Movie Recap: U.S. SEALs 2, Act 2

Back and at 'em with the stupid, friends and femmes. Here's the second part of my recap of the most action movie ever: U.S. SEALs 2: The Ultimate Force, directed by Isaac Florentine.

ACT 2: FIST FARMING ON COW FART ISLAND

So when we rejoin our action movie cardboard cutouts… I mean, heroes in Act 2, Admiral Whatshisname isn’t particularly pleased with the motley gang of lovable misfits (fun fact: I almost wrote “misfists” – wasn’t kidding about the brain damage) Casey has assembled for the job. Here, I’ll let him sum it up:

Admiral Whatshisname: “Are you guys crazy?! You’ve got a Japanese female civilian, an ex-con, an ex-SEAL, and a… a Mr. Moneybags who's demanding 300 000 dollars cash! Are you okay with this, Major?!”

Don’t you just love it when a movie starts ripping its own script apart?

Nonetheless, the Major assures him that he trusts Casey’s judgment and looks directly into the camera (I’m not kidding, the actor pretty much stares into your soul as he delivers these lines), and the existential crisis that discovering the fourth wall gives him makes the Admiral agree to let the team proceed with the mission.

So it happens that we next find ourselves on a plane, en route to Kickpunch Island. On the way, the Major leaves his seat to go… hell if I know, leaving his bag with the acid rounds for his air gun unattended and politely unzipped for whoever wishes to steal one – in a plane containing a hitman and a prison inmate. Smooth. Sure enough, seeing that everyone is either asleep, sharpening knives or otherwise not paying any attention to their surroundings, Omar reaches into the Major’s bag and slips out an acid round (which, for the sake of clarity, are basically fragile ping pong balls with liquid death inside), putting it in his pants pocket. Which seems to me an excellent way to burn your leg off, but of course I live in a world where the rules of reality apply. In case you haven’t noticed yet, this movie and reality had a nasty breakup a long time ago. Anyway, do take note of the stolen acid round – it will come back and bite us all in the ass later.

After Omar is done not being suspicious at all whatsoever, Casey tries to chat with Kamiko, but she pretty much tells him to go climb a tree; it’s been heavily implied via a hamfisted funeral flashback that she’s resented him since the deaths of her father and sister. How that could be a cause for hostility is beyond me, but don’t ask me about what makes and doesn’t make sense in this movie. I snapped the cord on my suspension of disbelief the first time Casey made a FWOOSH sound.

Once above Kickpunch Island, the team prepares to go skydiving into the ocean; Finley quotes the Bible before heading out, because that’s his One Personality Trait and the movie isn’t done beating it to death yet (not for lack of trying). The skydiving sequence is legit pretty badass – no complaints on my part.

As the team are throwing themselves off the plane, McSmirk and his martial artist girlfriend Sophia have a talk, which turns into a heart-to-heart about the repercussions of a plan involving kidnapping, murder, extortion and nuclear threats, realizing that their greed has put them into a situation that there is no way back from... Pfff who am I kidding they just have sex. At least it’s offscreen, thank the Lord for small favors. The only notable things about this scene are that Sophia carries a sword for some reason (that reason probably being that it looks bitchin’ in a fight), and that McSmirk apparently takes his – as of yet not even functional – nukes’ remote detonator into bed with him. Either he is a man of very strange fetishes, or someone thought that was a subtle way to beat us over the head with the fact that he has a remote detonator.

Once in the water, Casey’s team heads into a drainage pipe for an underwater hike into the island’s interior. Casey assures everyone before submerging that there’s no way anyone could spot them this far out, which naturally means that they get attacked by two goons the second they set their flippers into the pipe. Looks like SEAL training doesn’t cover Murphy’s Law these days. The fight gets pretty tense, too, until Casey ends it via scuba dive neck snapping. Hell yeah! (This has been your free band name of the week.)

The team emerge into the sewers of the main compound, right next to a surveillance room of deeply convenient placement; the hatchet-faced gentleman from earlier (okay, fine, his name is Byrd, but it wasn’t even said until this scene) takes care of the guard by way of something that looks like Crocodile Dundee's knife and a machete had a drunken tryst. But alas! Another guard emerges and stabs him in the stomach, ending his performance in this movie that lasted… maybe three minutes, combined. Wow. Nonetheless, his team members are very upset – the Major is so shaken he has to turn away and almost stare into the camera again. Dear God, the ham and cheese in this movie could feed a family of ten.

