Under Siege (4K UHD Review)
Director
Andrew DavisRelease Date(s)
1992 (January 6, 2026)Studio(s)
Warner Bros. (Arrow Video)- Film/Program Grade: B
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
Under Siege isn’t just an entertaining action-adventure, it’s a fascinating historical document—although not necessarily in a way that anyone involved could have possibly foreseen. To be fair, it does document some real American history that would have been obvious at the time, like the decommissioning of the U.S.S. Missouri on March 31, 1992 (director Andrew Davis actually got his cameras aboard in order to shoot parts of the ceremony for the film). Screenwriter J.F. Lawton’s story was also inspired by President George H.W. Bush’s unilateral 1991 orders to remove all tactical nuclear weapons from American surface ships, attack submarines, and land-based naval aircraft. It was a decision that made perfect strategic sense as post-Cold War tensions eased, and it also eliminated a major security risk for the ships that had been carrying those weapons. Lawton’s script for Under Siege offered a fictional scenario that demonstrated some of those risks: a group of non-state actors take the aforementioned Missouri hostage in order to steal some of those weapons. He blended fact and fiction together in a way that reflected real-world fears.
Yet there’s no escaping the fact that more than three decades later, Under Siege is now a historical document of a very different sort: it’s an invaluable record of a nearly forgotten period in cinematic history when Steven Seagal was not just a major box office draw, but even a respected one. As hard as this may be to believe for anyone under the age of 30, the star of the notorious direct-to-video debacle Attack Force (and the more recent recipient of Vladimir Putin’s “Order of Friendship”) was once poised on the brink of superstardom. Andrew Davis had already played a key role in Seagal’s upward trajectory, helming the actor’s solid debut effort Above the Law. Seagal’s follow-ups Hard to Kill, Marked for Death, and Out for Justice had all been successful enough, but Warner Bros. was eager to reunite him with Davis, and Lawton’s script (originally titled Dreadnought) seemed like the perfect project for both of them—which it unquestionably was, since the results proved to be Seagal’s highest-grossing film to date. (Okay, who are we kidding here: it will always be his highest-grossing film ever.)
Seagal plays Casey Ryback, who is serving as the cook aboard the Missouri on its final voyage. Unbeknownst to everyone except for Captain T.J. Adams (Patrick O’Neal), Ryback is a former Navy SEAL who was busted for insubordination. The ship’s executive officer Commander Peter Krill (Gary Busey) can’t stand Ryback, but the cook is under the captain’s protection. Still, Ryback ends up in trouble again, and is locked up by the XO while some outside entertainment is flown aboard the ship. That includes a blues band led by William Strannix (Tommy Lee Jones), as well as Playboy Playmate Jordan Tate (Erika Eleniak), who is intended as the centerpiece of a surprise for the captain. That surprise turns to shock as terrorists take over the ship, leaving Ryback and some unexpected assistants to try and take it back. Under Siege also stars Colm Meaney, Andy Romano, Nick Mancuso, Dale Dye, Raymond Cruz, and Bernie Casey.
Other than the footage from the decommissioning ceremony and some establishing shots at sea, the one thing that Under Siege doesn’t star is the actual Missouri. Obviously, shooting the bulk of the film on the historical landmark where the Japanese surrendered in 1945 was a non-starter. That offered some challenges in need of a creative solution, but Davis got lucky in that regard—or to be more precise, he brought his luck with him. Davis is a Chicago native who had used the city as a backdrop for most of his previous films, and he had already established a stock company of Chicago actors. Since he couldn’t bring Under Siege to Chicago, he brought as much of Chicago as he could to Under Siege, including some of those actors. One of them was former Chicago cop Joe Kosala, who suggested to Davis that the U.S.S. Alabama, which was on display as a floating museum in Mobile, Alabama, might make a good substitute. The rest, as they say, was history.
Despite the fact that the Alabama is a South Dakota class battleship while the Missouri is Iowa class, measuring 200 feet longer and displacing 20,000 more tons than the Alabama, the bait and switch works surprisingly well. That’s a testament to Davis, cinematographer Frank Tidy, production designer Bill Kenney, visual effects supervisor William Mesa, and their team of editors. The combination of two different real ships, sets, and visual effects all tie together relatively seamlessly. There’s plenty of Hollywood cheating going on, especially with the design of the sets for the ship’s interior, but it’s not something that will bother anyone who isn’t an expert on WWII-era battleships. (On the other hand, the interiors of the vintage submarine seen in the film were shot inside the U.S.S. Drum, also on display in Mobile, so they’re a little more authentic.) It doesn’t hurt that the action in Under Siege is competently staged, and Lawton’s script always keeps plenty of balls in the air, so both elements also help to tie everything else together.
