Cast: Patrick Muldoon, Roy Scheider, Michael Biehn, Maria Conchita Alonzo, Ric Young, Phillip Tan
Directed by John Terlesky
Scheider plays the President (for the hundredth time or so in undoubtedly the worst movie to date to cast him as such) who is compromised when he meets with a Taiwanese businessman who wants the briefcase with nuclear launch codes to destroy China. Enter Muldoon who plays the secret service agent who will save the day by basically standing still and shooting an AK47. Chain Of Command is really pushing it, even for fans of the cast. Michael Biehn in particular is wasted as a bad guy who isn’t given any motivation as to why he would help the Taiwanese terrorists. Scheider really though gets it the worst as this was the guy who killed the shark in Jaws and he’s reduced to a role in which he basically cowers and is held hostage. Plus the film clearly hates him for his womanizing ways which add up to nothing in said film. Sure he was in peril in the vastly superior Peacekeeper (check index) but he was given a lot more to do, as he was in Executive Power as he actually was allowed to fight alongside the good guys. Here though Scheider is utterly useless and one wonders why they hired Scheider if they weren’t going to use him. Of course what hurts the film also is the casting of Patrick Muldoon. Muldoon of Starship Troopers fame is far too young to convince one as being a killing machine standing between terrorists and nuclear destruction, Muldoon is of course no Dolph Lundgren or Mike Madsen but one was nostalgic for Lorenzo Lamas. Indeed part of the problem is that he seems too much like a teenager which is what is often the problem as he is apparently the one man that stands between the terrorists and Armageddon. Overall the most unforgivable problem is that Chain Of Command is just plain boring, with too many sequences of static suspense scenes and a climax that is just a complete mess. Chain Of Command than is a very ridiculous effort taken on its own plot threads but with the lack of action and lack of any real freshness to the exhausted material, Chain Of Command is just a deadly dull rip off.
I actually thought I'd already reviewed this and was surprised about 2 years ago when I was reviewing Rage and Honor 2, another Muldoon classic, to find that this wasn't the case. Anyway, what annoyed me the most was they took the number one male chauvenist reason why women shouldn't be president-- that they're too indecisive-- and actually said "see, DC would get blown up by a nuke if that happened, because women can't make big decisions." Big ol' pile of suck.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I was far too bored to be offended by Maria Conchita Alonzo's President being indecisive. I was more offended by Roy Scheider's treatment, as well as the way Biehn was wasted. Plus the whole way China continues to attack despite the U.S calling off the nukes was absurd to say the least.
ReplyDeleteI may disagree with alot of your reviews( like all the PM films you gave negative reviews to for example, in my mind there's no such thing as a bad PM film, also LOVED Rambo 3, and I was also baffled as to how you could give Hard Luck a positive rating, that film was one of the worst pieces of garbage i've ever seen and easily Snipes worst film) but I mostly agree with you on Chain Of Command, I found it to be below average though it wasn't painful to sit through, but it was a just a little too downbeat for my tastes, and like you said it was mostly dull with little in the way of action, though for me Alonzo's performance was the best thing about the film as she was pretty convincing(and her being indecisive had nothing to do with DC getting nuked, the Chinese were portraed as being so unreasonable that they probably would've done it regardless of who the president was) Muldoon and Schneider were competent despite not being very convincing in they're roles. Oh and if you thought Schneider was unconvincing here, just wait til you see in Red Serpent where he actually plays a Russian, Hard not to laugh at that! And he also played a bad-ass convict rather unconvingly in the Die Hard/Con Air rip-off Evasive Action.
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