Riposte immédiate

Rather than the abomination that was released in 2010, this is what the A-Team movie should have been like. The necessary pieces are all there, desperate situation, chase scenes with vehicles jumping/flipping over or crashing through things, people falling or being flung through the air, thousands of rounds of ammunition expended and last but not least, big explosions.

Even with all that going on, this feature is only marginally entertaining. It is ham and cheese at it's best (or worse depending on your viewpoint). The dialog is bad and the plot is so formulaic that you know what will happen well before it happens. The buddy-buddy bonding scene in the beginning is not believable and adds no real value other than to give the audience a quick introduction to the team and their "We are bad ass" attitude/history.

There is a fair amount of violence which includes a graphic torture scene. The story, what little of it lacks cohesiveness and as a result jumps around more than a Mexican jumping bean on a pogo stick.

For those looking for mindless entertainment with gun play and explosions, they will probably be satisfied. For those wanting a good story to go along with the violence, probably not.

"Death Before Dishonor" is a cheesy, nasty, jingoistic piece of work, and pretty fun on that level. In any event, it does exactly what it should be doing, and that's delivering lots of gunfire, explosions, and brutality before revving up for a nicely rousing finale. The villains are utter creeps whose demise we eagerly anticipate, and our hero is a jut jawed type who everybody knows damn well will take on all comers in order to do what's right.

It's also the sole feature film vehicle for TV star Fred Dryer ('Hunter'), who plays Marine sergeant "Gunny" Burns, who's stationed in the Middle East. When terrorists manage to kidnap his superior, Colonel Halloran (a lovably crusty Brian Keith), he goes into action. Luscious Polish babe Joanna Pacula plays a dubious journalist covering the terrorists' activities, Paul Winfield (rather wasted) is an officious, typical bureaucrat (the kind of guy in this type of film who will insist that the hero do things by the book), Sasha Mitchell is one of Burns's young soldiers, and Rockne Tarkington, Mohammed Bakri, and Kasey Walker play our unsubtle villains.

This marked the only 1st unit directing credit for veteran stuntman and stunt coordinator Terry Leonard, who's worked on films ranging from "McLintock!" to "The Green Hornet". You know it's comfortably familiar stuff, when, even if you're watching it for the first time, you can easily predict upcoming lines of dialogue. The on location shooting is a bonus, as is the excellent music by the under-rated Aussie composer Brian May. The action is first rate, and keeps us happily watching for the duration. And just to show us how sadistic the baddies are, the most memorable scene has them mutilating Keiths' hand with a power drill and threatening his young associate with similar treatment. That makes it all the more glorious when Dryer and associates, with the assistance of the Mossad, launch the climactic attack on the stronghold where Keith is being kept. It's guaranteed to get you cheering and pumping your fist, right up to the final frame.

Seven out of 10.

Cardinal Richelieu said: "War is one of the scourges with which it has pleased God to afflict men."

The scourge who afflicts men in this wheeze is Gunnery Sgt. Burns (Fred Dryer). Burns is a career soldier, battle hardened and grizzled. He has his own interpretation of American foreign military policy, all foreigners are suspect by default and therefore subject to his military policy.

Armed only with this simple misunderstanding (and highly powered automatic weaponry), Burns' ire is aroused when his superior and friend, Col. Halloran (Brian Keith) is bushwacked and spirited away by babbling, machine gun toting "types". Burns' initial bafflement with his superiors reluctance to blame and incacerate every non-American in a hundred mile radius soon gives way to righteous indignation.

Bullets are soon being chambered, grenades are attached to bandoliers and rocket launchers hefted. Before you can say "United Nations peacekeeping envoy" Gunnery Sgt. Burns is (with the help of a few other people who don't stand on ceremony when there are asses to be kicked) laying siege to the desert fortress of a large man who looks like the product of an unholy union between Chewbacca and Dave Lee Travis (sorry, not funny if your not from the UK). After the smoke clears (and we have learnt that any combatant who has received a knife to the chest still has to be punched in the face really hard and fall from a terrace to ensure neutralisation), everyone who deserved to be (except the writers) is riddled with bullets, blown up and in one case has had a jeep dropped on them.

Possibly you may think I don't care much for this film, based on the above, but you'd be wrong. This is a slightly above average actioner, decently edited action scenes and pushes all the politically wrong buttons to get any red blooded blockhead like me baying for blood.

Its a shame Fred Dryer couldn't bring the same understated, laconic charm to this effort that he did to seven years of the excellent cop show Hunter, but he does make a pretty good action hero. Not a bad action pot boiler and I didn't even know it was Islamophobic until I looked it up on wiki.

Good casting and good plot. Modern movie watchers can say "predictable"; however, they've seen lots of action films SINCE 1987 that make plot elements here rather familiar. Don't you think? They acted like marines; everyone was fit and could do the wall climbs, etc. People seemed to be willing to do things not for money--that was a bit unusual, to the end that the "good guys" won! It was patriotic, sure, but in this age (2011) of from the top-down complacency, this patriotism comes across as welcome, I'd say. Good Action. Only the blond photographer lady seemed miscast to me. As you can see from the high score, I liked it!

Imagine 6 terrorists in a truck and 2 terrorists in a car all with sun-machineguns and firing/killing every living thing in their path, shooting heavily on cilvilians and killed them earlier, yet ou hero with a pistol which had only 1 or 2 bullets left, is chasing them, avoiding all of heavy bursts magically, omg thats a true failry tail, no my mistake, its like some lonely tunes cartoon. And the terrorists AKA 47s were bult in a way that they kill any person other than our hero. OMG, thats all. here I stopped watching this and fast forward just to see a scene where Joanna Pacula invites our hereo. The truth is I just wanted to see Joanna Pacula, but this highly intelligent film even stopped me to watch any further. Hope you get the rest.