Submerged - Allarme negli abissi

Syeven Seagal is gone for good. All he ever makes these days are crap B movies. The old stuff like Nico, Hard To Kill, Out For Justice and Under Siedge is in the past... If you don't wanna see a crap movie then just skip this one. Totally crap. I have seen all of Seagals movies and this is in the league of one of his baddest to date. Oh my god I say. Gary Daniels I expect this from but from Vinnie Jones? I hope I never see something this bad again ever in my life. But I know I will some day :) Forget this crap. I give it 1 out of 10 stars and that's just cause I have to give it one as it is the lowest. Pls Steven, get some backbone and stop making crap movies.

Steven Seagal, oh Steven Seagal, why must thou continue to make movies? IL' Stevie boy is at it again, as he lumbers around this occasionally diverting, yet heavily recycled piece of garbage. Seagal over the last few years has made a whole plethora of films. Ever since he experienced a brief comeback in hit film Exit Wounds, Seagal has reverted to doing DTV movies, with only the disastrous Half Past Dead as his last Cinema film. Since 2001 Exit Wound's we have been offered, HPD, Ticker, Foreigner, Out For A Kill, Out Of Reach, Belly Of The Beast, Into The Sun, as well as a small role in Korean Action flick, Clementine. That is a lot of movies from 2001-2005, andhe has a possible 3 more films to come this year or early 2006. My god! Exit Wounds came after Seagal had, had a 3 year break from filming and he is making up for lost time. Steve's cinema appeal has seemingly waned now but in the video market he continues to draw in punter, with some of his movies making upward of 20 million dollars in the rental market. He is certainly still the market leader, despite his laziness and complacency. His efforts, post Wounds, have been dire to say the least, with one common feature: Seagal looking bloated, old and extremely bored. It gets so bad at times he is being dubbed by some one else and in Submerged this is particularly evident, with large chunks of the trite dialogue being performed by a rather bad Seagal impersonator. So his movies stink, he stinks and can't be convincing as an action hero anymore, so why do people rent his movies? God knows. I do so in the vein hope that one day he'll make another kick ass action flick like Nico, and be about 3 stone lighter. Chance would be a fine thing!

So how does Submerged rate in the grand scheme of things. Well firstly for a DTV action flick it isn't too bad on some levels. It is also perhaps Seagal's most enjoyable since Exit Wounds as well. The film has an inane plot about brainwashing which they have stolen form classic films like The Manchurian Candidate and Ipcress File, and done without any of the cleverness of those films. It's a pretty conventional action film to say the least but has the advantage of having plenty of bang for the buck. There is a good amount of action and we have shootout's and car chases and all manner of explosive and bloody deaths. It's solid R-rated violence. Of course although the plot is stale, that matters not in a DTV Friday night easy going piece of entertainment. We want action and B-movie veteran Anthony Hickox handles that side reasonably well. The action is solid, with plenty of carnage and some neat stunts. This certainly marks a step up from the directors recent works, with far lower budgets. With a bit more money to play with he has done a lot better it seems. Of course his view on the action is to simply mimic John Woo, but if your going to mimic an action director it may as well be the Woo. The main problem with the flick though, is thus: Steven Seagal. The film starts off not half bad with some neat action and a good pace to open with. However no sooner does Seagal lumber towards the screen in slo-mo accompanied by a Heavy Metal soundtrack do the problems arise. Seagal stinks up the movie whenever he appears. From his atrocious accent, one expression, lameness, to his heaving, plodding physical performance in his action scenes, he just stinks. The movie has a good cast, with no fewer than 3 people who appeared in Guy Ritchie films, most notably Vinnie Jones, who is the best thing in the film. Action veteran Gary Daniels appears, acts as badly as we know he can, and gets killed like a little bitch and after co-starring with another action superstar Dolph Lundgren, he has been thoroughly wasted in what should have been his best two movies. Brit babe Alison King is sexy in full on Lara Croft mode as well. The action is well staged but it's the old problem that when Seagal is on screen fighting, the director has to make up for his lack of speed and agility by filming from the chest up and watch him wave his hands about. It's embarrassing. Of course Seagal doesn't actually participate in a great deal of the action anyway, only about half, so thankfully we don't have to put up with him too much in that respect. One can't help feeling though that with a more able leading man, this could have been a grade up and more enjoyable. Van Damme, Snipes, Lundgren, even Lorenzo Lamas, would have been better in the lead. Vinnie Jones could have led this movie, he steals the film to be honest, looks tough. Jones in fact revels as an action man and you can't help but feel that when he puts on his crazy face in his fights scenes, he is a bit too into it and probably landing a few punches on the poor old stunt guys or co-stars.

