Under Siege

It grossed $83 million in theaters and removed the video-star stigma attached to Steven Seagal once and for all. But if, as the cassette box says, Under Siege is ''Die Hard on a battleship,'' it's a less clever, more muscle-bound one, already coasting in the ruts of its new genre. In Die Hard, it was hero Bruce Willis whose self-deprecating wit sparked the movie and kept you entertained. In Siege, that honor is taken by villain Tommy Lee Jones, who's a scream as a renegade CIA spook bent on capturing the U.S.S. Missouri's nuclear missiles. Seagal, as a Navy SEAL-turned-cook-turned-one-man army, plays the same vague behemoth he always does, and director Andrew Davis smartly stages the action around the actor's limitations. It's a star vehicle in which the star seems barely there. B-