Director: Andrew Davis
Starring: Steven Seagal, Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Busey
Running Time: 103 minutes
Synopsis: The USS Missouri battleship is commandeered by terrorists led by rogue CIA Agent Strannix (Tommy Lee Jones) and the ship's Executive Officer Krill (Gary Busey), using a surprise party for the captain as a ruse. The ship's cook is ex-Navy SEAL Casey Ryback (Steven Seagal), and he teams up with ex-Playboy playmate Jordan Tate (Erika Eleniak) to disrupt the terrorists' plot to transfer the battleship's nuclear missiles onto a North Korean submarine for sale to the highest bidder.
What Works Well: This is a straightforward Die Hard On A Battleship thriller, infused with enough attitude to establish a separate identity. The bad-guy duo of Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey luxuriate in bewildering unpredictability as they dance on the edge of madness, Busey dressing up as a woman for the fake captain's party, Jones channeling his inner has-been or never-was rock star. Steven Seagal provides the rational stoic counterweight with few words but plenty of one-liners and impressive kills, and Erika Eleniak contributes quirky presence as the centerfold caught way outside her comfort zone.
What Does Not Work As Well: The B-grade script serves up oversized logic holes, and the nefarious plot gets more muddled and less impressive with every passing scene. The terrorists are resourceful enough to take over a battleship but possess no coherent follow-up plan, while back at Navy headquarters, the impotent crisis mis-management team of military commanders gather around a table and flirt with an awful unintended satire of Dr. Strangelove.
Key Quote:
Jordan Tate: You're not a cook.
Casey Ryback: Yeah, well... I also cook.
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Three stars is probably the right place for this--in my world, that's the rating for "I liked it, but it's not going to change your life" more or less. Fun action sequences, stupid overall plot, very much a product of its time when all of that was enough.
ReplyDeleteExactly right. Action thrillers can be much worse - and much better - than this.
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