Family Under Siege

Caught this on a day following all night on the phone to Europe - so just "vegged-out" and watched half-awake. Half-awake is quite sufficient to follow this story.

In the midst of these psychos pointing large revolvers at them, enough dynamite planted in the attic to demolish the famous bridge spanning the River Kwai --- and the protagonists assurances they are intending to blow them up --- Mom finds time to calmly see if the bad guys won't let her kids get some sleep. She later engages in a quiet, but stern, monologue, lecturing her somewhat rebellious daughter about life's choices, and her need to become more thoughtful about same.

This story does look like a soap opera with many disjointed scenes, and another person who commented here hit the proverbial nail on the head, describing this flick as a combination of "Die Hard" and "Leave it to Beaver."

Daniel Baldwin seemed as if he might nod-off at any moment, and his young confederate (alluding back to "...Beaver" again) seemed like Eddie Haskell with a revolver.

All-in-all, it looked as if it might have been written by several different ("C") students in a script writing class, different aspects, loosely connected.

There is even an intended surprise towards the end, but by that time the complete lack on any empathy towards these characters as presented makes this entirely moot. Give it 3*, rather than 1 or 2, simply because it is one of those presentations providing a minimum amount of fascination in its mediocrity.

This movie is so bad, I couldn't take my eyes off of it.

Mel Harris looks like the best actress in the universe next to all those other morons. Baldwin? What a joke. I have heard about how bad he supposedly is. Today I experienced it - this guy is a disaster.

And the director? Never, EVER(!) let him make another movie! What a waste of time...

I can't believe anybody paid money to see this "movie", nevertheless bought the DVD. Was there any company brave enough to publish this thing on DVD? I hope not...

Got to be the worst I have ever seen.

"Vishnu has of late toned down his huge frame and he fits the part perfectly. Though he is a digital media professional, his character uses more of brain and muscles instead of technology. Though his performance is not really up to the mark, he pulls off stunts beautifully. On the other hand, Praneetha does little than walking around in mini- skirts. JD Chakravarthy gets to play the villain and he does his part well and with ease. Nagineedu in a brief role makes his presence felt. Usually, the norm is that in films that Vishnu produces, the technical values are high. "

If you're a Daniel Baldwin or a "Baldwin brothers" fan, *maybe* you'll go la dee da over this thing they called a movie.

The only person in "A Family Under Siege" aka "Dynamite" worth their pay is Mel Harris. The movie is among the worst I've ever seen. Mel Harris has kept up to her standard excellent performance. No one else in the cast of "A Family Under Siege" is worth mentioning. The writing and screen play is the worst. No one in the movie was worth their pay.

I wouldn't watch it for free - which I did. This was so bad, that I know I won't watch it again "by accident". It was too bad to ever forget any part of it.

Too many threads weaving too many fractured scenes in a dissembled conglomerate of randomly disparate pieces of meaningless dialogue make this a muddled concoction of a cinema buffet of tasteless morsels more of a snack for a buffoon.

This mixture of Die Hard and Leave It to Beaver leaves much to be desired as action in one place seems so unnecessarily unrelated to the main action in the other. The threat of needing to kill an entire family by blowing up their home with them in it over a mere collection of gold coins does not equate with the need to blow up a building in Die Hard along with all the hostages for 700 million dollars in bearer bonds.

The bad guys at their best are exaggerations of futility and at their worst are unbelievable as weak-minded antagonists. Melinda Clark would have been better cast as Cat Woman and Derek Hamilton as a schizophrenic, psychotic misanthrope all mouth and no menace. Mel Harris does a credible job as a caring parent but does not show enough of the fear that would be more natural for a parent in that situation with pistols aimed at them in a continuous "I wanna shoot you but won't" series of idle threats.

Cameron Bowen as Nick is the MacGyver of the family with unique and fearless ingenuity despite his seemingly superfluous asthma while Michelle Jackson portrays one of more credibility had she been in Ferris Buhler's Day Off. As for Fred lane, he might as well have been MIA since he had no meaningfully significant role other than to be there as a reference.

The shift from scene to scene, house to house, set to set makes this more of a bad soap than a good action-less mystery. The title is a misnomer but it is certainly better than the original, Dynamite, because with either one, as a success, certainly all blows up in their collective faces.