Under Siege

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Die Hard on a boat!! One of Steven Seagal's greatest films. It was released in 1992.

Casey Ryback (Seagal) is a valued cook on the USS Missouri, which is undergoing one last party in Pearl Harbor before it goes to San Francisco to be decommissioned. The captain of the ship wanted Seagal to show up in his dress whites with full decorations, but he refused; he eventually said that the captain's birthday was tomorrow and he needed to make bouillabaisse for it, which lets him off the hook.

The captain's birthday is coming, and a surprise party is arranged. Food will be flown in, and so the pesky cook has to be Locked in a Freezer -- though not before the bouillabaisse is spat on and he attempts bodily harm on the XO making the plans. He is guarded by someone on orders not to let him out or listen to him. He isn't let out...

Anyhow, this is an elaborate surprise party. There is a band featuring Tommy Lee Jones and a cake containing Miss July. Everyone is allowed off shift -- though the captain didn't want that. And there's a clown car's worth of mercenaries ready to take over the ship once everyone's had enough champagne. That's right -- a hijacking!

The captain and operations officer are killed; most of the rest of the crew is locked into the forecastle, and a few other soldiers get locked in the engine room. The hijackers now have control of a ship with nukes on it. It occurs to them that the kitchen, where our cook is, is not blocked off from the weapons room, so they send someone in to finish off the pesky cook...

Of course, the pesky cook kills him first, and leaves a bomb in a microwave when he finally escapes. He sneaks up to the captain's room, finds him dead, and finds the cake with Miss July in it, unopened. She's alive, but she's missed everything. She's also a self-proclaimed pacifist and The Load...

The XO then finds the cook's service record, which had been locked in the Captain's "eyes only" safe. When they do find it, they learn that he was a Navy SEAL, one of the best ever, who, after a mission in Panama went wrong, lost his security clearance, leaving him only qualified to be a yeoman -- or a cook. Unfortunately for them, he still has the skills of a SEAL...

They try to keep to the plan anyway -- the plan being to transfer the nukes to a sub that the CIA thought had been destroyed by mercenaries. The leader of the mercenaries in question is the band leader helping with the hijacking.

Good triumphs eventually, but it triumphs messily.

It has a sequel, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995), which involves a plot to hijack a train which happens to be carrying Ryback, which is part of a larger plot to hijack a new orbital satellite-based superweapon, and use it to destroy the United States eastern seaboard for fun and profit. Naturally, asskickings ensue.

Tropes used in Under Siege include:

Strannix: (looking at the carnage Ryback has left behind) Doumer, Doumer, Doumer... why did you not hire this man? Whatever it would have cost, he would have been worth it.

