Viewed nearly 25 years after release, this Private Media feature reminds one of that far-off time when Adult Cinema was taken seriously enough by its practioners to warrant careful attention to making a real movie, of course with explicit erotic content included. Just glancing at a cast and crew list numbering over 300 names is jaw-dropping, given that most porn nowadays is cranked out with a skeleton crew.
Director Nic Cramer was a very big deal during the VHS era, now principally remembered for his "Looker" and "A Clockwork Orgy", and his stylistics and command of filmmaking impresses here.
Basically taking the form of an action/caper film with maximum production values and deadpan performances, the show quickly moves beyond the "Under Siege" premise from that Steven Seagal starrer, concerning hijacking a cruise ship as part of a plot to steal a floppy disk containing key information, to become a suspenseful thriller. I especially enjoyed the chance to root for the "bad guys", glamorously led by redhead beauty Dina Jewel (sort of a Gillian Anderson beauty with brains type), who organizes her special crew featuring Mike Foster, Zenza Raggi and twin action babes, offering "a hundred large" as payment for the operation, likely meaning $100,000.
Nominal good guys are muscular if wooden Chris De May and his sexy girlfriend Ivy Crystal, who outwit and outfight the baddies but curiously are not as charismatic, a neat inversion. Technical aspects of the storytelling are very fine, especially the tight, quite professional editing, likewise pro lighting, and okay action scenes and pyrotechnics.
Main fault here, predictably, is that the momentum and suspense of a well-made action movie is frequently interrupted by everything screeching to a halt in order to take time out for a XXX porn sequence. Cramer keeps them concise, but they nonetheless break the spell that one is watching a real movie rather than just porn. And for current 21st Century viewers, their relative brevity (e.g., 5 minutes of sex rather than the now mandatory half hour or so) is no longer appreciated.
Nonetheless, this movie belongs on a serious Adult fan's want list, and even proves to be a forerunner of fellow Swedish director Mike Beck's string of action/porn flicks -with Beck featured in a NonSex acting role here early in his career.
