AllMovie

Combining elements of Die Hard, Under Siege, and Crash Dive, this modest offering has the makings of a very successful B-movie, if that's all one is expecting. The tension of Die Hard is missing, and the clever traps of Under Siege are gone, but there's plenty of action aboard a fast-moving, large vehicle, with clearly labeled good guys taking on properly delineated bad guys -- whose motives may be murky, but what the heck. And the fate of the entire world is in the hands of one man, with a digital clock counting down the seconds to massive destruction, and you can't beat that. Jeff Fahey plays Lyman with wide-eyed fear instead of steely eyed confidence, which makes him a sympathetic would-be hero. Director Worth Keeter, a veteran of TV's Power Rangers action series, and prolific B-movie scripter Steve Latshaw keep things moving in the right direction without being hobbled by excessive character development. The useless subplot about the teenaged girl could have been lost without anyone noticing, but other than that, this is harmless mindlessness.