Omar, thankfully, ends the sobfest by pointing out the two missiles on the surveillance camera. Finley asks the very sensible question of how they could be launched if a single spark could make the place go kaboom, but the Major has a theory that the air in the missile silo is uncontaminated, because it’s apparently in a different dimension from the rest of the island. This makes everyone realize that they might be in deeper doodoo than they had envisioned. Nonetheless, after a slightly dickish speech from Casey (short summary: we’re BADASSES and we’ve got ORDERS, nevermind that this is a much riskier situation than we prepared for, did I mention we’re BADASSES?), on they press. Meanwhile a guard, who managed to escape from the elite team with the observational powers of a watermelon, alerts McSmirk to their presence in the compound. McSmirk has a conversation with them via long-range radio transmitter/speaker system in the sewers (don’t even ask me), uttering this beautiful line:

McSmirk: “I’ll not be screwed, Casey – not by the Admiral, not by you, not by anyone.”

You know what? Fuck it. After the sugar mama line, I’m not dignifying this with a gay joke. Feel free to insert your own.

So after McSmirk reveals that he’s been thinking about the list of possible candidates he could be screwed by (...okay, couldn’t resist), Casey’s team head out from the sewers and to open ground, into a hollow, burned-out industrial area that looks ugly as sin.

Finley: “Looks like Hell on earth to me.”

Casey: “Yeah, without the flames, of course.”

Please stop beating your head against the wall – in the world of U.S. SEALs 2, this qualifies as a witty quip. Also, it won’t make the pain go away.

Finley wonders whether the Lord is testing them – He sure is testing me every time you open your mouth, buddy – and Omar replies that with this much money in play, the good Lord might have put him in the wrong team. Now, you might think that that comment is a bit, shall we say, incredibly obvious. You might even say that it’s barely above Omar taking his pants off and mooning everyone while screaming, “I’M GOING TO BETRAY THE TEAM!” But shh, please – be nice to the movie and pretend to be very surprised when he goes and betrays the team.

Before we could recover from that whack on the head with the Baseball Bat O’ Foreshadowing, Finley… just for fun, I’m going to let you guess the next plot point.

A. Finley realizes that Omar is a bit of a ticking betrayal bomb and tries to warn the team, but Omar quietly kills him before he could.

B. Finley thumps the Bible again, and because everyone is sick of that by this point, they round on him and kick his ass.

C. On an abandoned Soviet research island in the middle of the ocean, far away from any game or woodland life in general, Finley steps into a bear trap.

Here’s a hint: it’s C. And if you’re wondering what purpose on God’s green Earth that bear trap could have had in such a place, or why Finley never saw it in broad daylight before plonking his foot straight in the middle of it, the answer is very simple: you’re putting way more thought into this than the writers. Me? I’ve already let it go. Except for the fact that for the rest of my life, I’m going to have dreams about this movie; dreams that I can never remember afterwards, only that they always make me wake up in a cold sweat screaming at the top of my lungs, “A FUCKING BEAR TRAP ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.”

Moving on.

The banshee howl Finley addresses to his leg in a bear trap summons an entire flock of knife and machete-brandishing goons on various levels of hatchet-facedness, as well as Sophia and McSmirk, whose presence Casey and Kamiko react to via DRAMATIC ZOOM. McSmirk actually gives them the “thumbs up turns to thumbs down” gesture (!), and Spartacus… I mean, Casey and the gang prepare to righteously kick some ass.

Finley: [handing Casey the cross on a chain he’s been wearing and kissing every single time he spoke until now] “Tell my son… I was a good man...”

Dude, WTF? I can’t even with this line. The fight hasn’t even started and he’s already giving his own eulogy?

Then a vicious battle does break out, and it’s… genuinely awesome. Everyone kicks, punches, twirls, jumps and screams their heads off with gusto, and once again I really have to hand it to Andy Cheng for his work on the action scenes, because the fight choreography is through the roof – and we’ve barely even begun the descent into the kung-fu maelstrom. Notable moments include: Finley swinging a chain screaming at the top of his lungs, the Major (whomst I’m rechristening Major Badass) using his air gun to both beat up and shoot goons, Kamiko’s sword, Omar’s escrima sticks, and Casey slicing ‘n’ dicing people with a… rapier?! Okay, we’re officially in Action Movie Mad Libs territory. And I for one am loving every minute of it.

Alas, the fun times turn into less fun times when Kamiko spots a door to the building whose roof McSmirk is waving his dick at them from, and takes off for it. Maybe bringing along someone with a deeply personal vendetta against the person you’re supposed to catch wasn’t such a great idea, Casey. He goes to catch up with his lady love, of course; so do Omar and the Major after an injured Generic Guy (okay, fine, his name is Harper) promises to hold back the rest of the mooks together with Finley. Well, so long, Harper – we knew literally nothing about you. But I’m sure Casey will weep bitterly over you judging by that SH-BOOM fistbump.

