Take this ship to Cuba (February 2004).

The Bruce Willis film 'Die Hard' generated a whole new batch of film making featuring the occupants of hijacked buildings being rescued by maverick cops and/or special forces. In an effort to add a new twist to this film makers started transferring this breed of action movie to ships, Steven Seagal's 'Under Siege' being a prime example, and this is what this article concentrates on.

The first thing to say is that this genre of films is most certainly not new. 'Assault on a Queen' had a plot line of this kind back in 1966 and I'm sure that was not the first. One of the more recent films is 'Counterstrike' a made for TV film starring Rob Estes ( who seems to appear in a lot of TV movie these days) as a special forces maverick. He is aided and abetted by Joe Lando (his on screen brother) and Rachael Blakely who plays the most glamourous ship security officer in the history of the world. The action is set aboard the QE2 (another favoured locale for this type of film) and involves the hijacking of the ship whilst the US president (a woman) is on board.

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The head of the terrorists is a Taiwanese martial arts actress Maggie Chang, played by the impossibly gorgeous Marie Matiko. There's some plot about Taiwan independence from China and a rogue submarine but with the surfeit of eye candy on display that all passed me by. All I know is that Rob Estes parachuted in to save the President with the help of Joe and Rachael and poor Maggie had her ambitions for Taiwan trodden into the dust.

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Another film of this kind is the 1995 HK action film 'Red Wolf'. The plot follows standard guidelines. A bunch of crooks board the rob the safe and get their comeuppance by the end of the film. In the mid 1990's the HK movie industry was coming to the attention of the western world for it's unique slant on the action genre. To a certain extent this film reverses the trend by taking the plot from 'Under Siege' and transferring it eastwards. There is still an abundance of OOT action which we have come to expect from HK films of this era but mixed with misplaced humour the film is a strange hybrid.

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The real reason to watch the film is to see the two HK starlets of the film, Christy Chung and Elaine Lui. Christy plays the good girl and Elaine plays the psychopathic criminal. From my point of view it was worth buying the DVD just to watch Elaine transform from cabaret singer to cackling criminal.

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I know I've reviewed it previously but the Jim Wynorski film 'Final Voyage' fits firmly into the Shipjack genre. Not a very good action film but at least it gives me the excuse to show a few more stills of Claudia Christian as the head honcho to the crooks big boss (Ice T).

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