La sentinelle

This is Dolph's directorial debut. For the tight schedule and budget he had, Lundgren does a really good job. Here's the reason to watch the flick: It has Jerry Springer as the President! Dolph Lundgren stars as Lance Rockford who is assigned to protect the prez from terrorists. Everything goes wrong and Rockford has to battle everybody. Can he make it out alive? Springer puts in a decent performance. Wished he had more screen time though....but the movie has a lot of action. The Mechanik also directed by Lundgren is awesome!

Worth Watching!

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I don't like action movies all too much but I got this film and it was very good. I haven't seen many Dolph Lundgren movies except Rocky 4 and He-man but El Protector was a very good film. If all his films are like this I shall watch more.

The idea is quite good, involving terrorists and quite brave for todays current situations. The film has a strong plot which helps because it is almost all action. It never stops. Lot's of gunfights, punching and kicking and explosions. This is good fun.

Dolph Lundgren is quite a good actor for the genre he works in I must admit. He's still also in excellent shape considering Rocky 4 was 20 years ago.

I also must say I liked the music. I am a musician myself and would like to get into the movie industry through that, and the score in this film is interesting.

This is overall a good movie, worth your time.

I'd read somewhere that Dolph Lundgren got into directing a few years ago, when the next in a long line of straight-to-DVD cookie cutter action movies had its director get sick, so Ivan Drago himself just stepped in and took the reins. Then I forgot about the movie for four years.

I'm flipping channels today, and see the first two names in the credits: Dolph Lundgren ... and JERRY SPRINGER. I make a bet with myself to watch it until Springer shows up, and Springer is playing the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

With all this going for it, it should be one of the grandest movies of the 21st century. Except, no.

While not the worst movie I've ever seen, nor the worst action sequences I've ever seen, the action is still choppy, shot from entirely too close a range to see what's going on. The acting isn't terrible (except Dolph, though he's only required to stand there and look chiseled), but the plot is telegraphed in every scene. Every good guy that turns out later to be shady, acts shady the moment they come on screen. Every character who is going to die, the camera lingers on them long enough to give them extra footage for future demo reels. And Dolph's character is named "Lance Rockford." Seriously. I am not making this up.

Every action sequence is essentially the same, just a whole lot of bullet sound-effects and nothing interesting to look at or remember. There was some mumbo-jumbo at the beginning where Lance Rockford was a POW in his past, as if to explain that the character is damaged or something. It's completely unnecessary, as is about 45 minutes of the movie. By the time Lance Rockford is faced with a crucial moral dilemma, I honestly don't see how anyone watching it could care.

There are better places for your action fix, and better places for your Dolph fix. It's currently averaging around a 5.0 on IMDb, which is about right. It's by no means worth a theatrical release, but nor is it Uwe-Boll-quality, either. Guns fire, people shout a lot, and you'll find yourself getting bored when you're not studying the scars from Dolph's face-lifts. But hey, Jerry Springer plays the bad guy, so that's worth a bonus point.

5/10

Dolph Lundgren stars as Lance Rockford, a secret service agent who protects a politician from a terrorist group called "The Patriots" who see the President's view on terror as underwhelming to say the least. So Dolph is thrown into a fight where nothing is ever as it seems. I generally review these type of movies when I see them on TV because I generally don't see straight to video movies. For instance I reviewed Bridge Of Dragons because I saw it on HBO some night awhile ago and I happened to have my notes. I actually rented The Defender because I saw that it had Jerry Springer in it and the thought of him as the President of the United States had me curious to say the least. I was expecting a movie of magnitude ineptitude and was indeed surprised to see that Lundgren was a competent director and that the action sequences were fairly well staged and suspenseful. The story was (As expected) stupid and full of plot holes but I for one found this to be far better than I expected it to be.

* *1/2 out of 4-(Pretty good)

To be fair- I loved him in the Rocky 4 and Creed II. So from the early days until now. He was upgraded to B-Level actor! But I have to give this one a 2/10. Once you see Jerry Springer- 2 stars is all you get from me!

I must BREAK YOU!