I think it’s best we just get this over with and I promise I won’t bother you with any more Steven Seagal movies. After we talked about arguably his best movie, Marked for Death, it’s time to talk about his most popular one. Under Siege is a big and completely unhinged action movie featuring a stellar cast and a fun atmosphere. We will be following Ryback, a seemingly ordinary cook aboard the battleship USS Missouri who will have to stop a group of terrorists from taking it over. I mean, you can see right away just how preposterous the story is. Instead of trying to compensate for this, the movie leans into the crazy.
And this is why it’s just so much fun to watch. It’s a perfect holiday movie right up there with Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. Action-packed, fast-moving, and cheesy it’s perfect for those hangover afternoons when you’re trying to recuperate for another night of hedonism. Right away you see and feel the sheer scale of it. Under Siege was filmed partly on the real USS Missouri and partly on battleship USS Missouri currently on display in Mobile, Alabama. You can actually visit it and check out for yourself the scale of this mighty warship. And that’s not the only naval vessel we’re going to be seeing in this movie. However, I don’t want to spoil anything for you.
Under Siege also features two completely over-the-top villains, Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones. Both of them are fucking phenomenal giving memorable performances that made the movie even more entertaining. I mean, Tommy has more scenes in the movie than Seagal and that says something. To balance this bubbling pot of testosterone and craziness we have an actual Playboy playmate Erika Eleniak. You might remember her from Baywatch where she plays Shauni. Fun fact: people who rented this movie on video cassette replayed her striptease scene so much that the video stores had to actually replace the entire tape.
I would also like to mention our Blood In Blood Out duo Damian Chapa and Raymond Cruz, who also make an appearance here. I think you already know what type of a movie this is so I’m not going to bore you too much with the details. Under Siege is an action movie requiring zero brain effort and featuring a lot of shootouts and fights. The body count is pretty high as exactly 100 people were killed. The pacing is fast and the running time is short. And the sequel is crappy, so I suggest you steer clear of it. The storytelling is actually quite good and the movie keeps its card close to the chest for a long time.
Even after more than fifty minutes we still didn’t know what the terrorists were planning to do. The action, however, starts pretty early, just like it should. It made more than $160 million against a $35 million budget. Director Andrew Davis gathered no less than nine actors from this movie and made another big nineties hit, The Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford. After the huge success of Die Hard, we were drowning in these “one man against terrorists” movies.
The trend continued throughout the nineties but died down in the new century. However, it was back in force during the early 2010s with movies like White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen. Finally, if you’re looking for movies exactly like Under Siege, I suggest you check out Executive Decision, The Rock, and Face Off. All three of them feature similar stories and Executive Decision even stars Steven Seagal.
Director: Andrew Davis
Writer: J.F. Lawton
Cast: Steven Seagal, Gary Busey, Tommy Lee Jones, Erika Eleniak, Damian Chapa, Bernie Casey
Fun Facts: The video of George Bush giving the order to remove the nuclear missiles from U.S. Navy surface ships is real as he gave that order back in 1991.
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IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105690/
