Highly Overrated But Still Good

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

As Good As It Gets

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Next stop Uruguay for Seagal. He's is a soldier of fortune freed from prison under the proviso that he and his oppos can stop a group of terrorists who have taken over a nuclear submarine. A sub-plot about mind control is a big distraction for his objective, and for viewers at home. Backstory and exposition is bypassed quickly and there are some amateurish visual effects from the get-go which combine to make very dull viewing, further weighed down by an irritating flashy visual style. There are one or two good action scenes but all in all it's a ridiculously convoluted plot which is difficult to engage with.

Nothing much new about the story but you don't watch a Steven Seagal movie for that. Nonetheless a doc without a conscience using a mind control machine as the evil guy has room for a lot of fun. Through in a team of various military guys lead by Steven "wood face" Seagal and two hot chicks who can fight and you have a recipe for a very likable no brainer. So far so good...There are plenty of gun fights. And most of us who like this kind of action flick have gotten used to the bad guys shooting a lot and not really hitting much. But the camera work in this movie makes it as ridiculous as can be. In one scene you see that about 40 or 50 bad guys are standing like 30 feet away and still take minutes until they hit one of the 5 or 6 good guys. Of course they still lose or the movie would have been over in its first third.Hand to hand fights: They actually COULD have been pretty good if the cut hadn't been totally awful. There are some nicely executed moves but you barely get the chance to appreciate them. With a less hectic cut I would have given the movie one more star.The characters: Steven Seagal is Steven Seagal, same role he always plays. The above mentioned chicks look good and do some fighting - what more do we want? OK, boobs would have been nice, but we can live without it ;). The highlight of the movie, to me, is Vinnie Jones who plays some bad ass Brit, which he does damn well in every of his movies. A pity he didn't get more camera time. The rest of the military team just sucks and is totally colorless. You don't connect and you don't mind when almost all of them get shot up. The evil doctor, played by Nick Brimble, looks evil, talks evil and acts evil. There are also a corrupt agent and a rich company owner being a little bad here and there but they should have put more into the doctor instead of bothering with boring and useless additional characters.With a better director this movie could have easily been a 5 star movie. As it is a lot of potential just got wasted and I really can't recommend this flick to anyone. I had a really hard time giving it a 3 and not a 2.

Submerged starts as hard as nails ex-military man Chris Cody (Steven Seagal, also executive producer) is offered a deal, either he undertakes an assassination & rescue mission for the Government & pocket a hundred grand or he goes to prison for the rest of his life. The choice is as easy one & one that the rest of Cody's team accepts too, their job is to go to Uruguay & rescue some captured US soldiers & kill madman scientist Adrian Lehder (Nick Brimble) who as created some method of mind control & is using it for less than friendly reasons including trying to gain control of an entire country. Cody & his team successfully rescue the soldiers but Lehder escapes, while on the submarine Alcatraz heading for the warship Clinton the rescued soldiers turn on their saviours as Lehder's mind control kicks in. With a fully armed nuclear submarine under their control Cody has to prevent a potential disaster, then he & his team head for Lehder himself & the corrupt Government officials who fund & allow his work...This British Bulgarian co-production was co-written & directed by Anthony Hickox, to be honest I wasn't expecting that much from Submerged considering the crap Steven Seagal has been churning out lately but I was fairly pleasantly surprised here as I though Submerged was a decent enough straight-to-video/DVD action thriller that wasted an hour or two harmlessly enough. The first hour of Submerged is rather enjoyable in a fun action film sort of way, it moves along at a great pace, there's plenty of action albeit quite low budget & it's good fun. Unfortunately once the shoot-out in the submarine is over & Seagal & co make it back to dry land Submerged turns into a rather dry & somewhat confusing political thriller that ditches the pace & action seen earlier for lots of exposition that is too complex for it's own good. There are double agents, double crosses, mind control, bad guy's, good guy's, shoot-outs, fights & you never quite know what anyone's motivation is or why they are doing what they are. The script is to blame here, it just isn't clear enough & is far too muddled to make complete coherent sense & with a film like Submereged the average viewer just wants to see lots of fights & explosions rather than a muddled plot that made me lose interest. The character's are average for this type of stuff with Seagal his usual by-the-numbers action film clichéd hard as nails dude with a military background who never loses a fight or gets shot in a shoot-out & the main villain is also especially bland this time out. So, the first half is good clean violent Seagal action film fun while the second half is a dry, confused & rather dull political thriller that is worth a watch for sure but ultimately won't totally satisfy fans of either genre.The part set inside the claustrophobic interior of the submarine with Seagal taking out the bad guy's could have been a mini fifteen minute Under Siege 3 & this is when the film is at it's best. The action is pretty good, there's plenty of violence, blood splatter as people are shot, a car chase, an exploding dam & submarine & Seagal single handedly taking out a tank. Like you do. Seagal is overweight in this & he again wears a long baggy coat to try & hide it while the other members of his team wear proper tight fitting military uniforms. Some of the modern souped up directing techniques are a bit annoying at times, from slow motion to fast motion to quick cuts & edits to colour tinting.Apparently filmed in Sofia in Bulgaria this had a supposed budget of about $12,000,000 & the film has decent production values although the model aeroplane & submarines look terrible. Steven Seagal seems to be almost entirely dubbed in this & when his character talks there are loads of reaction shots of other character's or establishing shots of the surroundings, ex-footballer Vinnie Jones is quite funny while Gary Daniels is alright.Submerged was a lot better than I had expected, it ain't no masterpiece & it's a shame the pace & action of the first half is jettisoned in favour of a muddled thriller but all in all not a bad effort from Seagal & one of his better straight-to-video/DVD flicks.

I'm Uruguayan, and in fact, I'm not offended at all... I mean, OK, it has a lot of misconceptions, and I think it is actually funny that they put mayan ruins in Uruguay, the Italian instructions that were supposed to be in Spanish (and a latino validating this!! simply priceless) and also the fact that there is a port to the NORTH of Montevideo? I mean, if you researched Uruguay enough, at least look at a map and see that the coast is in the SOUTH.However, I'm really sick of my fellow Uruguayans being offended with everything (The Colbert Report incident as well... come on!! It was a joke!! put it in context!!!)... it is just a made-for-TV movie, nothing else, so don't expect to much. Also, quit attacking Americans for portraing us as terrorists... as far as I'm aware, the US government didn't play any role in the production of this film.IN synthesis: loosen up!!!!!