Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995) “stars” Steven Seagal reprising his role as ex-Navy SEAL Casey Ryback. Unfortunately, he’s really just not the best action hero at this point (or maybe at any point), but I’ll write more on that later. This movie also lacked a strong lead bad guy. The first Under Siege (1992) had Tommy Lee Jones as a mercenary/terrorist who was disguised as an aging rock star. It’s even more awesome that it sounds, trust me.

Along with Tommy Lee Jones looking like the above for the whole movie, Under Siege also has Gary Busey dressed like a woman (not for the whole movie, though, sadly) and a knife fight between Jones and Seagal!

(See? Even Gary Busey looks sad that he’s not dressed like that for the whole movie.)

Under Siege 2 lacks the kind of bad guy-ness that Under Siege had in Tommy Lee Jones. Let’s look a still from Under Siege 2 for a moment, a crucial point in the movie where Seagal and the head bad guy, Travis Dane (Eric Bogosian) come face to face (well, they’re in the same room for two seconds before this).

Seagal has just “beeped somebody” by which he means made some kind of incendiary device out of a cocktail shaker, lighter fluid, a pager, and a little bit of old-fashioned know-how. Here’s what happens:

Two guys end up en fuego (I guess the first guy flailed around and set the other guy on fire?), Travis proves that he’s not really up to snuff as a leading action movie bad guy. Check this out:

First, though, we have to give an appreciative nod to those two guys in the background, the extras, still sitting at their control panels in their nice ‘90s office chairs (they didn’t have standing desks back then, the heathens). They look mildly alarmed, but not enough to get up out of their chairs and run away. We can surmise that they’re probably like, “Oh, this shit again. Why do we work for this douchebag Travis, again? Oh right, the double overtime we’re supposed to be getting once this is over.” Joke’s on them, because they don’t get their overtime, all they get is DEATH BY SEAGAL.

Most importantly in this still, though, is what Travis is up to. This is like one of those drawings where you’re supposed to find and circle all the hidden objects on a list. This list has one thing on it: the bad guy of the movie. Can you find it?

That’s right, he’s cowering behind a half-wall. He couldn’t even find a whole wall to hide behind. Sad.

Let’s look at this scene from another camera angle, just to make sure. I mean, maybe Travis is back there preparing to do something action-movie appropriate…

…like …shitting his pants? Ugh, no! And look at that tie!!! God, how I long for Bennet from Commando. Now he’s a bad guy who knows how to dress. Plus he totally just runs through a boarded up doorway at one point, AND he tells his heroic counterpart, “John Matrix” (Schwarzenegger), that he’s not going to shoot him between the eyes, he’s going to “shoot him between the balls.” Travis Dane doesn’t look like someone who’s going to threaten to shoot Steven Seagal between the balls, though I think that’s what this movie really needed, or at least what we all needed to see after watching it.

All is not lost, though, so fear not. We have at least some modicum of awesome action movie bad-guy-ness from lead henchman/terrorist, Marcus Penn (Everett McGill). A couple minutes before Ryback (i.e. Seagal) “beeps somebody,” Marcus discovers Ryback’s adorably sullen teenaged niece on the train.

He’s about to take her into custody when she sprays him in the face with something from her pocket, yelling “Mace!” He is unaffected. He takes the bottle from her and says, “Not Mace … pepper spray. Sold to civilians. Once you get used to it …” THEN HE SPRAYS HIMSELF IN THE MOUTH WITH PEPPER SPRAY “… it just clears the sinuses.”

How fucking balls to the wall is THAT?!

Pretty impressive. This is lead bad guy material, in my opinion. And remember the scene where the two guys are on fire? Marcus steps up to one of the on fire guys, who is screaming like a little bitch just because his face is melting a little, and shoots him. Then he says, “Put him out.” The only thing that would’ve been better is if Marcus had said instead, “Someone else put him out, he’s not worth the piss.”