The Fifth Commandment

I would just like to point out that the 5th Commandment on the Holy Bible is actually honor thy Father and Mother, not "Do not kill" as the theme song for the movie goes. So the title already sets the mood for the rest of the picture - a bit of a joke. I would like to know who came up with the title as they made a serious booboo? I went to the DVD store to pick out a fighting movie that we could all say "how cool was that?" to, but unfortunately i picked this movie. the cover seemed good but the explanation was slightly off, going into life theories and morals etc - not really describing what is to come. I was seriously disappointed in the acting abilities of the 3 main characters, especially Angel. They might as well have held the script up and read it straight with no emotion, because even no emotion is better than fake emotion. The one single part in Ong Bak where the guy fly kicks the other fighter and says the most cheesiest and random line ever "the mustang has galloped on your face" was still better than the entire 5th/6th Commandment Movie. Krystal

A US-made movie shot in Thailand, THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT seems to be something of a vanity piece for writer/star Rick Yune. Perhaps he was hoping to break out of the B-movie mould and become a modern-day Bruce Lee or something, I'm not sure, but this cheapjack rip-off of BANGKOK DANGEROUS was never going to do that for him.

In fact, the wooden Yune is one of the most uninteresting things about the whole production. Yune seems to do much better when he's either in support or playing the bad guy, as he has zero charisma as the protagonist here. Still, the supporting cast are better, and there are a couple of nice turns from both Bokeem Woodbine and Keith David, although neither actor gets a whole lot of screen time.

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT is a typical B-movie action flick filled with shoot-outs and fight scenes, and as is usual the storyline comes second to the battles. Yune is a trained assassin who gets caught up in protecting a Jennifer Lopez-lookalike singer from a husband and wife assassin team (shades of MR & MRS SMITH). Sadly, the action is pretty poor, with dodgy choreography making things difficult to see, and there are only a couple of good fight scenes in the whole thing. It's clear to me that British director Jesse V. Johnson should stick to being a stuntman.

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.

The Fifth Commandment (TFC) is the real deal. The action is fierce. The tension is explosive. The camera work is dazzling. This highly stylized exploration of ass whoop reminds us of A Better Tomorrow, one of the earliest John Woo films. That one wasn't perfect either, but it is in that imperfection, in that grit, that the beauty of it lies, and through that movie both John Woo and Chow Yun Fat were recognized internationally. The characters in TFC are hilarious in a comic book sort of way. This slam bam thank you ma'am action smack down is a fitting tribute to the great low budget martial arts films of the seventies and eighties. The litmus test for this movie is: did you enjoy Ong Bak? If you did, this isn't quite as good but you do not want to miss this bad ass whack fest. The Fifth Commandment is not quite The Killer or Hard Boiled, but, come one, what movie is. In its own right, this is a heavy duty no holds barred celebration of violence as a choreographed art form. Of course the plot is thin! It's not supposed to be Scent of A Woman, for crying out loud. An assassin hired to kill a Jennifer Lopez look alike doesn't take the job because it would involve killing his own brother so the people who hired him are now out to get him. Duh. Transporter 3, which has a similar plot, is a joke compared to this one. Kill Bill was only making fun of movies like TFC. Too bad it doesn't have a better ending. The last half hour drags on and ruins the entire experience.

I really like Rick Yune and it really isn't easy rating the movie that low. But I just can't rate the movie higher. As another reviewer wrote, you could give Rick Yune an "A" for his efforts. But it might have been better, if someone else would have written the story, someone (many?) would have helped him with the producing part and maybe if the movie had stronger leads.

The acting is way below average, but then again, the script doesn't seem to have anything that anyone could hold onto. The female lead might be beautiful, but is totally misplaced. While I'm writing about all this, some of you might wonder, why I haven't lost a word about the action sequences. After all this is an action movie and the really important part is the choreography of these scenes. I'd say that they save the movie from a "1" rating, but as the time and the stunts have progressed the last year, coming up with stunts like these, won't really cut it. There's Ong Bak, Tom Yum Goong and also Donnie Yen's and Jet Li's latest efforts. Even for a fan of the genre, this won't appeal to you. I hope for Rick Yune, that he finds better projects in the future.