Last Bullet - Showdown der Auftragskiller

As in many movies before, Dolph Lundgren deals with his love for Eastern European / Russian mob themes. And he has always participated in strong feelings movies where love, hate, betrayal etc have been clearly up and vividly performed.

Gooding is great as always (Academy Award winner!), but Lundgren does not seem his pale shadow - has he improved so much then? And the guys depicting Russians are equal to the task - if taking into account that none of them is of Russian origin. Alike in other movies by Lundgren, there are lots of long shootings, dead bodies and changing sides - with some unexpected moments, though. If you choose to see this movie, your time will not wasted - although Lundgren has starred in better ones.

One in the Chamber, i can sum it up in a few ways. Its not that bad, its an average action flick with a few good and bad things. The things I liked about it was the good cast. Gooding Jr. and Lundgren make a somewhat good duo. The action sequences were good, I think they could have been slightly better. The story was a lil confusing to me but after a moment, I was able to figure it out. Its a mind-bending scenario. The things I didn't like about it was the clichés that I obviously saw coming. Like one point, I knew something unexpected was going to happen. Either a drive-by shooting or a car bombing. The love angle, I just didn't get. It was not thorough and poorly executed, in my opinion. Overall, Its a average action movie. With a few clichés here and there. I recommend this to anyone that just enjoys a lil action flick every once in a while. Replay value for me is moderate and I'd still enjoy it. Overall 6 out of 10.

I was very hesitant to watch yet another Cuba Gooding Jr. Direct to DVD film after the last handful or so, but the fact that Dolph Lundgren was a co-star eased up my trepidation long enough to justify to my better judgement about renting it from Redbox.

The film did indeed start off pretty awful, but got a bit better as the film plodded along, of course, picking up coincidentally when Dolph first appears about half an hour into the movie. Now that means you have to suffer the first 24 minutes and 40 seconds, so if you man up and tough it out as the seemingly trite, insipid tale of a Bible-quoting hit-man up against warring fractions of the Russian mafia, it DOES get better.

Whether we like it or not we DO often judge movies by the title and/or cover art promo-poster at first. I expected a true 'B' movie here, but what I got was considerably beyond it. It is an intelligent, albeit formulaic plot line, but it also has very intelligent dialog, shot extremely well, and directed substantially better than MANY "Blockbusters" we end up paying far too much for.

Here you have the many clichés and standards of an average budget action flick, but what this movie does is engross you from beginning to end. I would NOT consider this a 'B' movie by any means. It stands aside as a well thought out and inspired piece of film making on the merits of writing, casting, crew, production values and certainly Directing!

Cuba is truly outstanding here. Best performance in years(I believe). Dolf is...well, still Dolf at his best average, but good casting and acting all around. I recommend this because it surprised me as to certain nuances of actual quality of direction and cinematography AND script writing that is rarely shown in movies of this genre.

Note: Many people and critics complain of not being able to 'follow it'. That is likely because a LOT of the story and scenes here are INTELLIGENTLY executed and THAT takes a disciplined attention span to pay full attention to what is going on.

On a side note; and part of what makes the 'Love' interest in this movie so good, is that, like 'Remains of the Day', you can truly feel the wistful melancholy of the 'Inapproachable' aspect of 'Togetherness' that, as much as we want it to be, it has another more romantic aspect regarding the questions that it leaves behind.

"When one mob family has a problem with another they call me. For the right price I solve it. I'm a fixer that's what I do, but that's not the only reason I'm here." Ray Carver (Gooding Jr.) is the best assassin money can buy. After being hired by both sides of a Russian gang war he sets out to do his worst. When he refuses to shoot a woman he himself becomes a marked man. Aleksey Andreev (Lundgren) is sent to take care of Ray before things get out of hand. I know what your thinking...a movie with Dolph Lundgren!! How can that be bad?? Without trying to totally disappoint you this is not really good at all. I'm not sure what happened to Cuba but after winning the Oscar he really lowered his movie standards. Dolph's were never that high to start with but I am really wondering why his Russian accent in Rocky 4 was better then his in this one. I assumed the more movies you do the better you get but I guess I'm wrong. I have to say though that I am not into the B-rate action movies though and if you like them you will probably like this one. Overall, exactly what I expected, maybe a little worse. I give it a C-.