Crash Dive

Small budget ripoff of Under Siege (minus Erika Eleniak topless) staring Michael Dudikoff and produced/directed by Andrew Stevens.

This non-entity of a movie doesn't deserve a long review, so here are my brief thoughts. You will have seen every single element of this movie done better elsewhere. It is Die Hard and Under Siege on a submarine, yet so much worse than any of the films in either series. It is utterly predictable and totally unmemorable apart from the single worst shootout I have ever seen in a movie. This shootout manages to be completely mesmerising due to the total lack of jeopardy and the catastrophic editing. It is staggeringly poorly done, however, for this hilariously bad sequence I have added an extra star.

As far as I know, this is the first movie to place the DIE HARD scenario on a submarine. Michael Dudikoff plays James Carter, an ex-Navy SEAL (what else?) who reluctantly agrees to save the day when terrorists seize control of a nuclear submarine, the same sub he designed. The movie has a good deal of action that keeps the film going, and the production values (for a B-movie) are pretty good. The use of footage from the producers' other movies for the film's underwater sub action and the special effects of a missile destroying part of a New York skyscraper are a bit distracting, but everything else is pretty well done. It would have been nice to have J*A*G*'s Catherine Bell in a bigger part. The story isn't deep or anything, but it has a good pace that never drags, the action scenes are well-choreographed, and the music has a big-budget feel that helps the film. All-in-all, one of Dudikoff's better 90s films. Look for TITUS star Christopher Titus as the sub's comedic, celebrity-impersonating sonar man.

This movie was by far the worst Techno-thriller type movie I have ever seen, I suffered through the entire movie to see who was the brave soul that allowed his/her name to be attached to the technical adviser's slot and who the continuity director was. Now I know that everyone is not an accuracy nut like I am, but having been in the navy, it would be nice to have the film stay in the ball park. The hardest thing about this film to believe is the fact that of the 90 minutes that it ran, 45 of it was re-hashed from other movies, and the majority of those 45 minutes were from "Crimson Tide." I guess sampling is alive and well in the movie industry as well.

This was a really bad movie. It uses every cliché ever known to man, the 'romance' was even less unbelievable than most bad movies, and it was completely militarily inaccurate. Case in point: Catherine Bell's character Lt. Cmdr Lisa Starks was referred to as "Lieutenant" by all other characters. And she answered the phone with "Lieutenant Stark". Uh hello. A Lt. Cmdr is always addressed as "Commander." You'd think that even without any sort of original story line that they would have at least tried to get the technical details right Don't bother seeing this one. U-571 is much better. And Stealth is much more entertaining even if its kinda cliché too.