Seconds to Spare (2002)

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Blistering performances.

***SPOILERS*** Tracking down the guy fellow DEA Agent Emmett Larkin payed by Jerome Ehlers, who has a striking resemblance to he late Brtish actor Laurence Harvey, disgraced and on the lam, from breaking out of federal prison, DEA Agent Paul Blake, Antonio Sabato Jr, finally finds the creep on the other side of the world. It's in the wilds of Australia that Larkin has made plans to steal a number of the country's deadly poison gas canisters also known as weapons of mass destruction-WMDS-to use for his own selfish and greedy purposes. Not in what he lead his boss in this operation fanatical environmentalist and president of the EDL, Earth Defense League, Kate Beahan, Eve Lambert, into thinking that he's doing it to save the environment for future generations. Larkin wants to us them to blackmail the Australian Government to pay him off, with 25 million dollars, or else the city of Sidney with a population of 5 million will end up a ghost town! With everyone in it dead when he detonates the poison gas canisters that he'll ship into the city under the cover of darkness by rail! In the train that Larkin and his crew are planning to hijack!Spotting-on a tip-Larkin on the train at the loading station Blake uses pretty Sidney native Rhonda Newcombe (Kimberley Davies), whom earlier at the train station he almost knocked off her feet, as a front to keep Larkin and his gang from knowing that he's on to them. Blake wants Larkin to think that he and his lovely date Rhonda are taking a romantic ride through the Australian countryside. Rhonda at first thinking that Blake is some love-sick romantic looking for action is later sadly disappointed in finding out that it's Larkin not her that he's after and it has nothing at all to do with love! Straight or gay! It has to do with him getting even with Larkin for setting him up in a phony drug sting as well, in finding out later, preventing him and his gang from pulling off a super 9/11 on one of Australia's major cities!Good action scenes with Blake-undercover-knocking off Larkin's men one by one as the terror train hurdlers towards its target Sidney with only minutes if not seconds left, with the timers on the gas bombs set to go off, to stop it. Back in Australia's top intelligence agency's headquarters Commander, the guy who runs the whole show, Haggarty played by Nick Tate has to make the biggest decision of his entire life! Have the runaway train blows to smatterings and kill everyone on it, hijackers as well as Innocent civilians, or allow it to smash through city limits and wipe the city of Sidney off the face of the earth!***SPOILERS*** Exceing and Unbearable tension as Rhonda, not Blake as you would suspect, saves the day by disconnecting the train's locomotive that has the poison gas canisters on it and having it incinerated, by attack helicopters, thus rendering them harmless! Larkin seeing that his whole grand plan has suddenly, thanks to both Blake & Rhonda, gone up in smoke tries to make a run for it only to find, guess who, an angry and take no BS or prisoners former DEA Agent Paul Blake standing in his way! In the end it was poor and naive Eve Lambart who got the very worst of it from both her partner in crime Larkin as well as from Blake and the Australian Government! Foolisly thinking that Larkin was really interested in saving the environment Eve unknowingly made it possible for him to destroy it, with the poison gas canisters, for many many centuries to come!

