Second in Command

This is pretty run of the mill stuff.

Its a bit more of an understated JCVD and that's not a bad thing.

The action is a bit basic as is the plot.

Would I watch it twice? No

Did I feel like I was suffering when I watched it? No

The film sees Van Damme star as Sam Keenan who is given the task of protecting the new president of Moldavia (made up? Maybe!) from violent protesters and ardent supporters of the country's previous regime. Essentially this is a siege movie, and with a plot somewhat resembling Dolph Lundgren's The Defender. Both movies are very similarly toned, however while Lundgren received mostly positives from that film (and more so from his directorial follow up the Mechanik) Van Damme will probably not earn the plaudits on this one. Now the man himself is not the problem, but the film suffers from amateurish direction and overly ambitious delivery of it's ideas in which the film tries to deliver the requisite amount of atypically military imagery. For instance helicopters make appearances in this film, only mostly they are poorly done CGI helicopters. As such the films attempt to look more expensive results in it looking cheaper. This is where SIC fails and where The Defender did not.

The direction from Simon Fellows lacks imagination, cohesion and competence. The trouble is the director is too quick to try and mimic certain styles from other directors. There is also too much compensation made in the editing room. Many of Fellow's stylistic choices do not work and only serve to hinder the film and whereas Dolph Lundgren made the Defender taut and polished, SIC is sometimes a little slipshod. However as the film progresses, Fellows gets a little more controlled. On a technical standpoint the rest of the film is okay, with mostly polished cinematography and an okay musical score.

The cast are good with Van Damme ably supported by Raz Adoti, Julie Cox and Alan Mckenna and William Tapley. Jean Claude himself is good in a pretty straight down the middle kind of role. He's not required to stretch as much as in Wake Of Death, but Van Damme gives his role a humanity and the role some conviction and thus adds depth to the 2 dimensional character as written on the page. Van Damme is certainly developing as an actor and he now adds so much to roles that other action stars would simply do competently. JC has improved so much and in regards to the action stars of the moment Van Damme is the most interesting as an actor. I certainly hope he stretches himself in future roles, cause I think having matured as a person he has a world weariness to him and an inner depth that shows up in his last few roles and there is now something going on behind those eyes.

The action in the film is okay. In terms of hand to hand combat there as some nice brief flourishes from JC, and there's a average length fight scene at the end but that suffers from poor editing and choice of shots. As for the rest it's primarily gunplay and Fellows chooses to go docu style which half walks and half doesn't. However the last half hour of the film is mostly action and the pace picks up nicely and we have a good amount of explosions going on.

Overall this is not a write off and by no means one of Van Dammes worst. It's good to have him back after a long wait following Wake Of Death, but understandably some fans may be disappointed. I can only say to them that Hard Corps promises much more and that also this film is far better than Seagal's recent turkeys. **1/2

Commander Sam Keenan is appointed second-in-command at the US Embassy in Moldavia, mere hours before the Ambassador is killed. The streets are full of insurgents attempting a violent uprising against the democratically elected president, who is now in the care of the US within the embassy. However with the insurgents laying siege outside and rescue many hours away, options for survival and limited and Keenan comes under pressure from without and within.

In a way I suppose we should see it as Van Damme returning to Europe to use his American-found fame to bolster film-making in Europe, however another way to see it is that his appeal has dwindled badly and he has taken to doing basic action films in Eastern European to squeeze every last penny out of the budget. Watching this film among others, it is hard to avoid the fact that the truth is almost undoubtedly the latter. The plot is fairly basic but in essence it is a war-zone version of Assault on Precinct 13. So what we are a looking for is a ratcheting up of tension across the film, with the silence being harder to watch than the action – which by extension is more exciting for its quality as payoff.

Sadly that is not what the film delivers because instead everything is played out as basic as you like, with minimal tension, obvious plotting, wooden acting and action that plays like they all just hoped having shots of gunfire would be sufficient to justify it as an "action film". It is never awful by any means and indeed for those trawling the cable listings looking for something to have on like visual wallpaper, you could do much worse. But this is hardly praise and all through the film I never shook the feeling of it being a cu-price low rent affair with no aspirations beyond the bottom shelf of the video store and maybe a 2am slot on a cable station. Obviously there is a limited amount of money to play with but this is only an excuse for scale – not for how good a film it is and director Fellows isn't able to do much. His cast don't help, with Van Damme on auto-pilot (without even much action to speak of for him), Cox filling a tired cliché of a female role and nobody else making an impression even if they had been given the material. The Eastern European villains are so bland and generic that even modern video games can produce a more realistic cast of characters.

Second in Command will be found on poor slots on so-so TV stations, was made in Eastern Europe and stars Jean-Claude Van Damme so really one could say that the clues are all right there for you to see for yourself. If you do decide to watch it then please note that it does live up to the low standards it suggests it will have and, while too bland to be really awful, there isn't much about it worth seeing.

The tempo of this film is just all over the place. It pretty much instantly drops into action, but then the audio doesn't change suggesting something exciting should happen, when the following scene is just guys talking in an office. Then when action kicks in again it's brought on in a lurch, so whilst it's not surprising, it's not built up to either. The plot is okay, very 'America saves the world', or to be specific, 'Moldavia'.

The acting isn't particularly inspired and the dialogue nothing special, these again aren't helped by the audio. People talking in an empty room with nothing else to engage you with isn't too riveting. Plus, whilst the budget must have been fairly decent, on account of all the helicopter shots, etc., certain parts just come across as cheap. There are graphics, such as the army's ETA or sight through binoculars, which seem like they're more from a video game of the same period.

JCVD is the major draw here, but I wouldn't particularly say he's utilised or that this is a typical JCVD film. His martial arts aren't used for ages, and when they are, the fight scene looks a little lame due to camera shots. Many edgy shots throughout, poorly done.

Still, the ending is kind of interesting, it at least has an enticing ending (despite being predictable, the false ending is a little obvious). It doesn't do a lot right, but it's not atrocious, although I'd choose many JCVD films before this one.

As such an admirer of Jean-Claude Van Damme, watching him make stuff like this is really disheartening to be honest with you all. I grew up with his movies, and whilst not all of them were great, he has provided me with many hours of entertainment with classics such as Bloodsport, Universal Soldier, and Time Cop. Even recently he has really upped his game with some DTV gems like Until Death, Wake Of Death, Replicant, Assassination Games, and In Hell. But this feels like something that Steven Seagal rejected. It doesn't have much action to speak of, and when it does happen, we get a lot of frustrating shaky camera work that really hampers what little it has going for it. It doesn't help that I can't stand politics. Anything to do with it, I tend to lose interest in quickly. There are a few exceptions to this rule where I end up enjoying them, but this was bloody terrible. Jean-Claude Van Damme isn't really trying all that much here. He phones it in, but he can't overcome the weak script or poor pacing issues. I realize he has toned down his histrionics over the last few years, but this movie really lets him down. The rest of the cast do what they have to do, but none of them really stand out all that much

Final Thoughts: He's made some really good DTV gems since this awful film, but this is without a doubt one of the worst movies he has ever done. It's up there with Double Team, Black Eagle, and Derailed. Even die hard JCVD fans (I consider myself one of them!) will be disappointed by this. The lack of interest really sinks this one

3/10