Golly, but this is a fun movie!

Profound?  Um.... no, not a bit.  But a heck of a lot of fun.

Under Siege was filmed right in the middle of the Die Hard craze, when action-adventure was all about one man taking on a whole horde of ruthless baddies.  And it fits the genre to a T.  This is "Die Hard On A Battleship".

The one man is Casey Ryback (Steven Seagal), a cook onboard the USS Missouri.   Seagal isn't exactly a thespian, but he kicks butt righteously, which is what the role calls for here. 

But the real standouts are the villains played by Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones.  (Did I say villains?  I meant to say gleeful avatars of chaos.)

The USS Missouri is on its way from Hawaii to San Francisco to be decommissioned.  Ryback is a favorite of the Captain (Patrick O'Neal), but the nasty Executive Officer Commander Krill (Gary Busey) can't stand him.  That why when the time comes for the Captain's surprise birthday party, Ryback has been locked in the meat locker.

The 'surprise party' is actually a ploy to chopper in a strike force of mercenaries disguised as musicians and caterers.  The team is led by CIA asset turned rogue Bill Stranix (Tommy Lee Jones).  Also along, though as innocent as the day is long, is Jordan Tate (Erika Eleniak), Playboy's Miss July, whose job is to jump out of the cake. 

Krill is in on the plot, and the ship is crewed by a minimal number anyway, so with the element of surprise and the XO on their side, the mercenaries are able to kill the Captain, take control of the ship, and herd the crew below-decks where they are welded in.

But here's what they don't know.  Ryback is a former SEAL, a member of the Navy's elite commando force.   After an operation gone bad, he'd punched a senior and was court-martialed and stripped of his security clearance.  The Captain took Ryback aboard as his cook to allow him to finish his twenty and retire.

A commando cook.  That means we're going to have martial arts, thrown knives, and a microwave oven turned into a bomb.

Once Ryback dispatches the baddies sent to the meat locker to finish him off, he attempts to turn into the 'one man against impossible odds' so beloved of the genre.  But Miss July has other ideas.   Jordan was drugged by the XO (or drugged herself with too many sea-sickness pills, it's sort of hard to tell), and wakes up to find herself surrounded by dead men and the ship taken by ruthless killers.  She's determined to stick with Ryback because he's the only good guy available and he has lots of guns.   (And from a movie-plotting standpoint, probably also because, hey, she's the only woman in the movie.)

A bimbo but no dummy, this girl.  Seeing Ryback working with explosives, she concludes, "You're no cook."  He replies, "Yeah?  Well... I also cook."

But what do the bad guys want with a battleship on its way to decommissioning anyway?   While both Stranix and Krill have their own reasons to be angry at the government, the plan is to steal the nuclear missiles and sell them on the international blackmarket for millions.  Oh, and did I mention they had a stolen North Korean submarine for making their getaway?

The story is not set entirely onboard the battleship.  Back at the Pentagon, the brass is trying to come up with a response to the seizure.  Their options are to retake the ship - or sink it.   Ryback  has contacted the Pentagon via satellite uplink, so he knows the end result if he can't foil the villains.  Complicating the issue, the mercenaries have the nuclear launch codes.

The action sequences are edge of the seat material, and Krill and Stranix are the best movie villains in a long time.  They think they have valid grievances with the authorities and are acting with purely monetary motives, though Stranix performs a wonderful crazy rant in his communications with the Pentagon, 'acting' crazy to keep the authorities off-balance -- but it's clear that these guys aren't as sane as they think they are.

Nuclear  missiles and computers are all well and good, but the most prominent feature on a battleship is the low-tech but impressively massive WWII-era 16-inch guns.  I don't think any fans of the genre will be surprised to learn that those guns fire before the closing credits.

Under Siege was written by J. F. Lawton and directed by Andrew Davis. This is the movie Davis directed right before he directed The Fugitive.  If you liked The Fugitive, you'll probably like Under Siege.  Under Siege is rated R; there is graphic violence and a brief topless moment for Miss July - parents take note. 
 

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