First, when I read the plot summary, I thought: a hijacked passenger train? That's gotta be an Under Siege 2 rip-off. And how amazing, it absolutely is. We got the train being hijacked, we got a lone hero who's swerving all over the train trying to stop the bad guys, we got the blonde chick who actually does resemble Katherine Heigl, and we got a counter-terrorism unit that tries to figure out how to stop the train.But Seconds to Spare is much, much inferior to Steven Seagals masterpiece. Kimberley Davies is just a bit too old to be a real good chick, and Paul Blake is just ridiculous as the hero. The best illustration for this is when he's fighting with one bad guy on the car-carriage and he desperately tries to break the bad guy's neck (and fails). Surely Steven wouldn't have allowed the rogue to get away. It's the same with the rest of the Seagal-imitating that Blake pulls off. Walking over the roof of the train really costs him a lot of effort; remember Steven strolling along the roof as if it were a day in the park? Or Blake hanging on the side of the train, trying to get a hold of some lever? Seagal and Morris Chestnut did the same in US2, but at least they were getting somewhere and weren't wasting their time bungling from the train for 15 minutes.Talking about these bad guys: that's really the low point of the movie. In Under Siege 2, you just gotta love Everett McGill and Eric Bogosian; especially Bogosian might arguably the best villain in cinema history. But the scam that we're looking at in Seconds to Spare is nothing more than that. We're to believe that some eco-terrorists (!) hijacked a passenger train, and that they want to release some nerve gas in Sydney to kill 5 million people (talking about ecological disaster huh?). Then the bad girl gets cold feet, and subsequently we're annoyed with some sort of psychological storyline about whether it makes sense to try and save humanity from its own destruction of planet earth. I don't care if you want to get in depth about ecological problems, but please, make it worth while.Oh, and then we got the counter-terrorism units. We're supposed to believe that this whole operation trying to stop the train, is run by ONE guy in his 50s, assisted by some blonde in her early 20s. So when this guy decides the train should be bombed before it reaches Sydney, possibly killing 30 people, he absolutely doesn't have to get any green light from military or government officials. Besides, the blonde is fully supportive of the decision, since the terrorists shot her soldier boyfriend out of his helicopter. Even more hilarious: the boyfriend appears to run the whole anti-terrorism unit on the ground by himself. He drives the jeeps, flies the helicopters, takes the sniper guns etc. etc. Some marine! I really don't know what got into the heads of the makers of this movie, even though I must say I enjoyed watching all these huge plot holes and irregularities. On the other hand: it again proves what an exceptional influential filmmaker Steven Seagal is. And it again makes you realize what a great filmmaker he is.

If I have a problem with the modern environmental movement it`s with their pacifism at all costs stance . You see the modern environmental movement was founded by quakers who`s ethos of non violence is the primary idealogy of the green movement . This is to critical free thinkers a flawed ideal , after all how you going to deal with evil men like Adolph Hitler and Osama Bin Laden without using force ? So it`s totally ironic that films always portray environmentalists as gun toting nutters . Can anyone remember these stupid holistic minded thrillers where Steven Seagal shows the world that ecology is all about blowing away everyone who works for an oil company ? Well it`s the same with SECONDS TO SPARE though thankfully someone came up with a great idea to make the greenies the bad guys !!!!! MILD SPOILERS !!!!! There`s some really twisted logic in this movie . The eco-terrorist leader Eve is against violence so she and her cohorts join up with a former CIA man ( Has there ever been a film where a former CIA man is shown in a good light ? ) and a Serbian war criminal ( Has there ever been a film where Serbs aren`t war criminals ) get some guns , steal a large amount of nerve gas , blow up a nerve disposal unit killing everyone inside , hijack a train to use it as a missile , and it`s only then Eve realises she`s taking part in something a little more serious than a sit down protest ! Duh hello , Earth to Eve ? I suppose her full name must be Naive ? As for the rest of SECONDS TO SPARE it`s basically one of those generic " Hero on a train that`s full of hostages " thrillers , a bit like DEATH TRAIN or UNDER SIEGE 2 so it plays out in a fairly predictable manner as with scene of bad guy taking pretty blonde hostage to quiet part of train to rape her but hero pops up and kills bad guy ,and scene with man in charge of operation making decision to save millions by sacrificing the hostages on the train . You`ve more chance of seeing Patrick Moore and Bjorn Lomborg rejoining Greenpeace than you have seeing the bad guys carry out their dastardly plan in this type of film

The only thing worth watching about this movie is Kimberley Davies, and that's just looking at her, not her acting (she can't act - but then again, that only puts her on par with the rest of the cast of this shocker).Mmm. Should have given it 1/10 instead of 2. Certainly the special effects aren't even worth that.Read a good book, watch something else, eg. flies crawling up the wall, or maybe grass growing, or photos of Kimberley, or some of the wonderful non-action-genre movies that have come out of Australia in the last twenty years.One day Australians will realise that they make great intelligent movies without trying to match Hollywood for action blockbusters which they will never be able to do. Until then we are stuck with these occasional misguided unsuccessful forays.Contemplating this movie's showing on overseas TV networks makes me cringe as an Australian.Don't bother with this one.