MAIDEN VOYAGE: OCEAN HIJACK is a fun B-movie riff on Steven Seagal's UNDER SIEGE, substituting the Aikido-fighting star for B-movie regular Casper Van Dien (STARSHIP TROOPERS). Van Dien and his buddies (including a rather unbelievable kung fu fighting female head of security) are trapped on a luxury cruise liner when it's hijacked by terrorists, and they must do their utmost to regain control of the vessel and save the lives of the passengers.Being a TV movie, I wasn't expecting much from this one, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I got. MAIDEN VOYAGE certainly packs in the action throughout, and there's so much of it that you can forgive the poor production values and the lack of technical expertise apparent in the movie's poor continuity, editing, and special effects.Almost half of the movie seems to consist of Van Dien beating up various henchmen or running away from them. All of the usual DIE HARD clichés are in place, but what most surprised me was how violent this film is for a TV movie, with plenty of bloody squib hits peppering the production. It's certainly no classic, but it's often unintentionally funny and it never fails to entertain. I had a ball with it.

Yet another Die Hard straight to video rip off with cardboard villains… How many more of these god awful cheaply (and badly) made rip off of the more popular action movies of the late 1980's and early 1990's are there still lurking out there? For the record (not that you will care really) this one is yet another blatant rip off of a combination of Die Hard, Under Siege and Speed 2 complete with a full complement of clichés and predictability.The non descript villains are the usual selection of cardboard cut out gun toting thugs who are dispatched by various means as the film progresses, the hero naturally is an ex cop or something that has family and attitude problems and of course he brings along to the party not only the usual emotional baggage but also a matching piece of eye candy and his annoying son.The supposed luxury cruise liner that is running between Florida and Mexico is carefully described as a cross between a liner and a ferry – this goes someway to explaining how come they appear to be larking around on a rusty cross channel ferry – in New Zealand! The acting is as wooden as the deck, the script woeful, the one liners predictable, the villains utterly inept and the plot has holes in it you could sail a boat through.There seems to be a never ending tide of this sort of rip off straight to video rubbish polluting the late night slots of television and the DVD bargain bins of supermarkets everywhere (although even this film is so bad it has yet to see a DVD release yet but give it time!) Is there any chance of something at least half decently made, semi believable and most important ORIGINAL?!? No, I thought not…..

The cast of this film contain some of New Zealander's better actors, many of who I have seen in fabulous roles, this film however fills me with a deep shame just to be from the same country as them. The fake American accents are the first clue that things are about to go spectacularly wrong. As another review rather astutely noted the luxury cruise ship is in fact an old car ferry, decorated with a few of the multi colour flags stolen from a used car lot. Most of the cast appear to be from the (great) long running New Zealand soap Shortland Street. It's as if this movie was dreamt up at a Shortland Street cast Christmas party, the result of too many gins, and possibly a bit of salmonella. Imagine "Under Siege" meets "The Love Boat", staged by your local primary school and directed by an autistic and you get the idea.If you are an actor, I recommend you see this film, as a study on how to destroy your carer.

What a sad sight these TV stalwarts make, running out the clock on their careers stumbling about a little rusting hulk of a ship - boat might be more appropriate. The whole production feels cheap and shabby, and it's not helped by a "big name" star who is barely capable of spitting out the few lines that he's given in a credible fashion.At no time do the supporting cast rise above the material; they're clearly watching the clock here. Bang out the scenes, get the pay cheque, go home, and try to forget all about it.It's not particularly badly scripted or filmed; there are no real clangers, it's just utterly anodyne, and shot in a very limited number of cramped sets with a small cast of extras. The pacing is a little bizarre; an embarrassingly tentative romantic sub-plot is only begun after the main action starts, which makes it feel irrelevant.Maiden Voyage scores a couple of points for being competently scored, and for being a fun game of "spot the Kiwi bit parters"; most of the cast are graduates of Shortland Street or Xena: Warrior Princess. The saddest thing about this production is that this film probably constitutes their big break.