Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent, a Must See

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

COUNTER MEASURES is a cheap DIE HARD rip-off from prolific B-movie director Fred Olen Ray. That it was filmed on an actual submarine - the USS Nimitz, in the Atlantic - is a highlight of an otherwise lacklustre movie which nonetheless turns out to be quite good for a Fred Olen Ray movie. It's certainly not the worst I've seen from the director and some of the fight scenes are quite enjoyable.The film sees former American Ninja Michael Dudikoff playing a good guy trapped in a Russian submarine with a bunch of terrorists. There's the usual stock footage here, but for the most part COUNTER MEASURES offers up goofy, non-stop, martial arts action. It's hardly well choreographed, but it passes the time and some of it is quite violent. A bit of a 'meh' film, then, this one; neither the best nor the worst you'll see, and B-movie fans might enjoy it.

"Counter measures" is a sequel to "Crash dive" . Both movies are "Die hard" clones with Michael Dudikoff ("American ninja") fighting bad guys on a submarine. There is very little difference between them in quality , but I do remember that the original "Crash dive" was slightly better."The hunt for Red October" , "Crimson tide" , "Under siege"… Better watch any of those movies. Or re-watch them. I have seen this movie only because I'm on a quest to watch as many crappy action movies as possible. Also , because I have fond childhood memories of "American ninja".I give it 1/10. Poor Dudikoff. His "career" really died after the 80's.

I don't know if there's an aphorism to put to this type of movie, but there should be, because this flick reminds me a lot of Steel Sharks. And the similarities are unexpected. Both movies are set on subs, both movies involve terrorists (of a sort), both movies are very cheaply done, and critically unrealistic. What've those links got to do with each other? You've got underwater listening devices that can identify screws among wreckage, an American submarine commander who has way less battle-sense than his Russian counterpart, and bad guys with ridiculously unrealistic, paranoid objectives. Anyone in any military service anywhere in the world could probably expand vastly on that list. They'd probably start with: instruments that do not register with military accuracy, but icons and labels that are marketed to American civilians.

I agree with Eric's comments, this is a pretty basic action flick, sort of like a TV movie, not up to the Rambos or Arny's stuff. To start it off they throw a bunch of Russian boobs and buns at you, to get us guys' attention (it worked), but from then on it's straight cheesy acting and lots of hand fighting and shooting. It's on the same level as Act of War with Jack Scalia. Not worth the rental bucks. -Bob