One in the Chamber

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.

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.

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 read the posted reviews posted about this one and they're massively wrong.

I'll keep mine brief:

The movie is rooted in the action and the characters and story are plot devices aside from the lead. The staples are all there (accent heavy thugs, withdrawn lead with a moral dilemma, back story dealing with his obsession with the female lead) and the female lead is gorgeous. I liked that it never resorted to objectifying her.

This is a hit-man movie. It's not aiming for realism over entertainment but it's not out right silly either. The shooting scenes are well done. The fighting scenes could use a little work since there were points where the use of a stunt double was too obvious. It's a hit-man in Prague playing sides in a Russian mafia war. That's about all you need to know.

Once the action gets going another player/hit-man is introduced. Dolph Lundgren steals his scenes with a great character that could have been developed more but is fun as it is.

A more menacing bad guy would have been nice. There are quite a few nasty Russians in this but it's all implied. Some scenes dedicated to showing them as bad people would have helped establish them as such. Don't just allude to him torturing someone. You've got the R rating so stretch your legs Mr Kaufman and let's see the guy tied to the ceiling getting killed so I know the guy doing it is more than just an angry Russian.

I gave this 8/10 because I judged it based on reception as a fan of action movies. If you like movies about professional killers you can put this on and not be disappointed. It's not Collateral but it's still fun to watch. Go into it remembering that it's a straight to DVD/VOD action movie and have a good time.

I look forward to seeing what the team behind this does next since this is a big improvement over their previous efforts. As long as they keep learning and striving for more their next movie could be something very cool to see.

Pros: *good shooting scenes especially with the long range guns *good acting *great locations *coherent and easy to follow plot *fun characters

Cons: *the script had weaknesses in the dialogue *the shots could have been more stylized *the texture of the film should have been adjusted by the DOP to reflect *the location and set pieces. I mentioned Collateral: compare the club scenes specifically to see what I mean. *the gun play (too many machine guns! don't double fist pistols!) *underdeveloped characters

8/10 for an action movie

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.