Submerged

• Directed by Anthony Hickox
• May 31, 2005

A top mercenary railroaded into prison must help stop a plot to use mind control.

To be fair, Steven Seagal has made some enjoyable guilty pleasures during his career and one undeniable classic (Under Siege). Submerged most certainly does not fit into either of those categories. And Seagal’s part is minimal in this movie.

Doing a little bit of reading on this film it sounds like Hickox, who has some great B-movies under his belt, had some great ideas for what he originally wanted to do but once Seagal came onboard his desire to be in a completely different movie turned this into a mess. Originally it was supposed to be alien creatures on a sub exclusively and then it wasn’t because Seagal.

The first mistake Submerged makes is explaining everything that’s going on in the opening credits of the movie. We know it’s mind control and we get that info mixed among shots intended to make Steven Seagal look tough and bad ass. It ruins any surprise or investment in the plot or any impact the first demonstration of mind control in this movie has.

Most likely because of the hefty changes to the whole script this movie is slow and confusing. The characters are relatively interchangeable. While I know a few of them died during the course of the movie, those deaths were done so poorly it took me a moment to realize they were not in the film any longer. Or maybe the actors just realized this was a shit storm and decided to not show up for filming anymore.

Clearly Seagal felt a strong need for his ego to get a massive stroking. We keep hearing how badass his character of Chris Cody (currently serving time in Ryback Naval Prison) is. But that does not marry well with the heft and relatively slow-moving individual we see in full body shots where we can say with certainty it is Seagal.

And there are effects shots in Submerged that look absolutely atrocious. I wasn’t expecting high production values, but I’ve seen equivalent production values in what are clearly no budget films. The drone was probably among the crappiest practical effects I’ve ever seen in any film. And they could afford a chopper for close-up shots, but they couldn’t get a few seconds of footage for a distance shot? Instead they used a computer generated helicopter that clearly did not belong with graphics straight from Call of Duty.

Vinnie Jones as Henry is the best actor in this movie. He makes the most out of every moment he has on the screen and tries his best to polish his part in this turd. Not that I can say much about his character as all characters here are relatively the same. Jones just puts on a show each time you see him in comparison to the actor whose name is most prominent.

Submerged gets its name from the midpoint of the film where the assembled team (a discount version of the Dirty Dozen) uses a submarine to escape. Various characters drop the film’s title at several points during this section, but submarines are not at all important to the story. In this case it was just a convenient method of escape which makes the title choice really dumb.

That moment comes and goes very quickly and because of that the movie feels like a few different ideas stitched together. Somebody thought these disparate elements were all cool and decided to connect them with a story. Not a bad idea but you need a good story and good actors and good execution and Submerged really doesn’t have much of that if any.

There isn’t much actual story here. A great deal of what occurs is padding to stretch this out. I give it maybe 45 minutes worth of narrative and that’s with all the necessities in order to communicate necessary plot elements. But they do the best they can to draw that 45 minutes out into 90. Good or bad they made it a movie certainly.

The purported plot of mind control is an intriguing idea. The use of the submarine to escape is an intriguing idea. Political assassination can be a very good idea. Releasing a guy that was railroaded in the prison to do a dirty job can produce a good movie. However, none of them come together to do just that in Submerged.

Ultimately Submerged is one of those things that you should watch if you’re into self-flagellation and have a serious masochistic streak. Otherwise move on.