Chain of Command (2000)

So much average

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I caught this routine, cliché ridden, action pic that rips off most action movies you have seen before, on TV last night, and in the absence of anything else on, I decided to give it a go since Roy Scheider can always be relied upon for a good performance, even if the movies themselves are not of the highest standard.What makes Chain of Command more interesting than the average action flick is good old Roy's President who seems clearly modelled on Bill Clinton and his womanising. The opening has him eyeing up his friends new wife while she plays tennis, and then it cuts to two Secret Service Men guarding a toilet door as Scheider has sex with her. One of them is Patrick Muldoon and he is the hero of the movie. He is dull, lifeless and is an awful actor. Scheider simply acts him off the screen every scene they share. Michael Beihn pops up as a nasty piece of work and he too does the same!!It has a little bit of a surprise ending, but it's nothing original

I probably shouldn't label this even as a B movie. It looks like it's shot straight to video. Anyway it's the type of action movies I avoid because there are at least 20-30 things (premise, goofs, plot-holes, bad acting, clichés... you name it) I can't stand about them. However, this one had a couple of pleasant surprises and I can actually recommend it, but in order to assure anyone I'll have to give away at least one spoiler to illustrate just why.If you watched "24" Season 4 you'll be familiar with this type of plot. A ship with US President and his bodyguards on board has been hijacked by Chinese dissidents. Along with the president the "football" (a briefcase with nuclear codes) is also being captured. The only guy to stand up against the gang is our stock hero who accidentally won the upper hand on them. The dissidents however plan not to obtain some kind of ransom but to actually launch US rockets on China (reasoning behind this must be one of the silliest). Will the hero manage to save all in the last minute or whatever is expected in movies of the same vein?WARNING: SPOILERS... Surprisingly he won't... Not completely anyway. In one of the truly amusing moments of this movie (and the C genre at that) both Beijing and Washington are being destroyed by a nuclear strike. This is not the only cliché being broken, but I'll stop here anyhow. The hero does save the day and not even that is done in the usual manner, but I'm not gonna give it away. The point is: with all the usual nonsense thrown in this movie, the decision to remove a couple of predictable clichés that would help faking the suspense is commendable by all standards.

An action film with weak political arguments. A Taiwanese "maffia" group arrests the president of USA, Roy Scheider (!!!!) and takes over the box with nuclear bottoms. The Taiwaneses are decided to attack China mainland with US nuclear bombs. So the main plot is around how to avoid the war, to fight against the Taiwaneses and to get back the box. The president is killed and the vice- president, the Cuban actress María Conchita Alonso, i.e. a latino lady (!!!!) is taking the control of the action. At the end the evils are in the mainland and not in Taiwan because the vice- president had to press the Chinese president to avoid a real nuclear war although Washington D.C. in the film is destroyed.

I really enjoyed this film. I have always liked Roy Scheider and he was really good in it. Muldoon did allright even though i don't really like him. It was kinda like a B-version of Die hard. If only they would have had a bigger budget then it would have been a 10. See it!