Read more about Casey Ryback at: Wikipedia Official Site: Warner Bros Casey Ryback is a fictional character and action hero from the Under Siege films of the 1990s. Played by Hollywood action star Steven Seagal, Ryback is a Chief Petty Officer and former Navy SEAL operator turned chef with top training in martial arts, explosives, special-weapons and tactics. He is a master of unarmed combat, highly skilled with firearms, knives and other forms of combat which enables him to defeat mercenaries/terrorists with ease. He appears in the 1992 film Under Siege and its sequel, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, in 1995. Casey Ryback was born in the backwoods of Kejimkujik National Park in Nova Scotia in 1945. Contrary to popular belief, Casey is not half Cherokee Indian but actually one quarter Mi'kmaq, one quarter Metis and half Cape Bretoner. He was born to parents Peter Rogers and Little Bear Ryback. When Casey was 8 years old he trained a wild buffalo living in the Kejimkujik area and rode it from that day forward. The buffalo was named "Mersey" for the river on which Casey wrangled the wild beast. Casey left Nova Scotia for the Navy in 1970 after graduating the NSCC Culinary arts/Martial arts joint masters program. He was a former operator with SEAL Team Four was demoted to his posting as a chef aboard the USS Missouri for striking his CO (Commanding Officer) when most of his SEAL team was killed during the invasion of Panama in Operation Nifty Package to disable General Manuel Noriega's private jet at Punta Paitilla Airport due to poor intelligence. He had lost his security clearance and was said to only be able to serve as an administrative yeoman or a cook. Due to the SEAL incident, he is seen as an outcast in front of the higher-ranking officers. At the end of the first film his former position was given back to him in a ceremony following his bravery, but at the beginning of the sequel it appears that he had retired from the Navy as a Lieutenant, as shown by the salute and verbal greeting from his driver in the beginning of the film, and was working as a chef at the Mile High Cafe in Denver, Colorado. In the original poster art of the first film, he is wearing the shoulder boards of a flag officer, but not enough is shown to see if he is a one-star, two-star, etc. admiral, however in the first film he has the role of Chief. In the first film it is unknown to the mercenaries on the who Ryback is, believing he was just a mere cook which added an element of surprise to the onslaught which followed. However in the sequel, Under Siege 2, where Ryback boards a train with his niece to visit a recently deceased brother in Los Angeles from Denver the mercenaries that hijack the train have full knowledge of the man they are dealing with once they hear his name. He is considered to be the most skilled counter-terrorist in the world and even the fearless mercenary leader Marcus Penn (Everett McGill) claims that Ryback is the only man he has ever been afraid of. One reason for this could be that the events of the first film made Ryback an international hero. In the second film, one of the chefs at the restaurant claims that people come to hear Ryback's stories. Casey Ryback became one of well known names of action heroes in the action film genre in the 1990s compared to the likes of John McClane from the Die Hard films. As David West writes, Under Siege is "cut from the same cloth as the 'Die Hard' series and stars Seagal as Casey Ryback..." Often the character of Ryback has been criticised in the media due the fact that he is invincible and would defeat his opponents rather too easily, removing the element of surprise in his personal combat. As Eric Lichtenfeld writes, "Ryback...is the ultimate warrior. As the action genre tends toward hyperbole, Ryback is an amalgam of everything that signifies Ultimate Warrior status, even more than Riggs had been in Lethal Weapon. It is fitting then, that...Ryback's costuming progresses from a white cook's uniform...to an olive tank top, to the all-black garb that merges Ryback with the ship, and with which Seagal came to be identified.
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Casey Ryback
