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. **
