Under Siege (1992)
Directed by Andrew Davis
A disgruntled ex-CIA operative, his assistant and their assembled group of terrorists seize a battleship with nuclear blackmail in mind. They've planned for every contingency but ignore the ship's cook, former Navy SEAL Casey Ryback—an error that could be fatal.
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What critics compared Under Siege to
Think Under Siege or the first Die Hard with a bit of In the Line of Fire tossed in for good measure.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Shooter), Olympus is the action movie equivalent of a Frankenstein monster assembled from other movies with the main template being Under Siege, plus a dollop of attitude from Die Hard and an overall blow-things-to-hell ambiance from almost any Michael Bay movie from the last decade.
For example, “Under Siege” was “Die Hard on a Boat.”
“Under Siege,” “First Blood,” “The Foreigner” and others all feature shady characters inadvertently picking a fight with someone surprisingly well-versed in the arts of violence.
This is what I call the “Who is that chef?” moment, as discussed in my “Under Siege” chapter in my 101 Must-See Movie Moments book.
The siege on Phillips’ ship is a wonder, and the Under Siege sequence where the crew attempts to stealthily ward off their attackers ratchets up a taut, commendable intensity.
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Under Siege and Speed for example are in some ways just Die Hard on a ship and a bus, respectively, but they succeed through details of their own creation.
From Luc Besson's influential Nikita , Robert Rodriguez's electric breakthrough Desperado , the aforementioned Speed ... Hell, even my least favourite action star Steven Seagal had his best outing ever with Under Siege !
Just as "Under Siege" was "Die Hard on a Battleship," "Speed" was "Die Hard on a Bus" and "Executive Decision" was "Die Hard on a Plane," this movie is "Die Hard on the Rock."