  • Almighty Janitor
  • Artistic License Military: This is a Steven Seagal movie set on a warship so you can expect quite a lot of this, but several significant points not related to the fight scenes are:
    • The rationale for Seagal's presence on board. At that time, Navy SEALs first went through training for one of the more normal Navy jobs (or 'rates'), then applied for SEAL training. If he had lost his security clearance they could simply have sent him back to be assigned in his initial rate (or discharged him, but its implied that the captain pulled strings to keep him in). Forgivable in that nothing stops his initial rate from having actually been MS (Mess Steward, or cook).
      • Still flawed in the "only a yeoman or a cook" logic, though. One, there's a lot of potential jobs that require only the lowest level of security clearance. Menial jobs, mostly, but they're still jobs. (We even see one in the movie - the sailor who complains that his only military experience is running the ship's laundry.) But the thing is, Yeoman is not one of those jobs. As the rate concerned with administration and paperwork, a YN pretty much needs a Secret clearance at minimum because there is a lot of information you can pick up just by reading all the routine paperwork.
    • After someone punches a senior officer in front of multiple witnesses, it would not take an order from the captain to put that someone in the brig. The captain should admittedly still be notified of such an occurrence, which Krill would still be anxious to avoid.
    • An order to lock someone in a freezer should be questionable. An order to lock someone up after its been specifically pointed out that the officer in question allegedly does not have the authority to lock someone up is even more questionable. Just barely justifiable in that a private fresh out of training will understandably fear to contradict a full commander to their face (although he should still have contacted his own chain of command after Krill left to tell them about this and ask for a second opinion, as it involves possible officer misconduct), and that the individual Marine in question was picked specifically because he was the stupidest guy Krill could find.
      • Ryan Szimanski, curator of Missouri's sister ship New Jersey, notes it's also physically impossible: The only walk in freezers on an Iowa class are part of the enlisted galley (sticking someone in a freezer in the officer's galley requires something more akin to Stuffed Into a Locker), and those have an emergency gong system for anyone locked inside.
  • Berserk Button: It's not really a good idea to spit in Ryback's soup. He takes it kind of personally.
  • BFG: The 16" guns of the Missouri. Which Ryback uses to sink the sub.
  • Bond One-Liner: "Keep the faith".
    • Hasn't lost the touch in the sequel; after a hostage distracts a mook ("My bra broke!") for Ryback to off him, he quips: "Tits to die for."
    • "Nobody beats me in the kitchen."
  • Captain Obvious: Bates declaring "We gotta lot of trouble on that ship" when he's just finished talking with Ryback in the middle of a heated gunfight is certainly redundant.
  • Chef of Iron: And how! Seagal's character is obviously not to be messed with.
  • The Chosen Zero: The main character, of course.
  • Cutting the Knot: In the sequel, one of the hijackers informs Casey that he's too late to stop the Kill Sat at that, even if he weren't, he'll never be able to crack the encryption on his laptop to do it. Casey's solution? Shoot the cell phone that was sustaining the laptop's wireless connection to the satellite control systems.
  • Da Chief: Averted by Admiral Bates in the first film. Upon finding out that Ryback has ignored his orders to avoid contact if possible and is busy trying to kill all the terrorists himself, the Admiral's response is thus:

Admiral Bates: (as the sound of automatic weapons fire is clearly audible over the radio) Chief Ryback, this is Admiral Bates. I see you completely disobeyed my orders, correct?
Chief Ryback: (while shooting) I'm sorry, sir, you can court-martial me if I live, sir!
Admiral Bates: (dryly) I see. I want you to listen to me very carefully. SEAL Team Five is en route, do you understand that? [...] Now since your ass is on the line, sailor, I authorize you right now to do whatever you can to aid in the arrival of the SEAL team. Because if I goddamned can't control you, I might as well support you!

