U.S. Seals II B-Movie Review

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U.S. SEALS II - 3 Slimes

Rated R

Reviewed by Andrew Borntreger on 16 November 2009

The Characters:

Casey Shepherd - Whoever said "good guys finish last" did not know Casey. He almost always finishes second (right behind the bad guy).
Kamiko - Honorable daughter of a great sensei. Buy the Kamiko action figure! She comes with kung fu grip, katana, and storybook scroll about her bushido guilt complex.
Dr. Jane Burrows - She is the only nuclear physicist in this movie, and she is also the only person who wears glasses. Coincidence?
Maj. Donner - He's a bit older, a bit fatter, and a bit grayer in the hair than the rest of the team (he's Army). His unarmed combat skills are not as deadly as the other members of the team, but he has a paintball gun that shoots projectiles filled with acid. Let's see you wiping that off, mutha!
Byrd - Grizzled old veteran. His last request was to be buried with his Harley.
Adm. Patterson - He is really good at setting deadlines.
Finley - Spent time on a chain gang, so his martial arts weapon of choice is a length of steel chain. Let's be glad that he wasn't an obstetrician; few people want to see a maniac flagellating people with an umbilical cord and placenta.
Harper - He's the young and cheerful Special Forces operative who would die for his friend, Casey Shepherd. He's toast.
Omar - This mercenary will change allegiance whenever it is most advantageous to him, which means that he is the last person you want holding a berserk when your ornithopter is the only thing between you and a craw wurm with two giant growths cast on it.
Artie - Dude, becoming a super saiyan takes more than just hydrogen peroxide! Turned into an improvised object of wall art.
Frank Ratliff - This is what happens when SEALs go bad. Dies a death usually reserved for really clumsy lumberjacks
Sophia - Of course the evil megalomaniac would have a killer martial arts girlfriend.

The Plot:

Oh no, it's yet another film where the rogue ex-SEAL, ex-partner of the hero threatens to nuke a major U.S. city with a stealth intercontinental ballistic missile that he stole from the Russians unless he is paid one billion dollars. To make things even more of a sticky wicket, the bad guy's base is on an island contaminated with methane gas; nobody can fire a weapon on the island or else the whole place will explode. The only way to stop the rogue ex-SEAL is by assembling a team of martial arts experts who can defeat the evil mastermind's army of mercenaries.

That is why you should see this movie: it's ridiculous. The script is so ludicrous that it would make Steven Seagal laugh out loud, and that man is not known for turning down anything. He has been a cook saving a battleship from terrorists for goodness sakes!

Odd thing to note: Steven Seagal's name in "Under Siege" is Casey, and he is also an ex-SEAL.

The movie begins as Shepherd and Ratliff lead their SEAL team on a clandestine mission that goes horribly wrong. What should be a routine interdiction turns into an ambush. During the furious gun battle the SEALs use submachine guns and pistols - pretty much anything less accurate than an MP5. After surviving that debacle, the comrades in arms spend a little time at the local dojo, practicing their martial arts and checking out the sensei's female offspring. Casey fancies the respectful and serious daughter, Kamiko, while Frank prefers the other daughter, who is an irresponsible tease. Now, Ratliff is not a nice person, as he already demonstrated by his actions during the earlier ambush when he shot a prisoner. He kills the sensei's slutty daughter when she resists his sexual advances. Casey is not able to stop the rogue SEAL from getting away.

To add insult to injury, the sensei commits seppuku over his daughter's murder. Kamiko blames Shepherd for the whole tragic mess and shuns her American suitor. Disheartened and disillusioned, Casey gets out of the Navy and becomes a welder.

Well, it's better than being a Navy mess specialist...

Ratliff kidnaps Dr. Burrows as part of his master plan to extort one billion dollars from his previous employer. Desperate to rescue the scientist, the United States once more calls on Casey Shepherd. At first the ex-SEAL has no interest in the mission; then Major Donner tells him that good old Frank Ratliff is the person holding the nation ransom. Once that is revealed, Casey is ready to report for duty.

The problem with attacking Ratliff's base is the aforementioned methane gas contamination (I refuse to make the obvious New Zealand joke here). Going in all gung-ho with machine guns, snipers, and plastic explosives is not an option. No, if the operation is to have any chance of success, the team that goes after Ratliff will have to be masters of hand-to-hand combat. Casey assembles a small force of the very best.

Life has been tough on the men that Casey chooses for his team. Finley is in prison, Omar spends a lot of his time playing pool while he waits for new mercenary contracts (mercs cannot exactly claim unemployment), Harper is still on active duty, and Byrd...well, Byrd is becoming one of those old men that you see in bars; the kind who shave every third day and appear to subsist on nothing more than whiskey and second hand smoke.

Lastly, Kamiko agrees to join the cause to avenge her family; she even brings her katana.

The attack on Ratliff's island gets off to a bad start when the SCUBA-equipped good guys encounter an underwater patrol. Kamiko has an especially hard time with the attackers, but survives because one of them insists on slowly sawing through her air hose, instead of sticking the knife into the struggling woman's throat. After stripping off their diving gear, the team starts working their way through the tunnels under the missile complex. Unfortunately, a random encounter gets Byrd killed and alerts Ratliff that he has visitors. Now the hodgepodge SEAL team is running on borrowed time. The bad guy is plenty annoyed at being trifled with. He launches one of his two stealth nuclear missiles, but detonates the warhead in outer space.

