Seaviper! More Like Slow Worm
When intelligence comes up with details of a German U-Boat delivering cargo to the Japanese the USS Seaviper is sent on a mission to bring an end to the trade. When the USS Seaviper gets near to the island of Sumatra Captain Culpepper (Steve Roth) must sneak ashore to discover what is exactly going on and so leaves the ship in the hands of XO Mister Cutter (Jeremy King). But tension between Cutter and Chief Keenan (Tim Large) puts the Seaviper in danger as damage, a patrolling Japanese destroyer and a decreasing amount of oxygen all mount up to make things seem like they have little hope of getting out of there alive.
So ignore all the hogwash about the German U-Boat dropping off cargo to the Japanese and the recon mission on an island and instead focus on the main drama which is the situation aboard the damaged USS Seaviper. Go on I bet you can guess what I am going to say, yes it is completely unoriginal as it toys with the same plot ideas which were part of the submarine movies from the 60s, those which had recognizable stars, something which his one lacks. But toys with the ideas is all it does and in an ineffective manner as "USS Seaviper" only ends up feeling like a weak rip off of those much better WWII submarine movies which preceded it.
But just doing nothing decent with those cliches is not the only issue as it tries to pad this out with a lot of irrelevant scenes which are just as ineffective. A scene which tries to establish the tension between Keenan and Cutter as a poker game ends in bad blood is so painfully forced that it flies past the point of being entertaining for being bad and on to a whole new level. If any of these scenes had been believable then maybe "USS Seaviper" wouldn't have ended up such a disappointment but not one of these padding scene or in truth any of the main scenes works and it simply lacks the tension that this sort of submarine movie needs to thrive.
I could go on and mention that the acting throughout is not good or that the script these unfamiliar actors have to work with does them little favours but I would hope by this point you get the idea and that I do not rate "USS Seaviper" one little bit. As such I am going to finish this review here with my only reason to watch "USS Seaviper" and that is if you are a huge fan of WWII submarine movies because afterwards it is another movie to tick of your list.