Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)

Steven Seagal returns as former Navy Seal Casey Ryback in this less than enjoyable sequel to the overrated surprise hit.

Seagal and bratty niece Sarah (Katherine Heigl) are taking a train to go to a funeral. As luck would have it, evil genius Dane (a really good Eric Bogosian) and his evil henchman Penn (Everett McGill) hijack the train for evil purposes. They control a satellite that can cause earthquakes, and will kill a few million people on the Eastern seaboard unless somebody sends them a billion dollars. Many generals and computer technicians watch helplessly as Ryback and the train's porter Bobby (Morris Chestnut) do battle with the baddies.

I will say this: Geoff Murphy does direct some very impressive action sequences. The special effects are sometimes obvious, but the action scenes are well done. Seagal was starting to slow down here, you can tell with sped up footage and obvious stuntman use, and his performance is predictably monosyllabic. Bogosian is a delight as Dane. He's crazy, has some funny lines, and is more interesting than Seagal, but then again, so is drying paint. Heigl is a typical bratty teen who learns to like her uncle, but Chestnut plays Bobby like an idiot, I cannot believe the character survives as long as he does.

"Under Siege 2: Dark Territory" has a few exciting moments and performances, but it is still another lousy shoot-'em-up that the action hero based film genre is still trying to recover from.

Stats:
(1995) 100 min. (3/10)
-Directed by Geoff Murphy
-Written by Richard Hatem & Matt Reeves, based on characters created by J.F. Lawton
-Cast: Steven Seagal, Katherine Heigl, Eric Bogosian, Morris Chestnut, Everett McGill, Peter Greene, Patrick Kilpatrick, Scott Sowers, Afifi Alaouie, Andy Romano, Brenda Bakke, Jonathan Banks, Nick Mancuso
(R)