Installing the arming mechanism for Frank's missiles is really complex. What ever happened to twist-to-lock?

While hunting for the rogue ex-SEAL's control room, Casey and his buddies get ambushed. BIG TIME ambushed. Dozens of Russian mercenaries surround the team. Incredibly, not one of the bad guys is carrying a crossbow. They all have knives, swords, or even lengths of iron pipe - but not one missile weapon. Quite a few of them probably looked at Maj. Donner's deadly paintball gun and then slapped themselves in the forehead. "Compressed air! Of course! Why didn't we think of that?"

You idiots didn't think of it because you are too young to have ever played Dig Dug in an arcade. That little dude knew the power of air pressure. Oh well, nobody in Russia was playing Dig Dug back then anyway. While American kids were depositing quarters willy-nilly, Russian teenagers were waiting in line to get bread. Plain, dry, tasteless bread.

Seems a bit unfair, doesn't it?

A huge battle takes place between the SEAL team and Ratliff's mercenaries. By the time it is over, all of the rank and file mercenaries are dead, and so are most of the good guys. Omar is still alive, but he is no longer a good guy. He switches sides when Ratliff's offers him a huge sum of money. It appears that the rogue ex-SEAL is unstoppable. Casey and Kamiko are left for dead after falling fifteen feet onto a pile of garbage.

Seriously, Omar thinks that the SEAL team leader was killed by falling less than twenty feet onto a nice, soft trash heap? Falling twenty feet onto a concrete floor is probably not going to kill somebody, though it will make them uncomfortable. Heck, falling twenty feet onto a concrete floor covered with thumbtacks is probably not going to kill somebody, though it will make them really uncomfortable.

After they recover from their fall, Casey and Kamiko take some time to express their feelings to each other. Major Donner interrupts the romantic moment and drags the couple back to reality. Make love and beautiful martial arts babies later; right now the United States needs you to stop Ratliff! The good guys go on to do just that (though Donner's wife becomes a lucky winner of the SGLI lottery), and they even save Dr. Burrows. She is the one who helps them to devise a plan to destroy the rogue ex-SEAL's base before he can launch the other stealth nuclear missile.

Yes, the methane. Go figure.

A great thing about this movie is that everything that everybody does makes an action movie "whoosh" sound. Sometimes it happens when a character turns their head! I wish that everything I did made action movie "whoosh" sounds. Yes, even pouring milk on my cereal or putting on my socks.

Things I Learned From This Movie:

Waterproof time bombs cannot detonate while underwater.
SEALs are masters of gunkata.
HALO jumps require special equipment only found at a run-down Army surplus store.
An area is not "All Clear" until you have looked behind the fuse box door.
Firing a pistol will ignite methane gas, but launching an ICBM will not.
Abs of Steel beats Tae Bo.
Every time a nuclear weapon explodes an angel gets his wings.
Dust cannot exist in the same room as a martial artist.
A female samurai's lethality is directly proportionate to her flexibility.

Stuff To Watch For:

2 mins - And fair winds and following seas...
13 mins - Quick, cut off his head so that he doesn't suffer!
26 mins - You've got something stuck in your teeth there buddy.
30 mins - RANDOM GRATUITOUS BREAST SHOTS!
34 mins - He just stole one of the Major's everlasting gobstoppers.
48 mins - Bear trap out of nowhere!
62 mins - Reynolds wrap is so sexy on a woman.
64 mins - "Kamiko, I've never seen this side of you before."
73 mins - "Does this look like a Fallkniven A1 to you?"
81 mins - Right now, somewhere is Soviet Russia, "Stand By Your Man" is playing.

Audio clips in wav format

SOUNDS

Starving actors speak out

	File	Dialog
	ussealsii1.wav	Adm. Patterson: "We've also found out that over the past few months Ratliff has put together an impressive team of killers, all trained in various martial arts." Lt. Shepherd: "Rule of combat, Admiral: know yourself. Now, I know our men use guns, so if you want this done I'll need at least a week to go through the men, pick the right ones." Adm. Patterson: "You've got forty-two hours!"
	ussealsii2.wav	Adm. Patterson: "Are you guys crazy? You've got a Japanese female civilian, an ex-con, an ex-SEAL, and a mister moneybags who's demanding three hundred thousand dollars cash! Are you OK with this, Major?" Maj. Donner: "Lieutenant Shepherd has assured me this is the best team for our parameters. Given our time frame, I don't think we have a lot of choice, Sir." Adm. Patterson: "Fine! Fine! You've got twenty-four hours!"
	ussealsii3.wav	Kamiko: "None of this matters to me. I will not leave without taking what I came for." Maj. Donner: "You all heard the orders." Lt. Shepherd: "Yeah. Well, I guess this is where the orders are going to stop." Maj. Donner: "Yeah, well I was planning on retiring early anyway. Let's do it." Lt. Shepherd: "Hooyah, Army."
	ussealsii4.wav	Lt. Shepherd and Dr. Burrows put their heads together to figure out a way to destroy the last ICBM. Genius!

Click for a larger image

IMAGES

Scenes from the movie

Watch a scene

VIDEO

MPEG video files

	ussealsii1.mpg - 6.9m
	Here is part of the big battle between the SEAL team and the bad guys. Did you notice the "whoosh" sounds that I mentioned earlier? If the Foley artist was paid by the hour they must have made a mint.