killer bees." When the bees sting the passengers it causes all kinds of CGI swelling and exploding. Luckily, by coincidence, Seagal is one of the passengers on the plane. He is a disillusioned former CIA agent who settled down and became a small time honey farmer. Also, he is allergic to bee stings, which shows how ****in badass he is, to become a honey farmer when a bee sting would kill him. Anyway, he has to fight the terrorists and get to the luggage compartment so he can get out his bee suit.

He manages to fight off the terrorists and land the plane, but then the killer bees get loose into the city (Los Angeles, maybe, but portrayed by Vancouver) and what's worse, they find out there are two kinds of bees. Each of their stings poison the blood in a different way, and when both types of blood combine, it causes a huge explosion. Fortunately, we find out that Homeland Security had just missed stopping the bees on a plane plot but had managed to embed a Judas Bee into the swarm, equipped with a tracking device and small camera. So even though he is now safely landed, the honey farmer makes the conscious decision to go after the bees and save Los Angeles.

Then if you want to go really ****in out there, there could be a twist at the end where he just gets swarmed by the bees and they sting the **** out of him, but then it turns out that people who are allergic to normal bee stings are immune to genetically engineered super killer bee stings. And what's more, the stings give them super powers. The ending sets up the whole BEES ON A PLANE trilogy in other words.

Well anyway I think an argument could be made that I'm off topic here a little bit. The point is, SUBMERGED is not one of the better Seagal pictures. If you want a legitimately good one see OUT FOR JUSTICE, if you want a funny one see ON DEADLY GROUND, if you want a more obscure/recent funny one see OUT FOR A KILL, BELLY OF THE BEAST or OUT OF REACH. If you just want a movie with Seagal in it though, SUBMERGED comes out May 31st.

thanks boys,

Vern

http://www.lulu.com/outlawvern

http://www.geocities.com/outlawvern

p.s. IMDB already lists four other Seagal pictures for 2005, not including THE UNTITLED ONION MOVIE, so you'll probaly be hearing from me again soon
 

GlimmerMan

Huge Member
Hahaha! Thanks for the review man. It's not often a reviewer manages to be funny, honest, constructive and objective. It kinda went off on a weird tangent in the middle - something about killer bees, but otherwise, you have basically told me what I feared anyway - another poor movie in comparison to his early stuff. I'll still buy it, but I always get the feeling that I am being cheated somehow. The trailer looks good but the film never lives up to the promise.
 
Damn...why's he keep dubbing his voice? One of the things I really liked about Into the Sun was the fact Steven actually looped all of his lines himself. I'm still pumped to see the movie, but this has me worried.
 

suziwong

Administrator
Staff member
offf !! again bad news huh ??? :(

I don't understand what happened this big guy ?? :(
I missed real Steven Seagal ..

Thank you Vern and Shirak..

suzie
 

Kcs

Member
suziwong said:
offf !! again bad news huh ??? :(

I don't understand what happened this big guy ?? :(
I missed real Steven Seagal ..

Thank you Vern and Shirak..

suzie

Such a movie is a 15 million dollar business and a product of 100+ experts, they all share their knowledge and experience. I'm sure that every decision the creators take is the best possible. However the actors are only a part of the process, so we shouldn't blame them for those decisions which they didn't influence, and which decisions' reason are not known by us.
 

DiDa

Super Moderator
Staff member
Does Steven even think about his fans. He also must understand that his fans don't want the voice-dubbing and a small amount of action. I just don't understand al of this..... I'm sorry, Steven but if it's true what is reviewed here, you must considering to start thinking of your fans once... and start making a good movie with a lot of action and not the irritating voice-dubbing!!!
 

KROM

Active Member
First Review: 05.06.2005 - World Tv Premiere

First of all the movie has been translated from original title - Enemy Within.
Second: I dont' want to spoil you.

I would like to say this movie is the best Seagal's in years, but beacause of the Bugarian visual effects company and the script was a disaster. The guys made in the past worst Van Damme movie ever called Derailed.This movie used more CGI shots than any other Seagal movies, very cheap effects like an PlayStation1 game.
- The movie have a great cinematography, the image looks like an A movie, the filters were used very smart, music and the editing also. I've seen some great shots in this movie but this is not enogh.Anthony Hickox is out of shape since 1996 Lundgren's Storm Catcher. I can say that he's trying to rippe off all modern action movie.
- The cast was the best since Exit Wounds, Vinnie Jones is great and the beattle between Seagal and Gray Daniels reminds me the fight between Steven vs. Tommy Lee Jones in Under Siege, but on lower lever.
- The script is to wide for the budget. It's a very strange story,a little bit of chaos.Evrything it's like a salad.
I'm happy that Steven is making a movie with a much more US commando feeling movie than asian action movie.
Let's make it clear:

+
1. great cast
2. great cinematography
3. great ost

-
1. the script
2. the director
3. Bulgaria

I'm saying Bulgaria because this country have a very bad standards in cinema. My country Romania ruled with Could Mountain or with latest Dolph Lundgren's movie.

I'm still missing the old times with Seagal/Nasso theatrical movies.
He has to stop making 2-3 average direct-to-video movies per year than 1 dam good movie per year.

ps: I'm not a specialist but i've seen thousands of movies, all Seagal's and all the other action heroes movies and A movies, i'm a movie maniac and i can say a realistic opinion.
 

suziwong

Administrator
Staff member
Krom,

thank you very much for this review.. Not a bad huh?? .. But I guess visual effects are very important in the movies our submerged is very poor if I understand correct.
Finally we can hope that we will see "not bad" another movie from Seagal..

How about Dubbing voice ??

suzi
 

suziwong

Administrator
Staff member
Shirak said:
Here is Submerged Reviewed By Vern.

Seagal gets a funny entrance, shackled, walking slo-mo with JOONK JOONK JOONK rock guitars.

hihihihihihi !!!! :D what can I say ?? :D
 

Administrator

Administrator
Staff member
Thanks for the review KROM, certainly seems better than the one from Ain't It Cool. :)

The special effects are also by the same group who did the ones for 'The Foreigner', 'Out For A Kill' and 'Belly Of The Beast'.
 

KROM

Active Member
Sometims his voie is dubbed or is a problem with the sound editing. I want to say again that the cinematography is really nice, but the visual effect are crap like the poster design too. By the way i don't understand why Steven accept so bad poster art design for his latest movies.
 

Assassin187

New Member
just great...

I waited such a long time for Submerged to come out only to find out that half his lines are dubbed in it. Also i read that there's very little action in it too. I don't know why he keeps doing that in his movies but for me it ruins the whole picture. I probably won't even buy it now only a rental possibly.
 
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