Simply Perfect

Absolutely brilliant

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Although this movie was originally titled "Seconds To Spare", for its North American release the title was changed to "Operation Wolverine: Seconds To Spare", no doubt in an attempt to make a connection with Antonio Sabato Jr.'s earlier Australian movie "Code Name: Wolverine" - even though Sabato is playing a completely different character here! Anyway, as other user comments have previously noted, this movie is a rip- off of "Under Siege 2". While that movie was not great, it looks great compared to this rip-off. It was clearly made for TV, so it's obvious that the movie didn't have a great budget, with various cost-cutting measures evident throughout. But what really sinks the movie is how surprisingly boring it is. Australians have made some great action movies, but you wouldn't know it from this movie, with one scene falling with a thud after another. By the way, has Antonio Sabato Jr. ever been in a good movie?

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.

Ex-DEA agent Paul Blake sets out from Miami to Sydney to track down a criminal he has a vendetta with. Meanwhile the EDL (Earth Defence League) carry out a raid on a chemical bunker in the Australian desert to make money and draw attention to the harm done to the earth, however the idealistic Eve Lambert doesn't realise that the "team" that is assisting with her work is none other than the associates of Larkin, the very man that Drake is hunting. Having spent about 15 minutes wandering around Sydney looking in corners, Drake spots Larkin boarding a train having carried out the EDL job. He follows them onto the train, meeting the sexy Rhonda at the same time however, when the Government try to stop the train Larkin's men take over, leaving Drake the only man able to stop him.I might say negative things about this film but please bare in mind that I chose, of my own freewill, to watch a film with Antonio Sabato Jnr and Kimberley Davis in the title roles. Regardless of this I tuned in to find a film that took about 15 minutes to actually set up the basic story (and does it in a pretty poor way) and by the time everyone had gotten onto the train I had gotten the gist that this was basically a version of Under Siege 2 and managed to make me realise just how much fun that film is. With a "by the numbers" plot involving nerve gas, things did not look good and, sure enough, things never got above the predictable and the obvious. This leaves the fight scenes and action to really involve and, while it isn't really bad, it certainly never gets above the average and more often than not is actually around the mediocre. Every now and again people get shot, punched or thrown out of trains; it is all done without any real style or imagination and the sheer blandness of the action just sucks any remaining tension out for good.There are people on this earth do think that the Van Damme's of this world are perhaps poor action actors but to them I simply say "you have not seen enough Antonio Sabato Jr films" because, if they had, they would hold Van Damme in higher stead. Here he is roundly poor – he has no screen presence, doesn't move that well, has poor chemistry with his co-star and, dammit, just looks plain weird. Of course he hardly risks being outperformed by Davies who is just a typical simmering blonde who doesn't even get that much screen time and barely looks mussed up at any point. Beahan is a bit annoying but, as with so many of these things, the bad guy dominates the film. This is not to say that Ehlers has a lot of competition but he does seem to be having fun even if his performance is just a poor carbon copy of much better ones.Overall this is a pretty poor film but might just about do very undemanding genre fans who find themselves stuck with nothing better to do/watch. However with so many "Die Hard in a….." type movies around you do have to wonder whether or not we really needed another one added to the pile? On the basis of the mediocre action, bad acting, predictable plotting and total lack of excitement or tension here, the most obvious answer is no.

Hollywood actioners which involve Terrorists/Trains/He-Man Heroes,etc were already tediously out-dated when this Australian hybrid was made;the only fun to be had is see if the Aussies can make them as derivatively and dully as Hollywood.The answer is they certainly can after this film,only on a lower budget!Kimberley Davies(Annalise from 'NEIGHBOURS)stars,and despite her limited acting ability is not helped by the hopelessly hackneyed script.She is,in fact,the only reason for watching;the dull,monosyllabic hero makes Arnie S seem like Larry O;the comic book villains are alternately over-the-top or wooden,with the wimpiest of cowards thrown in for good measure.Some incidents are reworked from SILVER STREAK(1976)and loads of other(equally clichéd)films.At least SILVER STREAK was often intentionally funny;the humour here is always unintended.Only watchable on that level.