Overall this is fairly polished and although not as crisp looking as Seagal's Into The Sun, looks better than some of his other efforts, while the amount of action is ample for genre lovers. However thanks to Seagal this manages to become somewhat avoidable. Watch Lundgren's Direct Action instead. **

I really had my hopes up for this one. After reading the original description of the film describing biological cargo...submarine...terrorists I thought we had the makings of an unrelated "Under Siege" sequel and since "Under Siege 2" was better than "Under Siege 1" and with the recent likable Seagal film "Into the Sun", I figured let me give it a look. And it wasn't even worth my viewing it for the full 90+ minutes. The storyline was way off the original description and it seems that we are now watching a poor man's "The Dirty Dozen". Though I rented this movie because I am a Seagal fan, I found that Vinnie Jones played a pretty good role and B+ movie action lead Gary Daniels is totally under-utilized. And the direction style used by Anthony Hickox does not lend itself to the movie in any way. It's a shame that this is what Seagal has come to with the movies he makes. Perhaps he should take a step back and look at "Into the Sun" which brought him back to his original form.

Hello Everyone:

I have just rented and watched Steven Seagal's latest film entitled," Submerged." To tell you the truth Steven Seagal is not only the reason why this movie is so poor. To start with you have poor lightening as many, and I mean many of the scene's were shot way too dark, and even at times you really can not tell what is going on cinematically. Onward now we get to the director, as Hickox did a lousy job with this movie as I do give him respect for trying to attempt to entertain us with all of his directing tricks to keep us, the audience riveted, but it truly did not work.

Now in getting to the script, as it appeared to me that very little care went into this portion of the film. A total bust as far as I am concerned. The producing was terrible as well.

I have a question with this particular film. Why is Steven Seagal's vocal parts being dubbed? He was not overdubbed for a minute or two as in the case with his last five film's, but throughout more than half the film and that is way too much. It really seemed as if nobody gave a damn with this flick as the disappointment just sets in and sinks really hard!!

I know for a fact that Seagal's film," Ticker," was done rather quickly but ended up a good solid feature, which by the way starred not only Steven Seagal, but veteran actor Mr.Dennis Hopper and Mr.Tom Sizemore who did a great job, as these are clearly experienced actor's who know just what to do with a little bit and turn out a fine movie.

And finally let us get to the acting..... ah yes the acting. While I was watching this monstrosity I quickly learned that I really could not care about any of the actor's that appeared on the screen as they really could not hold my attention at all. Clearly these are all in-experienced actor's who need to get back to the basic's in their craft if they really want to go anywhere.

To sum it up, " Submerged," is a poor film as it clearly is Steven Seagal's worst to date. Even with the straight to DVD release's such as, " The Foreigner," " " Out For A Kill," " Belly Of The Beast," " Out Of Reach," and one of Seagal's finest movies that should have had a theatrical release here in the United States, " Into The Sun," (no overdub's with Seagal's voice as far as I could tell) were all great and very enjoyable in their own personal way. I own all of Steven Seagal's film's, yes, some of them are better than other's, but this film will not see a space on my DVD rack. Forget this one.

To close this commentary out, Steven Seagal is truly my all time favorite action hero as he alway's will be. I have a lot of respect for him and I alway's have enjoyed his film's whether or not they ended up on the big screen in recent year's. Nobody can compare to Seagal as he is in a class all by himself. Remember fan's, we all get older too each and every day so give Steven Seagal the respect he deserve's. Every action hero is entitled to a dud so let us just forget about " Submerged," and make like it was never made.

