Been out in the UK for a couple of weeks already…picked it up and capsule reviewed it a while back.
“Command Performance”
Dolph Lundgren stars as a heavy rock drummer who takes on an armed gang of ex-Soviet special forces when they kidnap the Russian President…...............and ‘Venus’ the pop singer.
Good ol’ Dolph! You have to love the growing old disgracefully man mountain. He’s been silently churning out (often in the director’s chair, as here) some pretty damn solid STV action flicks that have seen him, at least on a smaller scale, climb back up to the top of his game.
“Command performance” is another solid actioner that has no ideas of grandeur or pretentiousness, it’s just there to entertain.
And it does.
Whacked out basic idea and all.
Dolph is craggy but certainly not baggy or saggy in the lead role (all his own drum moves too) and dishes out much blood spurting punishment.
Indeed, this is surprisingly graphic at times with bloody spraying, blood spattering bullet hits, knife wounds and drum stick to the eye carnage.
Shame about some of the lazy CGI work now and again, but overall….nice one!
Some dodgy editing hurts now and again.
For example, why have the authorities outside told the Russian secret service guy who’s with him to arrest Dolph after they have only just learnt of his existence?
No explanation is given.
But LATER we see that the authorities discovering Dolph’s past Police record. So is this why they wanted him arrested?
Seems so…except this discovery is edited in AFTER the attempted arrest!
But the odd dubious bit of scripting and editing can’t stop the fun (or the rock).
And you have to admire the fact that Dolph has young hot women go all ga ga over him. Such are the perks of writing and directing your own star vehicle I guess!
And you can only marvel at the genius unfolding before you when Dolph literally uses THE POWER OF ROCK (and a broken guitar) to take out a group of armed bad guys!
As Dolph himself says in the movie….“Dying’s easy, rock and roll is hard”!
Genius. Cheesy ass genius.
Roll on “The Expendables”!
