The Fifth Commandment

As a stereotypical action film review, I intend to split this review into "starter, main course, and dessert" for your action enjoyment:

The film really kicks off 13 minutes in where our main man Rick Yune displays exceptional gunplay ability, with a particular penchant for shredding his enemies' legs apart with wave after wave of lead. And this is just for starters...

Take one scene, Bokeem Woodbine lays the smackdown on a group of around 8 assailants, all while being unarmed. Why? Maybe his character is some scientific mash up of Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal. I don't know. In any case, the scene is pulled off with stylish camera work, and some cool looking fisticuffs. This main course is action packed, enjoyable, with a side order of dead bodies. Maybe...close to 100 of them.

And if that hasn't sated your appetite, for dessert, the antagonist (Roger Yuan) is exceptionally brutal and convincing in his attempts to kill everything in between him and his target (Dania Ramirez). The target who is such an arrogant, obnoxious character that at one point I was secretly hoping for her to get gunned into tiny, tiny pieces.

Conclusion: The plot is perhaps nothing to write home about. But the action is solid, the pacing is good, and all the ingredients of a great action movie are here for you to enjoy in some kind of crazy action soup.

(Thanks for sticking with all these food references!)

Title ridiculously translated into Portuguese as "O 5o Comando" (The fifth Command) instead of "O 5o. Mandamento"

For the people above who don't think it should be the 6th commandment, you're obviously not Catholic or Lutheran - for them it is. For the people above who don't think it should be the 6th commandment, you're obviously not Catholic or Lutheran - for them it is. For the people above who don't think it should be the 6th commandment, you're obviously not Catholic or Lutheran - for them it is. For the people above who don't think it should be the 6th commandment, you're obviously not Catholic or Lutheran - for them it is. For the people above who don't think it should be the 6th commandment, you're obviously not Catholic or Lutheran - for them it is.

Sorry for the repeat, but you need 10 lines.

If for no other reason one should view this movie as a perfect example one two things. First being why you should not let an actor of questionable talent write, produce, and star in his own film. Second would be how not to make a movie...period. I suppose I'll give Rick Yune an "A" for effort seeing as how he wrote the story, produced the film, and starred in it. That's got to take a lot of work. That does not, however, excuse his lackluster performance and the stinted dialogue of the lead and pretty much all characters. Even Keith David, a talented character actor who almost always seems to pick lousy roles, couldn't do much even with the rather limited time he's on screen. In the time Yune spent putting his name all over this thing he could've done things like...oh, I don't know...learned how work with a fight choreographer. The young Chance, played by the ridiculously-named-but-very-talented young martial artist Boo Boo Stewart, wastes his time impressing with his skills early. Then Yune pitches all of that out the window by displaying the martial arts skills of a bag of hammers. What action sequences there are do not come off as anything special and some almost yawn-inducing. Sadly this movie could have been a showcase for the potential of more than just Yune, but it trips out of the gate and just continues falling farther and farther back until you don't even care how it ends. Well, at least I didn't.

It does actually say quite a lot about the movie that they think the fifth commandment is "thou shalt not kill" It isn't. Gives you some idea of the lack of attention involved in producing the movie. As a kick-fest, with guns and explosions thrown-in, it stands with some merit, though the production values are not of the best. The plot is fairly simple, yet made confusing in an attempt to give it depth. The acting is pretty good given the limited script. The sound track is pointlessly noisy in all the wrong places. In all, it gives the feeling of an early eighties effort: a pleasant enough diversion for a rainy day, but don't expect to be blown away.