Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
Short description
Casey Ryback, a former Navy SEAL, is travelling by train with his niece when mercenaries seize the passenger service. The man behind the takeover is Travis Dane, a technology specialist who has turned the train into a mobile command post for a weapons satellite he controls. From it he threatens the United States government with destruction on the East Coast unless his demands are met. Ryback, the one passenger still free of the hijackers, becomes the only person able to stop the plan.
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory is a 1995 American action thriller directed by Geoff Murphy. It was his fifth feature, following Freejack and coming before Fortress 2. The screenplay is by Richard Hatem and Matt Reeves, and the producers are Arnon Milchan, Steve Perry and Steven Seagal, who also stars as Ryback. Eric Bogosian plays Dane, with Katherine Heigl, Morris Chestnut, Everett McGill and Brenda Bakke among the cast.
Made for about 60 million dollars, the film took roughly 104 million dollars worldwide, a solid commercial return for its budget. Audience responses have been moderate, with a rating of 5.6 from around 53,000 votes on IMDb and 5.9 from over a thousand votes on TMDB. A critics' rating of 4.7 from 31 reviews places it slightly below the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Jeff Goldblum and Julian Sands turned down the role of Travis Dane.
- Initially, John Peters was going to produce the film and wanted to bring back the character played by Gary Busey. However, he was assured that Busey's character had died in the first film, and Peters left the project.
- In an interview with Playboy magazine, Sandra Taylor hinted that she didn't know what fate awaited her character, Kelly, until she saw the finished film. This was because two versions had been filmed: in one, Kelly was shot in the knee, and in the other, she was shot and killed.
- During the preparation for filming the scenes on the railroad, sparks from under the locomotive's wheels caused fires in the areas adjacent to the tracks. In order to carry out the filming, the locomotive had to be modified.
- The phrase “fortune favors the prepared mind,” spoken in the film by Travis Dane, was borrowed from the French scientist Louis Pasteur.
- Filming took place from September 14, 1994, to January 18, 1995.
- The film features GP7 locomotive No. 1801, owned by Missouri Central Railroad at the time of filming. Ten years before the release of this film, this locomotive (then owned by Alaska Railroad) appeared in another well-known railway film – 'Runaway Train' (1985). Currently, this locomotive operates under the designation RRC-1800.
- The scene with the destroyed industrial plant in China was taken from unused footage from another Steven Seagal film, 'On Deadly Ground' (1994).
- In one episode of the film, the scientist terrorist Travis Dane says, 'Without the disk, this train is just 20 tons of scrap metal.' In reality, the total weight of the train was 2000 tons. It is also mentioned several times that Dane intends to blow up 8 million people in Washington. However, at that time, Washington had a population of just over half a million, while 8 million people lived in New York, approximately 400 km from Washington.
- At the very beginning of the film, during the launch of the 'Grazer' satellite from the space shuttle, the payload bay doors open simultaneously with the separation of the spacecraft. In reality, this could not have happened. Spacecraft launches can only be carried out with the doors fully open (to avoid collisions with the control system).
- The film depicts the launch of a 'Pegasus' anti-satellite missile from a Northrop B-2 Spirit bomber. In reality, the winged Pegasus rocket is launched from a modified Lockheed L-1011 Stargazer aircraft, owned by Orbital Sciences Corporation.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
