Alarmstufe: Rot 2

Steven Seagal reprises his role as a one time SEAL team captain, a counter-terrorist expert who had to rely only on his personal skills in order to survive, and protect the hostages... He happens to be on the Grand Continental passenger train traveling from Denver to L.A... Seagal joins the only family he has, a 'cute kid' named Sarah (Katherine Heigl) after her parents died in a plane crash...

Seagal has an electrifying screen presence... Seeing him in action is similar to appreciating modern art...

The train is hijacked by a team of 'ugly men' with guns... Their chief, Travis Dane (Eric Bogosian), is a high-tech mastermind, who fakes his own death in order to gain control of a top-secret nuclear satellite... For this crazy technical genius, technology can be used for beauty or debasement, and 'until you plug it in, you just can't tell.'

Dane's henchman Penn (Everett McGill) is a soldier of fortune freak, whose relationship with his boss resurfaced during Desert Storm...

Morris Chestnut's focus is on humor and breath-taking sequences...

Geoff Murphy's film is incredibly entertaining, combining action, martial arts, and dark sense of humor...

Yes, the earthquake beam from space (heck, the whole story line and all of the villains too) are totally unbelievable. Frankly, if you can find a "believable" action movie, I have a beach house in Arizona you might want to buy. Yes, the production values were not the finest.

But -- if you like watching the hero exterminate the bad guys, few do it with the style of Seagal. Like Jet Li (yeah, I am old enough to remember Bruce Lee the original, and Chuck Norris), he is one of the few action heroes who is a real martial arts guy, and he moves so fast and fluidly it is hard for the eye to follow, but fascinating to watch. This is brainless entertainment, full of hilariously cheesy B-movie one-liners you can laugh at ("Assumption is the mother of all f-ups!"), often bad acting, a story line you could describe in one sentence, and zero character development.

There are worse ways to spend 90 minutes. Believability is for films that take themselves seriously. Seagal is more like stand-up comic straight man meets Aikido ace. At least he handles a handgun like someone who has actually fired one.

Steven Seagal was so damn Awesome back in his glory days of the 90's!!! I grew up watching him beat the crap out of street scum & terrorists & always come back to his Classic flicks. No matter what is said about Steven Seagal these days he was a hero to me growing up & i still love his old films & genuinely enjoy most of his now low-budget cheap B-flicks as i still get to see Seagal taking out the trash in today's world, he's just gotten older & more rugged & out of shape as he's only Human!!! Seagal is an Action Legend as much as Stallone, Schwarzenegger or Van Damme are because each had their Glory days of the Box office & they're all old now.

My favourite Seagal film is his Action Masterpiece Out For Justice (1991) it's an incredible brutal action Thriller & my 2nd fave is his excellent urban-Voodoo Gang Action Thriller Marked For Death (1990), both superb films from the Awesome 90's that i constantly watched on video. I loved Seagal during his 90's Peak & also liked his serial killer Thriller The Glimmer Man (1996) & Hard to Kill (1990) & of course his Under Siege films which brings me to this excellent underrated Sequel, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory!!!

Part 2 brings back Casey Ryback (Seagal) from the Classic first film & sticks him on a train full of Deadly Terrorists who have stolen dangerous technology that can zoom in & hit a target from space, pretty cool & typical 90's Action Thriller stuff. Seagal is his usual Cool & Calm self until he needs to be deadly & is pretty much like he is in all his films except Out For Justice, anyway he brings all the kick-Ass stuff we wanna see & the film feels like "Die Hard" on a train & that's fine it's all good. I actually have always preferred this underrated Sequel over the Classic first film but that's my opinion. Another great part about this Flick is the Awesome know-the-face selection of Movie Badguys as the terrorists, we have the always great Peter Greene (Zed) from Pulp Fiction & Judgment Night, we have the intense Jonathan Banks from 48 Hrs & Beverley Hills Cop & FreeJack & we have the rugged & icey-Cold scary Everett McGill from Wes Craven's The People Under The Stairs & Silver Bullet, a great cast of intense & great character actors as Villains!!!

Here Seagal must defeat the Terrorists & save his young Niece (A young Katherine Heigl) & kicks plenty of Ass & has a fantastic fight scene with the big main badguy Marcus Penn (McGill) it's a bloody & brutal fight. All in all a Slick looking & totally 90's Cool Action Thriller

With the overwhelming success of the first Under Siege, it was inevitable that a sequel would be wheeled out before too long. Sure enough here it is, Under Siege 2 – Dark Territory.

Quite why they bothered with the last subtitle I do not known as it is not readily obvious within the action as to its reference but I digress.

This time the terrorists and Segal are all clumped together on a train. Basically it's a similar scenario from the first film, complete with the same Admirals, CIA boss etc from the first instalment.

The weapon of choice this time is a daft satellite weapon controlled by a nutcase and his band of hired mercenaries. The two leading bad guys do however have some wonderful much quotable lines, one in particular I cannot repeat here in print, you will just have to make your own assumption…..

Once again Segal is on his own with just an annoying sidekick/comedy relief (this time a Porter) for company and again he single handed takes on the non-descript bad guys and duly despatches them one by one as per standard procedure in an effort to stop the weapon, save the train and also save his irritating but nice to look at niece.

Sadly the quality of the seemingly recycled script is poor and Segal is hopelessly out acted by the two lead bad guys (Eric Bogosian and Everett McGill) who in turn are out acted by the two former Alaskan Railroad GP7 type locomotives hauling the train!!

Also not helping in my appreciation of this film is the fact that the UK DVD release is badly chopped about and obvious badly done cuts abound throughout. Thankfully an excellent soundtrack from Basil Poledouris saves this film from being just average.

This was pretty good actually, despite having some production problems(word has it that they were thinking of bringing Gary Busey's character back from Under Seige I-yeah, right-off the exploding Sub? Not likely...)But anyways, this worked well for me. I enjoyed Seagal, showed a bit of humour here in places, thought the train gave it a decent closed in setting, liked both Kurtwood Smith and Everett McGill doing what they do best. (Smith has played the worried Pentagon staffer before too, about the same way...) My impression of Bogosian was that he was a bit too wired at times in his portrayal but it worked just the same. Overall an enjoyable if not great action film, the sort Seagal should have made more of.

**1/2 outta ****, nothing great, but alright.