There
is not a lot of room to do the splits on a submarine, but fortunately JCVD has
plenty of others moves. As CIA counter-intelligence operative Scott Wheeler, he
has been framed and renditioned to a super-secret sub-bound interrogation
center by the very turncoat he was trying to root out. Basically, its Under Siege on a submarine (not that
that’s a bad thing) in Pasha Patriki’s Black
Water (trailer
here),
which is now available on DirecTV and opens this Friday in New York.
Wheeler
and his partner-lover Melissa Ballard have recovered an encrypted flash drive
with some kind of NOC-listy Macguffin from the treasonous cabal, but alas, the
bad guys have the drop on them. They take out Ballard, but they have to capture
Wheeler alive to recover the drive. Of course, he can take whatever the
by-the-book Agent Ferris can dish out, at least until the legit interrogator is
whacked by Wheeler’s old mentor, Edward Rhodes. By doing so, he pretty much
reveals himself as the mole.
Wheeler,
along with the two surviving honest CIA agents will play Die Hard games with Rhodes and the mercenaries administering the
prison portion of the sub. Strict firewalls are in place sealing off the
military crew from the civilian wardens, but both Wheeler and Rhodes will try
to devise ways of making contact. Wheeler also finds an ally in “Marco,” the huge
mysterious German prisoner in the cell next to his.
Even
though Black Water is all about
rendition and off-the-books facilities, it doesn’t seem to give a gosh darn
about any of that, as long as the good guys are in control. No doubt, critics
from The Guardian and Pravda will give it a stern lecture
about the wasted opportunity to make political statements, but Patriki and
screenwriter Chad Law understand everyone’s time is better spent administering
beatdowns to duplicitous traitors.
Van
Damme looks a little weathered around the eyes these days, but physically he is
still probably the best conditioned of his class of 1980s action stars. Frankly,
it is pretty easy to buy into him as a lean, mean fighting machine, unlike Steven
Seagal. Dolph Lundgren also still looks big and muscular—and he continues to
generate good will with his affable screen presence. Frankly, we think it is
high time for the Academy to recognize Lundgren for his contributions to action
cinema and his activism fighting human trafficking, but don’t hold your breath.
As
a bonus, the supporting cast is pretty solid, especially by genre standards. Al
Sapienza chews the scenery with a fair degree of verve as the villainous
Rhodes. John Posey looks and sounds spot on as the submarine skipper, Captain
Darrows and Courtney B Turk generates plenty of heat with Van Damme as Ballard.
Van
Damme and Lundgren really deserve credit, because they keep working regularly
and they sufficiently take care of themselves and their images to maintain
their action hero cred. Black Water is
a fine example of that. Scoff all you like, but it is hard to resist the film’s
meathead charms. Recommended for old school fans, Black Water opens this Friday (6/29) in New York, at the Village East.
