Home stretch now, girls and gentlefolk, so let's not waste any time! All I'm going to say before I get into the last half hour of this amazing experience is that despite my snark, I want everyone to know that I adore U.S. SEALs 2. Is it a good movie? Hell no - but it knows its own weight class and delivers solid, honest entertainment in that category, with every actor giving their all to each of these stupid, ridiculous, batshit, out there plot points and fight scenes. I admire a movie that has a heart, and U.S. SEALs 2 has so much, I find that I just can't stay mad at it even when it punches my brain for the fifteenth time in 94 minutes.
On to the dumb!
ACT 3: THE KICKENING
When we left Casey and Kamiko in the previous recap, they were having a tender, intimate moment of emotional walls crumbling and vulnerabilities shared, the two of them gently holding hands and sitting in a pile of dust, cardboard, broken glass and rubber tires in the middle of a terrorist stronghold that smells like farts.
Alas, the romance was interrupted by Major Badass so they can go on and finish the damn mission that three teammates have already died for; and so the lovebirds have had to kick off Act 3 by getting out of the garbage, but hey, look on the bright side. If they ever need to rekindle their spark, they can always dust off the hazmat suits and hop on a bus to the nearest landfill.
For stealthy movement through the largely-abandoned industrial buildings, most of whose population is currently leaking blood into the ground outside and doesn't see them anyway, the trio tries the lazy screenwriter's dearest friend: the conveniently human-sized ventilation shaft. But oh, no! While they are busy elbowing their way through several decades' worth of dust and staring at the bum of the person in front of them, Dr. Burrows has completed the nucular cocktail for McSmirk!
To add injury to insult, Kamiko then randomly drops her katanas with a ginormous clatter right when they're crawling over a room with McSmirk and Sophia in it. Not being an entire idiot (only, let's say... three-quarters of one, since she's still dating McSmirk), Sophia promptly stabs her sword into the ventilation shaft and slices lengthwise all the way through the bottom of it to get whoever's inside. Apparently she either drank a lot of Red Bulls offscreen, or she borrowed one of Zeus's nose hairs to make that blade, since I wasn't aware regular steel with the force and leverage of a regular arm can cut through metal sheets thick enough to support the weight of three people. Physics! Sometimes they're worth paying attention to in high school! I barely did and I still know that's bullshit!
Fear not, gentle readers, as the zeroes manage to escape Sophia's 'roid rage by backtracking extra fast... but feel free to fear in a different way because McSmirk then goes into the silo and arms the missiles. Casey, Kamiko and Major Badass teleport into the lab via some quick editing and rescue Dr. Burrows from her guards; but while she's having a confusingly-worded domestic with the Major over her kidnapping, McSmirk launches his first fully-operational missile to wreak some havoc outside, in retaliation for Casey & Co. coming to the island to annoy him. Way to go, guys.
But as the silo is opened to the outside and the missile's fuel system ignites, the methane-laced air covering the entire island catches fire, obliterating everything and everyone in a lethal nuclear inferno and pfff who am I kidding. Nothing happens and the missile goes on its merry way to blow up some random city or something; the CGI was a bit unclear on what exactly happened. You know what isn't unclear, though? Chemistry! It also doesn't work like that!
Since McSmirk has just shown his missile-shaped fangs to the world, the Admiralty decides to evacuate Casey's team and give in to McSmirk's demands, who is generous enough to promise that he'll leave the remaining missile behind as a gift in exchange for his billion dollars. While trusting the pinky promise of an international terrorist is right there with a black mamba petting zoo on the list of Not Great Ideas, so is Casey and Major Badass's brilliant plan: they're ignoring their orders and taking down McSmirk anyway. I sure can't see a way that could get even more people killed in hilariously dramatic ways.
To prove me wrong right away, the Major lets the team know he was planning to retire early from the Army, so Omar takes him down with a well-aimed slo-mo knife immediately. Seriously, it happens in the very next scene. This is a stellar practical application of the Lazy Screenwriters' Narrative Conservation Law, which in layman's terms sounds roughly like "Never, ever utter the word 'retire' in an action movie because you'll be angst fodder before you could blink". What follows is another frankly incredible fight scene with Omar, Casey, Kamiko and a few mooks, which ends with something so stupid it's kind of beautiful. Omar stabs Casey with his escrima stick slash staff slash whatever pointy thing the plot requires, apparently... and Casey walks down the length of something that was barely poking him in the chest at first, skewering his entire right lung just to stab Omar in the forehead without so much as saying 'Ow'. Seriously.
