U.S. Seals II (2001)

U.S. Seals II (2001)
aka: U.S. Seals 2: The Ultimate Force; Close Combat

 

Starring: Michael Worth, Marshall Teague, Damian Chapa, Karen Kim, Sophia Crawford, Kate Connor, George Chung, Andy Cheng, Hakim Alston, Dan Southworth, Mitch Gould
Director: Isaac Florentine
Action Director: Andy Cheng

 

I find it interesting that while U.S. Seals II is considered a minor classic among martial arts movie enthusiasts, nobody really remembers the first one. I don’t think very many people actually saw it, and those who did…well…Let’s take a look at an IMDB review (courtesy of Gideon40):

 

This has to be the king of bad action movies. The acting is really bad and the action scenes are repetitive and boring. What I found most irritating about this 'film' is that the navy seals don't use any tactics whatsoever-they always dispose of their enemies by simply gunning down the first enemy they see. Some parts are just over the top stupid, for instance during the part where the seals and the bad guys chase each other in armored carriers around a marketplace, a car just, out of the blue, drives from off screen, gets launched into the air and blows up for no reason. What kind of random stunt was that? That wasn't the first time either. Later on an enemy jeep goes up a crude ramp, explodes for no reason and flies into the water. Also the director has some strange fascination with objects suspended in the air that the good guys use to kill the bad guys. The first time, they use a block hanging on a crane to demolish a building with bad guys in it. The second time, they shoot a crane with another block suspended, which drops onto the enemies. The third time, they, using an innaccurate machine gun from a long distance, shoot another crane with a truck suspended below that drops about 6 meters and explodes onto the bad guys. This is just the icing of the cake, of course, because during most of the action sequences the seals are fighting literally an army of bad guys using weapons they aren't supposed to be using, while constantly exposing themselves the enemy fire. I'm going to list some of the most dumb scenes below.

 1. The good guys can run straight towards a pillbox with about 4 machinegunners firing at them, yet not get hit a single time. They hid behind a tree, throw a grenade without even looking and guess what? It flies through the slit in the pillbox and blows it up.

2. Throughout the entire movie the seals never, ever, have to reload their rifles. I estimate that they fired about 1000+ bullets, yet there isn't a single scene of them reloading, nor do they run out of ammo.

3. The seals are deadly accurate with their weapons, and the enemies couldn't hit a house even if they were inside one. Every grenade, every burst of gunfire from the seals always hits, and only one bullet the army of enemies fires actually hits a seal. I hate to say this but I nearly slept by the final battle because it had the same turnout.

4. The seals can't get killed by explosions. One scene had shells, missiles and rockets exploding all around them, and despite the fact that most of them exploded within a radius of less than 5 feet around them, not one seal got fazed or hurt. Yet their grenades explode with a tiny bang but can kill enemies several meters away.

5. The seals behave in an extremely barbaric manner. When interrogating the bad guys, they bash, punch, smash, and torture them to get answers. If I were a seal I'd be offended at the way this film portrays me.

 

And so it goes. One would assume that this first U.S. Seals films is a compilation of all the worst Hollywood action clichés presented with the utmost incompetence.

Somehow, Isaac Florentine—best known for Desert Kickboxer and Savate at this point--got his hands on the material and, for the sequel, made a straight-up martial arts film using an ingenious premise: the terrorists have set up shop on a Russian island (played by Bulgaria) contaminated by “methane-based” chemical waste, so that any spark would cause the place to explode. What a wonderful excuse for the Navy SEALs to put down their automatic weapons and engage in fisticuffs for 90 minutes!

The movie opens with our SEAL team, led by Casey (Michael Worth, of To Be the Best and Enter the Shootfighter), breaking up an arms deal. Some of Casey’s men are killed during the ensuing shootout, which is bad enough. To make things worse, his second-in-command, the psychotic Frank Ratliff (Street Fighter’s Damian Chapa), disobeys orders and puts a bullet in their target’s head, execution-style. But that is only the start of Casey’s problems.

Back on the Naval Base in Okinawa, Casey and Ratliff are getting some R&R and visiting their master’s dojo as well. One evening, the two men are at a bar when they catch their Sensei’s (Rush Hour’s George Chung) hot daughter, Nikki (Karen Kim, of The Silent Force and Killing Cupid), getting down and dirty with another sailor. Sensing she’s drunk off her ass, Ratliff offers to drive her home. Shortly afterward, Casey finds her body and discovers that Ratliff killed her after attempting to rape her. The latter gets away and disappears, and Sensei Matsumura commits hara-kiri in shame. Nikki’s twin sister, Kamiko (also Karen Kim), shuts herself off emotionally from Casey. This is the last straw: Casey retires from the armed forces and becomes a civilian.