Now I am looking forward to September 2005's release of " Today You Die," and the December 2005 release of," Black Dawn." These two are expected to be much better films, more like his last grouping of movies. ( As of February 1st,2006- " Black Dawn," was a great Spy/Drama/Action film. Seagal had very little action sequences in the release, but the story was quite interesting. There were also very little to no dubbing on Seagal's voice. Check it out.)

Peace:

Nicky Tuzio

e-mail: tuztones@peoplepc.com

Submerged is yet another putrid straight to video release involving a bloated and aging Steven Seagal trying unsuccessfully to hide the fact he can barely do any martial arts any more and the fact that he is really quite overweight. He still can't hide the fact that he can't act either, despite the fact he appears to be dubbed for sections of the movie (Which is why some of his dialogue is actually semi-intelligible for a change). The film-makers attempts to hide Seagal's lack of mobility and increasing girth are largely what make these latter day Seagal flicks entertaining. Clever tricks such as close editing in the fight scenes so you can't actually see Seagal isn't doing anything very impressive, dark lighting to hide his jowls and breadth and loose clothing so as to not accentuate his less than athletic physique.

Anyway, the movie involves Seagal and a ragtag group of ex navy bad-arses being pulled out of prison (There is some lame political cover-up after an operation gone wrong angle to explain their presence there) to go after an evil scientist who has developed a mind control device and hiding out with some vaguely motivated militants in Uruguay. It is never made clear exactly why the hell the government is using a bunch of convicts for this mission- I thought perhaps they would have been selected as it was more likely they hadn't been got at by the mind control device when it had been established the US special forces had already been compromised this way but such explanation was not offered on screen- in other words if the script-writers for this movie actually put as much thought into the plot in writing the script as I did in watching it for a few minutes it was lost in the editing stage. At least Seagal isn't playing an archaeologist, a scientist or an arch bishop or some equally unbelievable profession in this one.

Although the movie is called Submerged very little of it actually set on a submarine. It was rumoured before this one came out that it was to involve Segal on a submarine battling a sea monster but unfortunately this was not the case. (No cheap jokes about Segal playing the sea monster I promise). The first section involves the group getting together and raiding the baddies base, the middle section is actually on the submarine and actually seems kind of shoehorned in, almost as though they wanted to make this mind control action picture and then found half the budget had been blown on a submarine set they were then obliged to use. The last section of this meandering and goofy storyline is set in some South American city (Yes I'm too lazy to look it up).

The plot is meandering, is full of holes and makes little sense (I was quite frankly shocked) but the film is full of action and is never dull, even if it is because of unintentional laughs, of which there are many. My two favourites- Seagal's ultra cheesy slow mo entrance- chained in shackles walking slowly toward the camera (Naturally) with loud heavy metal playing in the background in a lame attempt to make him look cool. The second and funniest is at the end when Segal kicks one of the main bad guys about forty metres through the air accompanied by some bizarre trumpet blast sound effect. Seagal doesn't actually do much in the way of martial arts (Wonder why?) but there are plenty of goofy action sequences such as a Commando like sequence where Segal and friends take on a small army, complete with tanks and barely get hurt. As I said, the movie is fast moving and all over the place shifting from location to location, from a dam/naval facility to a submarine, to the streets of a South American city, to an opera house, to a cartoonesque super-villain base/ laboratory. There is a large supporting cast to distract from Seagals non-acting, most of whom are dead by the end of the movie, including two Lock Stock and two Smoking Barrels alumni- Vinnie Jones, applying his usual cheerfully violent soccer hooligan type character that brings some much needed colour to the screen and Hatchet Harry. Most of Seagal's team is forgettable, the only other ones I remember a few days after watching it are stiff faced woman and skinny Latino dude.

In summation, if you want to watch a stupid, cheesy but on the whole entertaining(ly bad) action flick and laugh at the comedy institution that is Steven Seagal then Submerged is pure gold.