The casting in Under Siege certainly doesn’t hurt, either. Busey and Jones chew scenery with abandon, Romano and Dye provide necessary gravitas, and even Eleniak is able to bring a decent amount of depth to a role that could have been cringeworthy. Yet there’s no denying the fact that the main thing that holds Under Siege together is, well, none other than Steven Seagal himself. He was never much of an actor (although he had advanced significantly since his visible discomfort with the camera in Above the Law), but he did have his own peculiar form of charisma. Casey Ryback’s troubles with authority gave Seagal the opportunity to loosen up a bit, and under the sure direction of Andrew Davis, he did just that, almost looking like he’s having fun at times. It was the beginning of the era where these kinds of action movies were often referred to as “Die Hard on a _____,” and Under Siege was indeed dubbed “Die Hard on a ship”. Yet what was lost in that facile classification was that the location wasn’t the important thing in Die Hard; instead, it was the charisma of Bruce Willis as John McClane. Seagal didn’t really bring that kind of charisma to Under Siege, but he still brought enough to help make it work.
And work it did, to the tune of a $156 million worldwide gross backed by plenty of positive reviews. That provided Seagal enough cachet in order to push Warner Bros. to let him behind the camera for his next film, On Deadly Ground—and the rest of that, as they say, nearly turned Seagal into history. (Like Stephen King before him, he learned the hard way that controlling your own cinematic destiny isn’t always a good thing.) Geoff Murphy’s 1995 sequel Under Siege 2: Dark Territory did reasonably well, but it was still the beginning of a long, painful slide into DTV obscurity for Seagal. Yet that’s why the original Under Siege remains such a fascinating historical document. Yes, Virginia, there was a time when people took Steven Seagal seriously, and even more improbably, he had earned that credibility. Without the continuing existence of Under Siege, younger generations might have a hard time believing that fact. And for older audiences, it serves as a nostalgic reminder of a bygone era when people actually went to theatres to see a Steven Seagal movie.
Cinematographer Frank Tidy shot Under Siege on 35mm film using Panavision cameras with spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release. This version is based on a 4K scan of the original camera negative that was done by Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging, with digital restoration work and grading performed by Duplitech (both Dolby Vision and HDR10 are included). The results were approved by Andrew Davis. This has already been a controversial release, so I’m just going to say something up front: it looks very, very good, and compared to the old Warner Bros. Blu-ray, it’s a revelation.
With that out of the way, it’s fair to acknowledge that the grain does appear to have been massaged in this version, but it hasn’t been erased, and fine detail hasn’t suffered in the process. One problem is that the Blu-ray was so boosted and sharpened that the grain was more prominent than it should have been, and it always looked harsh, digitally processed, and unnatural. But yes, the grain is still softened here compared to what it would have looked like on the raw negative scans, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing. (No theatrical print ever had grain that sharp and well-defined, due to generational losses from the printing process.) It varies a bit from shot to shot, but that tracks with the grain on the Blu-ray. It’s more prominent on some of the low-light scenes below deck, while it’s nearly invisible on full daylight shots above deck. There’s no information available about the stocks that Tidy used, but that variance also probably tracks with the nature of the original cinematography. Regardless, fine textures like facial details and the weave of Nick Mancuso’s suit are still nicely resolved.
In any event, the colors and contrast both look good. Under Siege isn’t exactly a colorful film in the first place, but the flesh tones do seem natural (and not monochromatic, either, with clear delineation between Seagal’s olive skin and Eliniak’s porcelain complexion). Under Siege is also a dark film at times, and while there isn’t always a ton of shadow detail, that’s probably as much due to the style of the cinematography under those conditions as it is to issues like crush. No, this isn’t a perfect 4K presentation, but it’s a good one, and it’s such an obvious improvement over Blu-ray that there’s no good reason to avoid it just because a random stranger on the Internet used the term “DNR” when talking about it. But by all means, do what you think is right.
Audio is offered in English 2.0 LPCM and Dolby Atmos, with optional English SDH subtitles. Under Siege was released just before the digital sound revolution picked up steam with Jurassic Park, so it was Dolby Stereo only—which, as a reminder, was a four-channel surround mix matrix encoded into two channels. The Warner Bros. DVD and Blu-ray both offered 5.1 Dolby Digital, although it was likely just a discrete encoding of the original four channel mix without any additional remixing. The 2.0 track here sounds like the original mix with encoded surrounds.
