Submerged
Stars: Steven Seagal, Vinnie Jones, Gary Daniels
Director: Anthony Hickox
2005
For some sick reason, I’ve challenged myself to watch a whole bunch of recent Steven Seagal movies. All the ones I’ve purposely not watched. But after viewing this pile of congealed cinematic pus, I’m not sure it was such a good idea especially as I’ve still got trash like Mercenary For Justice and Shadow Man to wade through. First, to the man himself. Seagal spends most of the movie dispensing wisdom in deep shadow, like he’s frickin’ Colonel Kurtz or something. Hilarious. He also seems to be sitting down most of the time, both these anomalies I’m sure due to his… er, “girth issues”. There’s also a pathetic attempt at character depth, with Seagal doing some sort of Southern acc-ay-ent. Which, like a lot of the cast’s dialogue, seemed to be dubbed on most of the time. The story is some sort of bastard son of The Dirty Dozen, U-571 and Mission Impossible. That’s a stilborn bastard son. Despite billing itself as an “undersea action thriller”, Seagal and his oh-so wacky team of misfit army crims (including a slumming Vinnie Jones) are only sub-bound for about fifteen minutes of the movie! From thereon it’s all spy thriller/evil plan shite, some standard MKUltra mind control bollocks. Truly a test of my resolve to sit through this, it was just so dull, uninspired and by the numbers. Hell man, it didn’t even have the unintentional comedy value (Belly Of The Beast) or truly unmitigating, unredeemable awfulness (Out For A Kill) of other recent Seagal dreck to save it. Miraculously, there was one class Seagal arm-snap/groin-kick/point blank headshot to enjoy, but typically it was a one-on-one henchman smackdown that lasted about five seconds. Made me long for the days of Marked For Death/Out For Justice where he’d take on ten guys in a five minute melee. Ah, glory days. Sod the Geneva convention, “Torture By Seagal Movie” week has begun at my house. Bring it on! Or rather, don’t…
3/10
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