Hijack - Agguato in alto mare

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but some films are good and some films are bad. Of course, there are extremes within those two broad categories. Films such as The Godfather, Saving Private Ryan, and Star Wars slot comfortably into the good category. At the other end of the spectrum there are those films that simply don't deserve to be mentioned by name. Occasionally however, someone produces a truly woeful film. A film that should be singled out as a demonstration of how awful a film can be. A film that is more than bad. Such a film is Maiden Voyage.

Briefly, Maiden Voyage is a story about a luxury cruise ship that is hijacked by a gang of evil criminals who demand a ransom from an equally evil, scheming ship's owner. Of course, there is an all American hero on board, complete with chiselled jaw and sculptured chest, who saves the day.

This is a production that plumbs new depths. Everything about it is bad. The acting, the direction and the so-called plot are breath-takingly poor. In short, it is an insult to the intelligence of any unfortunate viewer. Even an American viewer would be annoyed by its shortcomings.

Yes, it's that bad.

I will resist the temptation to compose a list of things that angered me about this film. However, its dumber-than-dumb conclusion should serve as an adequate example of what I mean.

Imagine in your mind that you are an evil hijacker and you are stood in an open lifeboat on a calm sea. You are in company with the hero who holds a ticking bomb. Said hero throws the bomb to you and dives overboard. What would you do? I don't know about you, but I would throw the bomb as far as I possibly could into the sea. Not this guy. He watches as our hero swims away and then he tries to disarm the bomb with unfortunate (for him) results. Enough said. Such a demise would merit a mention in the Darwin Awards website and might also be a suitably apt conclusion to the production team's lives.

I think I've seen worse films, so I'm giving this a 3, but it's a struggle to remember what they could have been!! Possibly Xtro (nasty & dull) or possibly Creep (just plain dull), but it is a struggle to think of something worse. It's difficult to know where to start. Let's just say it's a poor man's Under Siege, starring an even poorer man's Jean Claude Van Damme. The only redeeming feature was seeing Casper Van Dien - I always wondered what happened to him after Starship Troopers. Yes, he was Johnny Rico, if you really want to know.

Judging from this site, he's been stuck in TV movie hell.... Casper, be more selective.... please!!!!!!!!!!!! Arghhhhh, I've just turned over and there's a half decent film on called Criminal Law...... now I'm beginning to get really resentful about the last 1.5hrs!!!

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.

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/

The boat stayed afloat - but the movie sank. I feared the worst when I saw the opening credits... It probably is as awful as the others have said, but it was VERY late at night and I watched on TV as I lay comfortably in bed - the best thing I could find at the time! (Which tells you how appalling the competition must have been)Yes it creaked, was as weak as all get-out but it filled the time and I smiled at some of the dreadful moments of which there was no shortage. When luxury cruise liners operating out of the States are virtual cities with every luxury on board, I did wonder throughout why anybody would pay good money to go on this rusting old tub! Not a decent surface in sight! The "lounge" was so tiny it was ludicrous. It made twelve people "a crowd". It must be the world's only cruise liner without a swimming pool. The aerial shots revealed it to be a stumpy, ugly old vessel looking suspiciously like a superannuated ferry. (And as is pointed out above -it apparently WAS.) Fortunately I'm not THAT familiar with Kiwiland to have recognised any landmarks so I was spared that pain. It seems the NZ taxpayers there didn't get away so painlessly. It was so bad it was good! Casper van den Bierg is decorative. I'd never seen him before! He really must have NEEDED the work.