Hijack - Agguato in alto mare

What a sad sight these TV stalwarts make, running out the clock on their careers stumbling about a little rusting hulk of a ship - boat might be more appropriate. The whole production feels cheap and shabby, and it's not helped by a "big name" star who is barely capable of spitting out the few lines that he's given in a credible fashion.

At no time do the supporting cast rise above the material; they're clearly watching the clock here. Bang out the scenes, get the pay cheque, go home, and try to forget all about it.

It's not particularly badly scripted or filmed; there are no real clangers, it's just utterly anodyne, and shot in a very limited number of cramped sets with a small cast of extras. The pacing is a little bizarre; an embarrassingly tentative romantic sub-plot is only begun after the main action starts, which makes it feel irrelevant.

Maiden Voyage scores a couple of points for being competently scored, and for being a fun game of "spot the Kiwi bit parters"; most of the cast are graduates of Shortland Street or Xena: Warrior Princess. The saddest thing about this production is that this film probably constitutes their big break.

What a poor excuse for New Zealnd Movie making. I'm ashamed to call myself a New Zealander when this movie exists and is currently playing on New Zealand satellite TV (Aug 2006). The cast is made up of a large number of local soap stars. The ship, in real life, is one of the inter-island ferries that travel daily between the two main islands and even has the company's logo (a dolphin) still all over the set including on the ship's funnel. The ship is supposed to be a cruise ship/ferry between the USA and Mexico. It has obvious signs of rust and old age all over the place yet is supposed to be a luxury ship on it's maiden voyage. One of the scenes shows the snow capped peaks of New Zealand's South island in the background for God's sake! Must have been a very cold time on the USA/Mexico area! The story is weak, the acting is weaker and the new Zealand/American accents just don't work. I expect the New Zealand tax payer contributed to the production cost of this movie and that was a waste of money better spent on a real production. I know high school kids in New Zealand who could make better movies with their cell phones. Goof: There is a truck in the hold with tagging on it and they stuck a Taco Company sign on the door of the truck, presumably to make it look like it was American. But some of the sign is over the top of the tagging - you'd think they would have noticed that in the props department before attaching it. I'd love to go on but it just isn't worth the trouble in any way.

MAIDEN VOYAGE: OCEAN HIJACK is a fun B-movie riff on Steven Seagal's UNDER SIEGE, substituting the Aikido-fighting star for B-movie regular Casper Van Dien (STARSHIP TROOPERS). Van Dien and his buddies (including a rather unbelievable kung fu fighting female head of security) are trapped on a luxury cruise liner when it's hijacked by terrorists, and they must do their utmost to regain control of the vessel and save the lives of the passengers.

Being a TV movie, I wasn't expecting much from this one, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I got. MAIDEN VOYAGE certainly packs in the action throughout, and there's so much of it that you can forgive the poor production values and the lack of technical expertise apparent in the movie's poor continuity, editing, and special effects.

Almost half of the movie seems to consist of Van Dien beating up various henchmen or running away from them. All of the usual DIE HARD clichés are in place, but what most surprised me was how violent this film is for a TV movie, with plenty of bloody squib hits peppering the production. It's certainly no classic, but it's often unintentionally funny and it never fails to entertain. I had a ball with it.

Having the In-Laws over for the weekend? Then this is the film to hasten their departure, failing that it will induce a catatonic state to bring a welcome relief from constant nagging.

The film is supposedly set on board a luxury cruise ship, which is more superannuated car ferry; the plot has more holes than the average colander and a cast dredged from the depths of the celebrity D list. An interesting piece of added amusement is playing "Spot the Villain" as passengers join the ship. You won't be wrong!!!! With a script that sinks faster than a brick, clichéd set pieces and copious amounts of raspberry jam doubling as blood this film attempts to encompass the genres of thriller, action movie and gore-fest and simultaneously fails to fulfil any of them.

A must watch film, if only to laugh at how bad it is.

Problem with these type of movies is that literally dozens of them are being made each year. Luckily for use only a handful are given a theatrical release, while the others are being pushed straight to video or TV, such as this movie.

The foremost problem of this movie is really its originality. It's one of those movies which uses the "Die Hard" formula of a tough but troubled guy being at the wrong place at the wrong time. In this case it's a character played by Casper Van Dien, who works for a security agency that thoroughly test safety procedures for companies and individuals. In this case he's being send to a cruise ship, which of course gets hijacked. You can see this movie as a sort of mix of "Die Hard" and "Air Force One" and the movie doesn't even try to conceal that those two movies were probably its biggest source of 'inspiration'. So really, you can't regard this movie as an original one at all. It uses all of the clichés out of the book and this movie really doesn't offer any surprises or anything that remotely resembles anything original.

Like you can expect from a movie such as this, it has a very weak script. Or rather said, it features some very lazy writing. Like I said before, the movie features nothing original but also the actual story itself features some elements which are far from likely and are just plain ridicules truthfully. I mean, hijacking an huge cruise ship with only about 8 guys, of which halve only carry some small guns and then ask for a ransom of 'only' 10 million dollars, for a ship that is about worth 10 times that amount is itself already quite ridicules. How do they even intend to split that money afterward? Every person gets just over a million or something? That's hardly profitable for such a big and risky undertaking. And then there is the case of taking the passengers hostage. Somehow they manage to take all passengers on the huge ship hostage and they manage to put them inside one room, with only one guy with his pistol, which he can't even seem to be able to hold right, watching them. You never see more than like 30 hostages however, as if they were all the people who were aboard at the time. Also when the Van Dien character goes looking for his son and vice versa, no matter which room they walk in through on the huge cruise ship, they always bump into each other instantly. Just some examples of the lazy writing within the movie.

But it of course is an action flick, so the story of course becomes secondary. But then again, it's not as if this movie features any good action at all. Halve of the actors look as if they had never hold a weapon before and the movie is filled with some ridicules slow-motion. It really becomes laughable at points.

Of course the movie also doesn't feature the best actors, though I must say that Casper Van Dien really isn't a bad 'action hero' and actor, as far as the genre and B-movie circuit is concerned. He just however also suffers from the same problem as Tom Cruise; no matter how old he is, he just never looks convincing enough to play the father of a teenager. Van Dien once started out as a promising new young actor but starring in movies like this really doesn't help his career much. He's probably capable of something better, though he is never really given the right opportunity to show it. All of the other actors also do a fair enough job but their characters are just so formulaic that they never truly become interesting.

Oh well, it's not the worst genre movie I have ever seen but it also ain't exactly the most original or memorable one either.

4/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/