The shock of such total disregard for basic anatomy proves too much for Omar, and he bites the dust; after a scene that puts Jim Carrey's death throes in The Mask to shame, so does the Major. So long, Major Badass. You were too cool for this movie anyway.
Casey and the ladies (hey, another band name for y'all) head to the launch room and lock down the system so the second missile can't be fired... or so they think. This pisses off McSmirk, who reveals that this whole nucular extortion scheme was just him attempting to get back at Casey and the Navy, who ruined his life and put him on a bad guy list because, er, he assaulted and killed a woman, almost killed his own team leader, and then ran away into the woods rather than face arrest. Those bastards, am I right?
Since McSmirk is pissed off, he gives up on his billion dollars for a grudge that would send Spock screaming from the room with the illogic of it, and he fiddles with the remote activator. That sets off another nuke launch, which Dr. Burrows's counter-fiddling in the control center can't shut down. She still tries to puzzle out a way to disarm the missile and turn it into "a big huge dud", prompting this immortal line from Casey:
I don't know, man, ask the director. He got a pretty big one out of this script.
Anyway, Dr. Burrows figures out that McGyvering a bomb to blow up the nuke right here on Cow Fart Island is the best way to make sure it doesn't blow up somewhere else, which also gives everyone the trusty Action Movie 10-Minute Countdown to take down McSmirk, Sophia, Andy Cheng, and Andy Cheng's frankly amazing death glare. While Dr. Burrows puts together random garbage in the lab with a thinking frown on her face to make it look like she's doing something, Casey and Kamiko go to finally do the this-town-ain't-big-enough routine with McSmirk's crew once and for all.
Casey and the ladies (hey, another band name for y'all) head to the launch room and lock down the system so the second missile can't be fired... or so they think. This pisses off McSmirk, who reveals that this whole nucular extortion scheme was just him attempting to get back at Casey and the Navy, who ruined his life and put him on a bad guy list because, er, he assaulted and killed a woman, almost killed his own team leader, and then ran away into the woods rather than face arrest. Those bastards, am I right?
Since McSmirk is pissed off, he gives up on his billion dollars for a grudge that would send Spock screaming from the room with the illogic of it, and he fiddles with the remote activator. That sets off another nuke launch, which Dr. Burrows's counter-fiddling in the control center can't shut down. She still tries to puzzle out a way to disarm the missile and turn it into "a big huge dud", prompting this immortal line from Casey:
Casey: "I like the sound of dud. How do we get dud?"
I don't know, man, ask the director. He got a pretty big one out of this script.
Anyway, Dr. Burrows figures out that McGyvering a bomb to blow up the nuke right here on Cow Fart Island is the best way to make sure it doesn't blow up somewhere else, which also gives everyone the trusty Action Movie 10-Minute Countdown to take down McSmirk, Sophia, Andy Cheng, and Andy Cheng's frankly amazing death glare. While Dr. Burrows puts together random garbage in the lab with a thinking frown on her face to make it look like she's doing something, Casey and Kamiko go to finally do the this-town-ain't-big-enough routine with McSmirk's crew once and for all.
Once the zeroes and Team Rocket meet next to the decontamination showers, McSmirk whips out his own sword; the ensuing three one-on-one duels look as awesome as a Star Wars lightsaber fight mixed with the lobby scene from The Matrix... as long as you have your eyes closed and imagine you're watching that instead of U.S. SEALs 2. In all seriousness, though, these epic slapdowns of steel, fists, kicks, a coat, a sprinkler system, a lamp and everything else in the room can't quite be summed up in a way that does them justice, so I'll put it this way: watch this movie, just for the last fifteen minutes of it. Even though most of the dialogue amounts to "HYAAH!" and "AAARGH!", keep your eyes on the sword-fu gymnastics unfolding in these batshit, beautiful fifteen minutes and I promise you won't be disappointed. Or you will be, but you'll be too busy laughing your head off to notice.
