UNDER SIEGE
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
UNDER SIEGE is a film directed by Andrew Davis, from a screenplay by J. F. Lawton. It stars Steven Seagal, Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Busey, and Erika Eleniak. Rated R, for violence, profanity, brief female nudity.
UNDER SIEGE was filmed on the USS Alabama, anchored in Mobile Bay, but is supposed to take place on the Missouri, now back in mothballs across Puget Sound from me in Bremerton. The film was written by J. F. Lawton (PRETTY WOMAN), who proves he does know about whoring as he mixes DIE HARD and Tom Clancy. Lawton is a totally corrupt hack with a fresh angle on a dead idea.
The result is Seagal's best movie to date, at least of the ones I seen. (I want to say right now that I go to these things because Lyndol has the hots for action movies.) Andrew Davis provides slick, bland directing as he reteams with Seagal (ABOVE THE LAW). Seagal is amazingly wooden, as always, but the story may point us in the direction these flicks are going to go to find a replacement enemy for Godless Communism, in this case, the Enemy Within, the traitorous CIA superagent who goes into business for himself.
The spook-from-hell is played by Tommy Lee Jones with huge gusto. Jones is great fun here and probably worth the price of a matinee admission. Jones has teamed up with Gary Busey as the traitorous XO, executive officer, who's quite a case himself. Seagal, on the other hand, teams up with the pouty, big-bosomed Erika Eleniak as a Playboy Playmate who's really "an actress. I did an episode of 'Hunter' and a 'Wet 'n' Wild' video." Eleniak is pretty irritating at first, even as comic relief, but later develops into something only wildly improbable.
This film is a nothing in terms of any kind of honesty. You nitpickers will have a field day. You tit-watchers will do ok, also. This is mind candy. Either you go or don't. I'm not recommending that you do, but if you're inclined to like Seagal movies and such, you will like this one. Just don't pay full freight. Or wait for the video. It ought to be out by Christmas.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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