Stealth Entertainment: Under Siege
By Scott Lumley
July 17, 2009
J.F. Lawton came up with a script about a group of embittered special ops soldiers that attempted to gain control of an American battleship loaded with 36 nuclear warheads on top of tomahawk missiles. Their plan was to offload the missiles and sell them at an absurd profit to enemy nations. (Terrorists were not in vogue yet.) What the special ops group doesn't know is that another extremely well trained and lethal special ops soldier smacked his superior after a particularly ugly mission and had his security clearance revoked so that he couldn't hold a rank higher than Yeoman or Cook.
And that is how we come to meet Casey Rybeck, performing the mandatory film sequence for all characters cast as cooks. He slices a carrot up into clumsy chunks really fast.
Fortunately, we're not left watching Seagal make chunky salads for long. The enemy team comes onboard via helicopter in the brilliant disguise of a band and a catering crew with the magnificent distraction of Erika Eleniak's breasts. (Yes, that's sexist. Then again, she literally pops out of a fake cake and takes off her jacket to expose herself. And I defy anyone to say that wasn't magnificent.)
It's the enemy team that makes this film really rock. They're led by William Stranix, a spec forces operative with a grudge and played like a hyena on meth by Tommy Lee Jones. He's backed up by Gary Busey as Commander Krill, who is also less than subtle in his role, but unlike most films, proves to be perfect in this one. Both are mesmerizing and chew the scenery like hungry rats, which is crucial, because it takes the focus off of Seagal and his limited acting scope.
The enemy team offers a perfect opponent for Seagal. A pack of anti-American profiteers, led by a pair of glowering psychopaths ensconced on a massive battleship, was an absolutely perfect setup. Seagal is offered legions of faceless bad guys to efficiently execute in devious and brutal ways. Any time Rybeck's one man assault on the invading force gets boring, the film cuts to Krill or Stranix actually acting in another sequence, and this in turn takes the heat off of Seagal. It also had the added effect of filling in the scenes in between fights in a Steven Seagal film with actual entertainment.
The film doesn't feel all that real, but it does seem plausible. It's also aging incredibly well, and shots of a slim, tanned and very fit Seagal show very well why it appeared he was going to be one of the biggest action heroes of all time. (Little did we know what was to come...) Lawton knew he wasn't working with a comic genius in Seagal and tailored his script with some well written tough guy lines as well as some straight man dialogue between Rybeck and Eleniak. It's also very well paced and there is very little in the way of dead time or throwaway scenes. He even has a scene that results in a fairly severe injury for Rybeck late in the movie, a nice touch in any action film. (Rybeck conveniently forgets the injury ten minutes later, but just seeing him bleed was shocking.)
In short, this is one great action film. It was never going to win an Oscar, but it did win first place in the box office for four straight weeks in 1992 and ended up with a gross of over $156 million worldwide in only ten weeks of release. That's a monster result for today, and this is a film that was released nearly two decades ago. And it did all that in an October release. For comparison's sake, Sneakers, another fine film starring Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Dan Akroyd and Ben Kingsley, opened in September that same year and managed a gross of only $105 million.
You read that right. Steven Seagal, Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones beat out three of the most revered actors of our generation by 50%. Under Siege was monster that came out of nowhere, and we would not see its like again until... oh... let's say Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
And while it's fun to mock Under Siege, it's also kind of pointless. This was an entertaining, well designed action vehicle that made efficient use of all of its pieces to craft a good story. It was literally more than the sum of its parts, and it still holds up quite well today. If you get the chance, give it a look. There's a reason it made $156 million 20 years ago.
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