Under Siege

[Finch]

4K ULTRA HD LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
• Brand new 4K restoration of the film from the original camera negative by Arrow Films approved by director Andrew Davis
• 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
• Original lossless stereo audio and a brand new Dolby Atmos mix
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Brand new audio commentary with director Andrew Davis and writer J.F. Lawton
• I’m on a Boat (With a Bomb), a newly filmed interview with director Andrew Davis
• One of the Guys, a newly filmed interview with actor Erika Eleniak
• A Tight Ship, a newly filmed interview with actor Damian Chapa
• The Introvision Files, a newly filmed interview with visual effects supervisor William Mesa
• Theatrical trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options
• Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Vern and a serial fiction by Martyn Pedler

[domino harvey]

My thoughts on this film and, for good measure, its sequel

Under Siege (Andrew Davis 1992) Ah Steven Seagal. Though I know I've seen bits and pieces of his work given that I grew up with basic cable and all the premium channels, I'm not sure I've seen a full-length work from his oeuvre til now. Under Siege is helped along by strong maniacal performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey as the villains (though those two could do this kinda stuff in their sleep, and have). Seagal himself is a weirder presence: sexless and cryptic, his soft-spoken nature and vocal awkwardness are at direct odds with his choreographed fighting skills, and it's easy to see why he could lead an action film, but he struggles anytime he's not called upon killing someone (luckily that's pretty rare here). I know action films in general are rarely the place to look for strong female characters, but holy hell is Erika Eleniak's Playboy Playmate tagalong the most worthless female character in any action film I think I can think of. Though the future Baywatcher is hardly a thesp to begin with, she's not exactly gifted with a role anyone could do anything with (Though she does get the film's biggest laugh when she literally starts shadowing Seagal because "the safest place is right behind you"). Super secondhand cringes at the out of nowhere romantic punchline with these two as well!

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (Geoff Murphy 1995) Unfortunately, if Under Siege is just barely a good action film, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory is just barely a bad one. Set on a train rather than a sub, the film finds Seagal improbably cavorting in and around a moving Grand Continental which has been taken over by tech-savvy domestic terrorists. Eric Bogosian is at-times amusing in a familiar villain role, but his scheme is so dumb that it should never have made it past a first draft: He demands a billion dollars from foreign terrorists in return for using a secret military satellite to blow up a nuclear reactor under the Pentagon. Above everything else wrong with this plan, what precisely does he expect will happen to the value of American currency is all of Washington and the Eastern seaboard is blown up? Though this is almost undermined as the stupidest thing in the film by the part where one of the foreign interests offers Bogosian an extra $100 million to blow up a plane with the foreigner's ex-wife aboard. $100 million. Sure, that could happen… ON OPPOSITE DAY. I know I'm not supposed to actually think about anything in an action movie, but this film's not good enough to keep me distracted from idiocy like this (or how an important CD-ROM isn't destroyed immediately upon its usurpation, or how two trained military intelligence officers wouldn't just succumb to certain death rather than give top secret codes at the expense of the safety of millions, or why Katherine Heigl's bratty niece is placed in a noose and given a live grenade for the last ten minutes by the bad guys instead of just being killed and yet she doesn't use the grenade to kill any of the bad guys, or how Steven Seagal is able to outrun and board a train in a beat-up pickup truck, or why the bad guys would let Jonathan Banks keep driving their train if it was going to hit the gas tanker head on, or why Jonathan Banks would hit the gas tanker head on and kill himself in the process, or or or or or or or or). I somehow still kinda enjoyed this low rent waste of time, maybe because I kept waiting for it to top itself in mid-90s action nonsense. And on that front the film delivers.

I’m surprised every extra here is new— did this not have any special features on the studio releases?

[P-Rock]

Arrow sure is scraping the bottom of the barrel lately.

[Mr Sausage]

I suspect you're saying so only because of the name Steven Seagal. But Under Siege is pretty far from the bottom of the barrel. Not only was Seagal a legitimate action star at the time, this was a professionally made, big-budgeted Hollywood blockbuster with quite a lot of talent in it. It's Seagal's best film by a large margin, has game performances from the supporting players, some very effective action sequences for 90s Hollywood, and has Andrew Davis in his prime, only a year before the excellent The Fugitive. Personally I'd take this film over Point Break, Patriot Games, Demolition Man, Universal Soldier, and many other early 90s action films that get more attention today. Along with Sudden Death, it's the best of the so-called Die Hard clones.

[hearthesilence]

IIRC, whenever Roger Ebert championed Andrew Davis, he would say he was the only director to make a good film with either Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal. I wouldn't call this good, but I'll take anyone's word that it's much better than anything else with Steven Seagal. (But I also prefer Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break by a huge margin.)

FWIW, for anyone who's a huge fan of Davis's The Fugitive, he worked with much of the same cast and crew on this film, including Ron Dean who recently passed away. (Also what was supposed to be the same cinematographer, but Davis fired him from The Fugitive early on during production. His replacement the late Michael Chapman has a hilarious anecdote about that and his miserable experience working on that film. I think I posted a link somewhere years ago.)

[Mr Sausage]

Ebert's right. Davis was a canny director and knew to surround his action stars with great character actors and to situate them in a convincing social milieu, Davis' hometown of Chicago. Code of Silence and Above the Law work as well as they do because Norris and Seagal are in fact not carrying the films, but are propped up by Davis' extensive location shooting and use of non-actors like various locals and former police officers. This is something he would carry over into The Fugitive, tho' in that case his lead actor did not need any help, so you get both star power and local colour. If you want to see Davis' strengths, compare his work to Out For Justice, a film that tries to do the same thing for Seagal as Above the Law, only in an Italian neighbourhood in Brooklyn, and just comes across as fake and ludicrous.

Under Siege isn't set in Chicago, obviously, but Davis does show his talent for turning locations into characters in their own right with how he films the Battleship. If you're not really into this kind of 90s action, Under Siege isn't going to persuade you, but I do think it distinguishes itself in numerous ways, and certainly doesn't deserve to be called bottom of the barrel.

[Walter Kurtz]

... this kind of 90s action

Geena Davis over Andrew Davis... even before the higher degree of difficulty (being a mother).

[Mr Sausage]

The Long Kiss Goodnight's a treasure. No argument here.

[colinr0380]

The other great use of Steven Seagal in film comes in 1996's Executive Decision, although to say why involves a major spoiler:

Spoiler

When he is built up as the obviously unassailable action hero in the first section of the film until he is surprisingly killed off in the process of getting onto the hijacked plane but saves Kurt Russell's nerdy sidekick in the process, forcing Russell's character to have to man up into saving the day all by himself. It would sort of be as if Sean Connery's character died early on in the process of just getting Nicolas Cage into Alcatraz in The Rock.

Executive Decision is not quite my favourite of that run of airplane hijacking films that was big in the 1990s until September 11th unsurprisingly put a halt to that kind of thing (Turbulence is my bonkers favourite!), but it is in a strong second place, and I would put it over Passenger 57 and Air Force One.

[domino harvey]

Discussion of Muslim representation in action films (but not this one, hence the move) is now here