The Dolby Atmos track, on the other hand, is a completely new mix that was produced at Warner Bros. under the supervision of Davis. The ambient surround information hasn’t been altered significantly, but the overheads are now engaged at key moments in order to provide more immersion. They’re also used creatively during moments like when Strannix is speaking to the brass in the situation room. In 2.0 and 5.1, his voice comes from the front speakers, but in Atmos, it can be heard in the overheads, matching the way that the actors look up at where his voice should be coming from the intercom on the ceiling. The bass also may have been sweetened a bit in Atmos, but it’s still not that different than what’s available on the 2.0. Both tracks are good, but do give the Atmos version an audition before you let it default to 2.0.
Arrow’s Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD release of Under Siege is UHD only—there’s no Blu-ray included in the package. The insert is reversible, featuring the familiar theatrical poster artwork on one side and alternate unused poster artwork on the other. It also includes a slipcover with the A side artwork and a 44-page booklet featuring an essay by Vern (yes, just Vern) and a fanfiction timeline by Martyn Pedler. The following extras are included:
- Commentary with Andrew Davis and J.F. Lawton
- I'm on a Boat (With a Bomb) (HD – 19:08)
- One of the Guys (HD – 13:52)
- A Tight Ship (HD – 18:35)
- The Introvision Files (HD & Upscaled SD – 27:51)
- Trailer (UHD – 2:00)
The new commentary featuring Davis and J.F. Lawton is a little sparse at times, but it does have some amusing moments, like when Davis cheekily refers to the first shot of his lead actor as “skinny Steven Seagal.” Lawton explains how his original pitch featured a hero who really was just a cook—the script and the characters evolved significantly during development. Davis had a hand in that process, and when Gary Busey complained that his character wasn’t interesting enough, they decided to make him openly crazy. Warner Bros. also wanted more martial arts in the film, something that Seagal was trying to get away from, so it was a constant process of negotiation (the studio even opposed the title Under Siege at first since they felt that Seagal titles all needed to have three words). Davis and Lawton discuss the rest of the cast, with Davis pointing out members of his Chicago stock company that he brought with him, and they also cover some technical information like the cinematography and what was shot on sets vs. the location work on the real Alabama.
Continuing in that vein, I’m on a Boat (With a Bomb) is a new interview with Davis, who explains how the project came together, with Warner Bros. wanting to reunite him with Seagal. Davis doesn’t mince words about the actor, noting that he had become a star since their first collaboration, which made him more arrogant and he now wanted to have more control over his projects. Davis also discusses the sets, the cinematography, and the visual effects. Since he used to be a cinematographer himself, he’s always preferred not to have second units that weren’t under his own control—he wanted to be there to make sure that he got the exact angles that he had in mind.
Arrow has also added two interviews with members of the cast. One of the Guys is with Erika Eliniak, who discusses her career from her first role in E.T. to Under Siege and beyond. She says that Davis did a good job managing the competing egos at play on the set, although she’s open about her discomfort with the fact that the topless scene wasn’t in the script—she felt pressured to do it, and regrets that she didn’t push back harder at the time. A Tight Ship is with Damian Chapa, who talks about his own background, explaining that he became an actor because he loved playing characters even as a child. Under Siege was his second major film, and he says that Davis got amazing production value out of the relatively limited budget—it’s all visible onscreen.
Finally, in addition to a 4K copy of the original theatrical trailer, there’s The Introvision Files, a new interview with visual effects supervisor William Mesa. It actually opens with archival footage from the 1989 promotional video Introvision – Wizard of Aah, with a much younger Mesa giving an overview of the process and examples from films like Stand by Me. The older Mesa discusses working with Davis on Under Siege, carefully crediting all of his collaborators at Introvision along the way. There’s also some behind-the-scenes footage of the radio control F-18 being filmed flying over the ocean, which is pretty interesting.
It's not the most extensive collection of extras, but considering that previous releases of Under Siege have all been bare-bones, it’s a major upgrade on that score. It’s also a major upgrade in terms of video quality—and if you have any doubts in that regard, try comparing it to the old Blu-ray sometime. It’s an across-the-board improvement. It’s still not a perfect release, but Arrow’s 4K Ultra HD Under Siege is well worth your consideration.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).