Steven Seagal is back as ex-Navy SEAL, Casey Ryback, now on a train instead of an aircraft carrier. Instead of Andrew Davis (The Final Terror, Above the Law) directing, Geoff Murphy (The Quiet Earth, Freejack) is making this. J. F. Lawton, who wrote the first one as well as Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, Pretty Woman, Blankman and DOA: Dead of Alive, as well as creating the Pam Anderson show V.I.P., is out and Richard Hatem and Matt Reeves are in. That’s right. The same director who made The Batman once made a Steven Seagal movie. Busey and Tommy Lee Jones aren’t the bad guys. Now, you get Eric Bogosian and Everett McGill.

But hey — Admiral Bates (Andy Romano), Captain Garza (Dale Dye) and Tom Breaker (Nick Mancuso) come back. And you do get Katherine Heigl as Ryback’s niece. Morris Chestnut as a train porter and Sandra Taylor (who somehow was a Penthouse Pet in March of 1991 and also did a Playboy pictorial in July of 1995 to promote this movie; she mentioned not even knowing if her character survived) as a barmaid so calm down. And oh wow, it’s the same train from Runaway Train.

But hey, this is one of Becca’s favorite movies. She loves it more than the first one, no matter how many people say that this was horrible in comparison. You can’t change her loves, which makes me lucky, because she married a fat child who ran upstairs breathless today to let her know that Arabella the Black Angel — a movie that she doesn’t want to see, need to see or should ever see — is on Tubi. And she loves me at least as much as this movie.

It’s the John McClane issue: how can the same hero be in the same situation all over again?  Oh well. This would be the end for Seagal, who would not make it to the end of Executive Decision and not get many movies in theaters after 1996.

Originally, Jon Peters was slated to be a producer for the movie. He wanted to bring Gary Busey back, but after he was told Busey’s character had died in the original , he quit. That story sounds like BS, but so does the story that Busey was hired and the casting director had no idea he had died in the first movie. He had the kind of contract where he got paid no matter what. That can’t be true.