Alas, I will now have to spoil the way McSmirk dies simply because it fills me with so much glee to talk about it, but don't worry, you won't believe me anyway until you see it for yourself. You see, during the final final beatdown Casey somehow manages to force Kamiko's katana between McSmirk's legs... and then Kamiko grabs the other end and the two of them pull upwards very hard. And they cut McSmirk in two. Lengthwise. I swear I'm not making that up. Not at the waist, not off with the head: crotch-to-head slicing, like something out of a goddamn Silent Hill cutscene with Pyramid Head. The beauty of this dumbass scene simply cannot be put into words; mostly because each time I see it a part of my conscious brain withers and dies, and this is my fourth watch so I can finish the recap for you, dear readers. If I don't manage to infect each one of you with a terrible desire to watch this movie just to see how dumb it gets, like I'm passing the videotape from The Ring around with some popcorn... I have failed my duty.
Watch this movie.
Do you now believe I can't top the McSmirk fillet? Think again. After that glorious, serotonin-inducing fail at physics, anatomy, CGI, screenwriting and everything else that saves a movie from the direct-to-video section, U.S. SEALs 2 does something else to make me yeet my brain. In the remaining one minute of the countdown, Casey & Co. find a conveniently placed escape submarine and get in just in time. And as they sink away into the sunset, Kamiko gently comforts Casey over his teammates' deaths in a sweet wrap-up to their, uh, turbulent romance... Which is then immediately ruined by every single dead team member's face being shown smiling with a flying American flag overlaid, from Byrd to the Major; and no, I didn't hallucinate that from stupidity overload because it was there every single time I've seen this movie. Other people have watched it with me too, so either the insanity is contagious, or someone really thought that was a touching, majestic note to end such a magnificent adventure with. I love that especially because Omar's face is shown with the rest, so I'm lowkey surprised they didn't just slap McSmirk's on there too. After all, if you forget literally everything he did literally every single second he was onscreen... he also was an American until the end.
Oh, and the island blows up. The end.
Alas, I will now have to spoil the way McSmirk dies simply because it fills me with so much glee to talk about it, but don't worry, you won't believe me anyway until you see it for yourself. You see, during the final final beatdown Casey somehow manages to force Kamiko's katana between McSmirk's legs... and then Kamiko grabs the other end and the two of them pull upwards very hard. And they cut McSmirk in two. Lengthwise. I swear I'm not making that up. Not at the waist, not off with the head: crotch-to-head slicing, like something out of a goddamn Silent Hill cutscene with Pyramid Head. The beauty of this dumbass scene simply cannot be put into words; mostly because each time I see it a part of my conscious brain withers and dies, and this is my fourth watch so I can finish the recap for you, dear readers. If I don't manage to infect each one of you with a terrible desire to watch this movie just to see how dumb it gets, like I'm passing the videotape from The Ring around with some popcorn... I have failed my duty.
Watch this movie.
Do you now believe I can't top the McSmirk fillet? Think again. After that glorious, serotonin-inducing fail at physics, anatomy, CGI, screenwriting and everything else that saves a movie from the direct-to-video section, U.S. SEALs 2 does something else to make me yeet my brain. In the remaining one minute of the countdown, Casey & Co. find a conveniently placed escape submarine and get in just in time. And as they sink away into the sunset, Kamiko gently comforts Casey over his teammates' deaths in a sweet wrap-up to their, uh, turbulent romance... Which is then immediately ruined by every single dead team member's face being shown smiling with a flying American flag overlaid, from Byrd to the Major; and no, I didn't hallucinate that from stupidity overload because it was there every single time I've seen this movie. Other people have watched it with me too, so either the insanity is contagious, or someone really thought that was a touching, majestic note to end such a magnificent adventure with. I love that especially because Omar's face is shown with the rest, so I'm lowkey surprised they didn't just slap McSmirk's on there too. After all, if you forget literally everything he did literally every single second he was onscreen... he also was an American until the end.
Oh, and the island blows up. The end.
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