Under Siege 2: Dark Territory

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Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory movie poster
Directed by	Geoff Murphy
Produced by	Arnon Milchan, Steve Perry, Steven Seagal
Written by	J.F. Lawton (characters), Roger Hatem, Matt Reeves
Starring	Steven Seagal, Eric Bogosian, Katherine Heigl, Morris Chestnut, Everett McGill
Music by	Basil Poledouris
Cinematography	Robbie Greenberg
Editing by	Michael Tronick
Distributed by	Warner Brothers Pictures
Release date(s)	July 14, 1995
Running time	99 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$60,000,000 (estimated)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory is a 1995 action film, and is the sequel to Under Siege.

[edit] Synopsis

As in the film that preceded it, Steven Seagal plays Casey Ryback, an ex-Navy SEAL, who is traveling on board a passenger train from Denver to Los Angeles with his niece to pay their repsects to her recently deceased father (Ryback's brother). The train is hijacked by a group of terrorists led by a brilliant rogue ex-government electronics expert, in order to take control of his former project, a satellite weapon known as Grazer One. The terrorists commandeer the train because two military scientists who know the access codes to the satellite are aboard and the train serves as a mobile control base so the terrorist's position can't be tracked. The terrorists offer their Mid-East investors the destruction of the U.S Eastern Seaboard for a $1 billion fee. To demonstrate their sincerity, they destroy a Chinese chemical weapons factory and at the request of one investor, a passenger plane carrying his ex-wife. Ryback must try to elude the heavily armed guards to take back control of the train and rescue the hostages including his niece. His problems are compounded because of the mountainous location (the eponymous 'Dark Territory') since no radio communication with the train is possible and because millions of lives are at risk if he fails.

[edit] Trivia

• Roger Hatem and Matt Reeves adapted their script Dark Territory, which they had sold to Richard Donner's company for $1 million, into a sequel to Under Siege.

• Jon Peters left from being a producer after learning that Gary Busey's character was killed off in the first film.

• The UK version of the film, although rated 18, was cut for violence by 2 minutes.

• Steven Segal's character, Casey Ryback, uses an Apple Newton MessagePad prominently in key scenes during the movie, especially its ability to fax documents.

• The railroad passenger cars were built especially for the movie by Colorado Railcar Company and are still in existence today.

• The scene of the destroyed industrial facility in China uses unused footage from On Deadly Ground (1994) (also a Seagal Movie). In "On Deadly Ground" it's the burning Aegis Oil facility.

• Julian Sands and Jeff Goldblum were among those who refused the role of Travis Dane.

• Travis Dane's signature line, "Chance favors the prepared mind," is a phrase originally said by Louis Pasteur.

• The countdown timer blip sound effect on the computer used by Eric Bogosian (Travis Dane) is a blip sound from a Motorola-brand pager.

• Travis Dane's notebook computer was a Toshiba T4600C which featured a 33MHz 486 Processor, 4MB of RAM, and a VGA display.

• Filmmakers pioneered a new technique that enabled them to film all the interior train scenes (practically all the film) in the studio. Tennis balls glued on the studio walls were used as reference points to allow computers to insert footage of Colorado scenery, even when the camera moved around.

• During initial test runs for filming of the external scenes, sparks from the locomotives caused flash fires along the railroad. The locomotives had to be fitted with spark arresters before filming could begin.

• In the final scene at the cemetary, we see Segal's character is now a full lieutenant instead of a chief petty officer.

[edit] External links

• Under Siege 2: Dark Territory at the Internet Movie Database

• Under Siege 2: Dark Territory at Rotten Tomatoes

• Under Siege 2: Dark Territory trailer