Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995, Geoff Murphy)

It’s never good when the worst thing about a Steven Seagal performance isn’t the Steven Seagal performance.

Kidding.

Sort of.

And while he’s terrible in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, he’s far from the worst performance. Stunt cast villain Eric Bogosian is much worse, for instance. As is Seagal’s sidekick, Morris Chestnut, who’s playing a Black sidekick out of the sixties. But Territory humiliates Chestnut (and all the female actors) regardless of their abilities. So the worst performance must go to Everett McGill, whose “soldier of fortune” tough guy only shows any enthusiasm when he gets to be pervy with fourteen-year-old Katherine Heigl. The rest of the movie, McGill’s a joke. That scene, it’s real creepy.

Heigl is playing Seagal’s niece. He’s meeting her train in Denver, and they’re going together to Los Angeles. It’s unclear why. Her parents have recently died in a plane crash—hence the train travel—but since Seagal refuses to talk for most of the film (not a bad move), we don’t get any information on what they’re planning on doing in L.A.

They just happen to be on the same train as Brenda Bakke and David Gianopoulos, who are two employees at a secret military installation run by Kurtwood Smith. The tedious opening titles reveal Smith and his gang, including the CIA guy from the first movie, Nick Mancuso (who’s the butt of a joke he doesn’t seem to get), have a secret agent spy scope that pulls in the moon, the stars, the planets, and the satellites, and the little bitty space men. It can even perv on women sunbathing, which the film gleefully explores.

Anyway.

Bogosian designed the satellite (an earthquake gun out of a Bond movie), only then he got fired for being unstable, so he faked his death, teamed up with domestic terrorist wannabe McGill, and hatched a plan to ambush Bakke and Gianopoulos on the train for their spy codes. Much of the film feels rewritten between scenes, though it never seems to get any better, just makes less sense.

McGill’s crack team of red shirts for Seagal to take out later on include familiar faces like Jonathan Banks and Peter Greene, along with Scott Sowers as “the racist one.” Why’s he racist? Because.

Dark Terrority’s also got the interesting problem of director Murphy. He’s not good at any of it. He’s not good with the actors, he’s not good with the fight scenes (he bungles every one of Seagal’s fisticuffs), and he’s not good with the pyrotechnics. The movie’s got lots of good explosions; it just doesn’t shoot them well.

However, much of the action is green screen and cinematographer Robbie Greenberg’s atrocious lighting for it. On the other hand, the actual stunt guy (not Seagal) climbing on the train is fantastic.

Basil Poledouris’s score is bad but could be worse. It’s kind of funny how obviously Poledouris wants to give Seagal the Robocop theme.

There’s some actual “Die Hard on a train” inventiveness in the second act, but the movie quickly forgets about it, especially since Murphy can’t direct it.

Also returning from Part 1 are Andy Romano and Dale Dye. Romano’s actually pretty dang good, all things considered. And, unlike almost everyone else, Dye doesn’t embarrass himself.

Oh, and the bad mid-nineties CGI.

Dark Territory’s a briefly fascinating time capsule, but otherwise, it’s terrible, boring, and gross about teenager Heigl every chance it gets.

The Straight Story (1999, David Lynch)

The Straight Story wants to present its characters as real, but it then exaggerates their reality. They’re better than real. Superior imitations. And it’s the film’s undoing.

Well, and the music. The eschewing of cartoon for caricature and the Angelo Badalamenti score. It is not the music to tell the story of a man born in 1920s Minnesota, who later moves to Iowa at some point and now at seventy-three is driving a riding mower to Wisconsin to see his estranged brother. Badalamenti’s main theme is ostentatious; even if you like it, it’s ostentatious. The movie’s all about how this guy, played by Richard Farnsworth, isn’t ostentatious. How could he be? He gives folksy, somewhat progressive wisdom and always pays his way. He never takes handouts, but he’ll compromise as long as it doesn’t fundamentally break his code. He’s a cowboy, on the steel green horse—well, steel green mule of a John Deere riding mower—he rides.

Straight Story isn’t a character study; its protagonist is never subject, never driving force (no pun intended). Director Lynch and writers John Roach and Mary Sweeney shrug off the idea of Farnsworth’s motivations until the third act when he dumps them in some heartfelt, folksy exposition. Straight Story is based on a true story, yet the film does whatever it can to make its characters seem utterly contained to their scenes. They stop existing when the film, sometimes jarringly, cuts away from them. It’s somewhat appropriate, however, as Sweeney also edited the film. The film has a handful of really rough cuts, not to mention when all of a sudden in the second half it employs frequent fades to black to end scenes. Occasionally the cuts are rough because clearly the actor onscreen didn’t think their scene was over. The movie’s just done showing this good, simple folk being kindly to one another. Point made, time to move on. Though, more often than not—especially in the second half—it’s just cutting to some other good, simple folk being kindly to one another scene.

It’s too bad. There are some occasional really strong moments. There’s a scene where Farnsworth witnesses a car accident and its frantic aftermath. Or when he’s hanging out with fellow old guy Wiley Harker at a bar and they’re having a profound emotional moment talking about World War II. Harker’s monologue is way better than Farnsworth’s and clearly so, which is concerning since Harker’s only in two scenes and Farnsworth is, you know, the movie. But even so, when Lynch and Sweeney bring in a non-diegetic war sounds track, it ruins the actors’ scene. Why would you give the actors this great opportunity then junk it for pedestrian memory sounds. It’s so strange. The Straight Story puts sugar in its own gas tank, time and again.

And then there’s Farnsworth’s daughter, played by Sissy Spacek. She gets a character revelation after her character is basically gone from the movie and it’s just to hammer in how progressive Farnsworth can be compared to, well, the younger generation. Straight Story positions Farnsworth as the world’s greatest grandad, only it’s a secret power and he can only use it on strangers, who hear more about his motivations for the trip than daughter Spacek. Of course, Spacek is—according to Farnsworth—a little slow. Spacek plays the character maybe autistic? Or with a speech impediment. But not slow. Not given the ideas she’s got to talk about in the dialogue she’s got. It’s kind of the most egregious of the film’s problems, just because the movie later uses Spacek just to develop Farnsworth and even then, only in a trite, contrived way. The film never feels less “real” than when Farnsworth is explaining how he’s so real. And manly.

Because he’s a cowboy. He’s a real American hero, which might explain why the movie treats him like an action figure. He moves where the film needs him; never once seems to have agency his own.

Even more distressing is when, in the final scene, a very special guest star outacts the 110 minute sum of Farnsworth’s performance without even speaking.

The film isn’t exactly condescending or patronizing, but it’s got a very definite narrative distance; it displays the events, doesn’t create them; it displays the people, doesn’t give them agency. They don’t develop. At all. And the exposition dumps are always manipulative.

Especially since it’s called The Straight Story.

Farnsworth is okay. It should be the kind of part you can go on and on about, analyzing the performance and whatnot, but you can’t. Because he’s just okay. Partly because Lynch doesn’t have any idea what kind of performance he’s directing. Spacek’s okay too, even if she’s the film’s narrative device doormat. James Cada’s good in one of the supporting roles, which are usually cast based on the actor’s appearance rather than their… acting ability. Or even casting appropriateness.

Good photography from Freddie Francis. Okay direction from Lynch. There are issues. There are peculiar choices when it comes to the ostensible character study stuff. There are weird, frankly silly zoom-ins.

It’s long, its plotting structure stalls, the music is annoying (even after the repeated use of the theme disappears—possibly when those fades to black come in, I wasn’t paying attention)… Straight Story has its sincerities, but never where it needs them.