The asskickery continues inside the building, with Kamiko giving the mooks hell with double katanas now (ah, Japanese stereotypes, where would bad martial arts movies be without you?) and Casey fighting his way through at least a dozen dudes as well as further up my marriage candidates’ list. Hey, I’m a person of simple tastes, I see a man with a good high kick and I swoon. In the meantime, Omar faces off against Sophia, and the Major vanishes into a plot hole as he searches for Dr. Burrows via her tracking chip.

Outside, things aren’t so shiny though: Andy Cheng shows up and makes short work of Finley, using stellar fight choreography and Finley’s leg wound (which wasn’t bothering him as he was kicking up people’s stomachs into their skulls before, but the Lord and action movie injuries work in mysterious ways). Harper, too, bites the dust shortly after, going out literally spraying blood in slo-mo as a soft mournful piano note plays over him. Holy shit, dude. Hamlet would be telling you to tone it down.

Just as Casey and Kamiko find McSmirk on a network of iron grates a few feet above the ground, Omar shows up with a captured Sophia. Uh-oh, McSmirk is in trouble – or not, because Omar chooses this moment to betray the team. DUN DUN DUUU... pfff who am I kidding. The motivation? Money, of course! Since McSmirk is an extremely generous soul, apparently, he agrees right away to cut Omar a share of Dr. Burrows’s billion-dollar ransom in exchange for Sophia’s life. Yeah, maybe bringing along a literal hitman with a little too much love for the dollar wasn’t such a great idea, CASEY. I’m almost starting to think that the man has poor judgment.

Omar uses Chekhov’s Acid Round! It’s super effective! Yes, he takes out the stolen acid round from his pants pocket and throws it on the hinges of the grate Casey and Kamiko are standing on; as it begins to fall apart, the two barely have time to run down the length of it and throw themselves through a window, into a closed-off courtyard full of rubbish. Somehow that knocks them both out. Now, some of y’all might be scratching your heads because apparently the acid round stayed intact in Omar’s pants during skydiving, miles of swimming and hiking through the sewers, and then twenty solid minutes of asskicking against half the world’s bad guy population… but it broke open and melted everything in sight the second he tossed it on that grate. I’m aware that this plot point might seem a little contrived, but I actually have a theory on how it could work: this is a very dumb movie.

Naturally, everyone assumes that Casey and Kamiko are out of the picture, and naturally, they aren’t: in the very next scene, they wake up barely worse for the wear after faceplanting into a courtyard-ful of old tires and industrial waste. They then have a long, heartfelt talk… but unfortunately I lost my ability to take this movie seriously sometime during the first minute of it. Anyway, what Casey and Kamiko have to say to each other can be summed up thusly:

Kamiko: So we’re in a bit of a pickle, Casey-san: our team members are either dead, turned against us or lost, and we’re stuck in a room with no exit. And frankly, I feel like this is an excellent time to hash out our personal drama! Should we set the Melodrama Machine to frappé and have a very painful conversation?

Casey: Painful for us or the audie– No, too easy. But I couldn’t agree more! What’s on your mind?

Kamiko: “I should have known when you showed up... it would only end in failure and tragedy. Just like before.”

Casey: Wow, that’s… a pretty horrible thing to say. Thanks.

Kamiko: Set to frappé, remember?

Casey: Look, just because the movie never bothered to establish any kind of meaningful connection between any of us doesn’t mean that I didn’t care about you and your family. Especially you, if my Awkward Looks O’ Longing and lack of actual dialogue with you weren’t convincing enough.

Kamiko: Good, then allow me to contradict my entire characterization so far, because I care about you too. The real reason why I kept telling you to go eat surströmming was because thinking about my feelings for you became too painful after losing the other people I loved the most, so I pushed you away instead of acting on them.

Casey: [holding her hand] Huh. That’s kind of deep for a movie where I make FWOOSH sounds by pointing at things.

Kamiko: [crying] I know, Casey-san! We’re getting actual character development and dignity! Kind of! Quick, do something awkward to reset the Silliness Meter!

Major Badass: [clears throat as he emerges from his plot hole] “If you two mortal enemies are through holding hands, I’ll get you out of there.”

Kamiko: ...or that works too. Let’s head into the third act, Casey-san. This recap conversation is starting to turn into a parody.

Casey: You’ve got it, my love.

And thus ACT 3: THE KICKENING begins!