"Under Siege" is the Stephen Seagal film that everyone's seen and most people like. I suppose in its favour is a decent-sized budget meaning that the producers could afford to hire a ship and some well-known supporting actors (which isn't to say that they give good performances - Tommy Lee Jones is OTT again), as well as the fact that Seagal was still pretty slim at the time, lending some credibility to his fights scenes.

But in spite of the above, this is still a thriller-by-numbers with the audience's credulity being made to walk the plank before finally plunging overboard. In other words, we have a sailor who goes round assaulting officers yet who is still tolerated by his captain, who then takes on a platoon of heavily armed mercenaries aided only by a stripper, whilst all the while managing to bump off the bad guys strictly in accordance of where they appear in the film's credits.

In a Seagal film, the thing I find that completely precludes any dramatic tension is… more »

"Under Siege" is the Stephen Seagal film that everyone's seen and most people like. I suppose in its favour is a decent-sized budget meaning that the producers could afford to hire a ship and some well-known supporting actors (which isn't to say that they give good performances - Tommy Lee Jones is OTT again), as well as the fact that Seagal was still pretty slim at the time, lending some credibility to his fights scenes.

But in spite of the above, this is still a thriller-by-numbers with the audience's credulity being made to walk the plank before finally plunging overboard. In other words, we have a sailor who goes round assaulting officers yet who is still tolerated by his captain, who then takes on a platoon of heavily armed mercenaries aided only by a stripper, whilst all the while managing to bump off the bad guys strictly in accordance of where they appear in the film's credits.

In a Seagal film, the thing I find that completely precludes any dramatic tension is the hero's sheer indestructibility - there's simply never any feeling that he's in danger. As such, the villains are like skittles in a bowling alley, miss them the first time and our hero will get them the next.

So to sum up, "Under Siege" is just a superior version of any other Seagal film, where resemblance to reality is a mirage, flickering intangibly away in the distance. It's not especially bad, but if you compare it to other thrillers of about the same era, such as "In the Line of Fire", it's not particularly good either.