  • Darkened Building Shootout
  • Defensive Feint Trap
  • Die Hard on an X
    • First movie: Boat!
    • Second movie: Train!
  • Distracted by the Sexy: Happens to some poor mook in the sequel.
  • Doesn't Like Guns: Casey claims he doesn't like guns and so does Jordan, but both end up using firearms. Casey is generally more at home using knives.
  • The Dragon: Marcus Penn is a texbook example in the second movie, and like many dragons before and after him, it's clear he is the most formidable of the villains.
  • Eiffel Tower Effect: The above-mentioned threat video made by Travis Dane.
  • Every Helicopter Is a Huey: In Under Seige 2 the terrorists hijack the train in a matched pair of Hueys, one of which apparently vanishes into thin air sometime before the climax. This appears to happen more because it'd be a really cool way to hijack a train than because it makes any logistical sense at all.
  • Eye Scream: used with a combination of To the Pain as a rather effective interrogation technique in the sequel.
    • In the first film, Ryback gouges out Strannix's eye before killing him off.
  • Finger in the Mail: Strannix recounts a tale of how he sent his CIA superior the fingers of two assassins who were sent to kill him.
  • Hidden Talents
  • Just Eat the MacGuffin: In the sequel, Ryback gets his hands on the encoded CD the villain needs to complete his plan fairly early in the film, and spends most of the rest of them movie trying to keep the villain from getting it back. He should have just broken the darn thing, and permanently derailed the villain's plot.
    • The one who gets the CD is the porter who's fairly dim. Also, neither of them really know what the CD does (it has targeting codes for the Kill Sat but only the bad guys know that) so it may be needed to reverse what they're doing.
    • As something the bad guys obviously want back and intact, the CD also has value as a hostage. Which is not a trivial concern given how many hostages they have available.
  • Jumping Out of a Cake: At the beginning.
  • Kill Sat: The main threat in the sequel.
  • Lethal Chef: Inverted and played with. Ryback is known in-universe as a great cook, but he still can kill you by other means.
  • The Load, although she shows Action Girl potential in the last 20 minutes of the film
    • She's also pretty Genre Savvy. He tells her to stay back "where it's safe". Her reply, "The safest place on this ship is three feet behind you!"
    • The sequel has Morris Chestnut's porter character who is semi-helpful but spends most of the movie getting lectured by Ryback and getting into lethal situations that require rescue.
  • MacGyvering: Ryback improvises explosives and other tools using a combination of everyday objects like paint thinner and military implements like gunpowder from a grenade.
    • In the sequel, he makes a bomb out of resources from the train's minibar.
  • The Mole
  • Ms. Fanservice: We are introduced to Erika Eleniak when she jumps out of a cake topless.
  • Never Bring a Knife to A Fist Fight
  • Never Found the Body: Lampshaded by Penn and later Travis Dane, in the sequel, in regards to Ryback.

"Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups."

  • Not So Different: Flipped around, from Segal's protagonist to Jones' antagonist.

Ryback: "We're the same, you and I."

  • Oh Crap: Seal Team 5 in the first film when faced with a heatseeker-wielding mook aiming at their helicopter. Ryback and his gang watching the same scene from too far away to assist.
  • Only a Flesh Wound: "You think this is being shot? This ain't being shot."
  • Our Presidents Are Different: Subverted in that the real president at the time, George H.W. Bush, is shown sending the ship off before its final voyage, even if he's not involved in the bulk of the movie.
    • That was stock footage from the actual final cruise of the USS Missouri.
  • Pretty Little Headshots: While there is some brutal violence, the headshots (most notably in the first film) are clean and leave small, relatively bloodless holes.
  • Psycho Supporter
  • Recycled in Space: Under Siege 2 is Under Siege ON A TRAIN! Small wonder that a common joke after the release of Snakes on a Plane would reference this by suggesting that the sequel would be Snakes On A Train.
    • There is a movie called Snakes On A Train (however it's a Mockbuster, not a sequel).
    • Your Mileage May Vary as some call the sequel as good as the first and it's certainly better then most other sequels.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Katherine Heigl as Rybeck's niece in the sequel.
  • Sentry Gun: The Phalanx CIWS aboard the Missouri.
  • Shout-Out: Strannix and the submarine crew use names like "Roadrunner" and "Wile E. Coyote" as codenames, referencing the classic Warner Bros. cartoons. Guess which studio Under Siege is from.
  • Stuff Blowing Up
  • Thriller on the Express
  • Villainous Breakdown: Strannix goes completely insane after Krill is killed, firing cruise missiles randomly. Shell shock from the deck gun blasts probably contributes, but still. Dane in 2 also has a bit of a breakdown when the Kill Sat CD is stolen, but goes back to normal when he gets it back. Of course, he has another one once Ryback starts messing his plans up big time.
    • Not that randomly in Under Siege 1 -- given where the ship is, Honolulu is the only large city within Tomahawk range at the time.
  • What an Idiot!: The Marine keeping Ryback locked in the meat locker. What kind of Marine can't recognize gunfire? No, never having been in combat before still doesn't explain this; to get onboard a battleship's security detail he's already had to go through Basic, Advanced Infantry Training, and then Force Security training, which means he'll have heard weapons fired only about fifteen thousand times by now, at various distances ranging from 'directly next to his head' on up to 'all the way over on the other side of the urban assault course'.
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