A few years later, Ratliff resurfaces as a terrorist who kidnaps a famed nuclear physicist, Dr. Jane Burrows (Kate Connor, of Humanoid and Snake Island). He holds her hostage on an abandoned island which the Soviets had used to manufacture chemical weapons. A series of mishaps resulted in the contamination of the place with flammable, but non-toxic, gases. In other words, the entire place would go up in smoke at the first gunshot. Army officer Major Nathan Donner (Marshall Teague, of The Bad Pack and Special Forces) was responsible for Dr. Burrows, so he heads over to the Navy in order to get a SEAL team to help him lead a rescue mission. Admiral Patterson (Burnell Tucker, of Honor Bound) recommends that they get Casey out of retirement: he’d just love to settle the score with Radliff once and for all.

Given the circumstances, Casey is going to need a team who’s better with fists and melee weapons than with guns. His team consists of Born-Again convict Finley (Daniel Southworth, of Mortal Kombat: Legacy and “Power Rangers Time Force”); professional hitman Omar (Hakim Alston, of Mortal Kombat); Harper (Stuntman Mitch Gould, of Ultraviolet and The Rundown); and Byrd (Plamen Zahov, of Shark Zone and Shark Attack 3: Megalodon). Finally, Kamiko decides to put her feelings for Casey aside and join the party, her katana and military-grade crop top in hand.

Of course, their presence on the island will eventually be discovered and our heroes will have to contend with an army of machete-wielding Eurotrash henchmen, plus martial arts heavy-hitters Radliff; his British girlfriend, Sophia (Sophia Crawford, of Angel Terminators 2 and Escape from Brothel); and Artie (Andy Cheng). Let the games begin!

I’m curious as to how it would play out in real life if American Special Forces had to infiltrate a locale in which the use of firearms was downright impossible. U.S. Seals II uses movie logic, so the retired guy is able to take up his former position immediately and hire whomever he wants (i.e. a convict, a known hitman, a civilian, etc.) to join him on the mission. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t play out that way, although I wonder if there would be some sort of screening for the SEALs (and Rangers and Green Berets and whatever) were the best at personal combat for the mission.

The film is mainly an excuse for a series of Hong Kong-inspired martial arts sequences choreographed by Andy Cheng, a former member of Jackie Chan’s Stuntman Association. Cheng worked with Chan on films like Mr. Nice Guy; Who Am I?; the first two Rush Hour movies; Shanghai Noon; and The Tuxedo. While not all of those represent Chan’s best work, one can imagine that someone would need a lot of martial talent to work for Jackie in the first place. Cheng has since gone on to become a big Hollywood fight choreographer, working on popular films like Twilight; The Rundown starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; Olympus Has Fallen; and most recently, Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. As of this moment (March 2023), Cheng is set to choreograph the action scenes in the live-action adaptation of the Saint Seiya anime.

After a few short dust-ups here and there, the action really begins in earnest at the halfway point, when our heroes are ambushed by an army of blade-brandishing Bulgarian stuntmen. You would assume that a group brawl choreographed by a Jackie Chan team member, whose work has featured many of the best one-on-many fights of all time, would be nothing less than stellar. And you would be right. Our heroes have to punch, kick, hack and slash their way through dozens of sword-swinging Slavs, which they do in style. Knives, staves, swords and even scarves get used over the course of this sequence. This is probably the best few-vs-many fight I’ve seen in a Western movie since Jeff Falcon took on the Russian army in Six-String Samurai (or any randomly-selected fight from Drive). And this is no short Hollywood kerfuffle. It goes on for a good seven minutes or so.

The finale is a pair of parallel sword fights: Michael Worth takes on Damian Chapa, while Karen Kim engages Sophia Crawford in the best female katana duel since Cynthia Khan threw down with Kim Maree Penn in In the Line of Duty V—notice how both films have a female Asian protagonist against an evil blonde…hmm. Oh, and just ignore the fact that steel banging on steel might produce a spark that would ignite the island; Isaac Florentine and company sure did. Worth and Chapa also break out the acrobatic swordplay, although they eventually disarm each other and go for fisticuffs, too. There are some nice spin kicks and wire-assisted falls on display, and the choreography is just as good, if not a smidge better, than what The Matrix had given us two years before. It certainly beats out the Hong Kong flavor of contemporaries like Charlie’s Angels and Romeo Must Die.

As a mindless action film with no basis in reality, U.S. Seals II largely succeeds. My only real beef with the film has to do with the sound effects. Everything the characters do, even just turning their head, is punctuated with the exaggerated Whoosh effect you hear in old school chopsockey films. Every. Single. Movement. It eventually drags the movie into self-parody. Think of the kung fu parody sequence in Wayne’s World 2 and multiply that by twenty. That’s the level of sound effect exaggeration you’re getting here. If you can get past that (plus some dodging acting from some of the supporting actors and Hollywood action logic), you’ll get one of the better examples of Hong Kong-style action in a post-Matrix film.