Steven Seagal plays Chris Jones, a special service soldier who gets released from a military prison and is offered a chance of freedom by helping the U.S. government track down a scientist who performs mind-control experiments that turns people into expandable killing machines.

SUBMERGED wouldn't be your typical Steven Seagal action flick because it struggles to ride the themes of military movies like UNDER SEIGE but fails miserably as it becomes a bad shoot em' up thriller that leaves lots of holes for which director Anthony Hickox tries to seal up with some stylized direction while throwing in a dab of Seagal's Aikido combat firepower.

Even though Seagal fights and gets his hands dirty, the sequences were poorly edited to a point where his fighting shows a lack of detail of what he's doing to his enemies. The movie also suffers from bad acting and even poor lighting & coloring of the camera lenses that will make you color blind. The plot falls into the category of Playstation 2 video games like Tom Clancy's RAINBOW SIX and the METAL GEAR SOLID series. The action/shoot em' up sequences are unrealistic where you'll think you're watching a video game demo.

The character Steven Seagal plays wouldn't be anything different from his usual roles seen in previous movies except for the fact that he seemingly speaks like he's loosing his voice while trying to use a country accent. He's released from prison along with a group of buddy Navy Seals to take on a special assignment of destroying an underground compound set on a submarine where the scientist performs his mind-control experiments. The scientist holds 5 prisoners (one played by B-movie martial arts star Gary Daniels- Jackie Chan's CITY HUNTER) hostage and eventually become the victims of the mind-control.

This leaves room for lots of poorly edited shootouts and fight scenes to take place that fails to live up to Seagal's hype. One of the disappointments will explode at the fans of Gary Daniels when they witness his fight against Seagal. Daniels doesn't deliver any of his martial arts and the fight turns into a copy of UNDER SEIGE's "Seagal vs. Tommy Lee Jones" fight finale. This fight is edited with another one-on-one fight between the mind-control specialist (Christine Adams- BATMAN BEGINS) and her female foe. The skills that Gary Daniels possesses, he deserved a fair fight with Steven Seagal but instead, he becomes Seagal's defenseless sparring partner. Seagal, and his crew ditch the submarine when the scientist escapes to continue his operations.

The ending to this movie left the doors open for a possible sequel to emerge but I don't think it's necessary for this poor piece to get one unless Anthony Hickox or another filmmaker can work a better budget and provide Seagal with a better script. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Ever since HALF PAST DEAD, Seagal has been progressing his movie career in countless B-grade movies, mostly distributed by Columbia TriStar releasing them straight-to-video, where some are pretty decent while the others turn out to be a waste of his talent. SUBMERGED falls into the category of a poor C-grade movie with the elements and Seagal not maintaining his usual non-stop Aikido combat which brings lots of hurt in this movie and probably a bad strike in his career.

I consider this movie to be one of Seagal's worst but a little quality action should lift the movie from the rock bottom it falls on but regardless, the fans will be disappointed with it.

I admire Anthony Hickox for his work the big budget horror movies, HELLRAISER III and WARLOCK: ARMAGEDDON but to see him try his hand at other genres and create this poor movie, the results aren't pleasent, at least in my eyes but hopefully, he will work in better projects while fans await for a huge comeback for the Steven Seagal they remember in HARD TO KILL and EXIT WOUNDS.