I'm a big Van Damme fan so I was excited when I got hold of this one, especially having seen the trailer. Suffice to say I was disappointed.
With something of a return to form in recent films 'Wake of Death' and 'In Hell', my expectations may have been a bit high.
Jean-Claude himself didn't do too much wrong (for Jean-Claude)but some of the other actors (or maybe it was their lines) were atrocious. I thought the director seemed a bit lost at times.
He certainly spread his limited budget a bit too thin and it shows, particularly in the mob/crowd and helicopter scenes. For the angry mob scene, this was one film where they should have used stock footage of a real mob (Romania?) and presented it as a news broadcast a-la 'Crimson Tide'.
I guess there must have been a technical adviser in there somewhere (or maybe not).
This film had more plot holes in it than anything I've seen for a long time. I won't touch on them all.
Why that 'militia' didn't just storm the presidential building right at the start of the film stayed with me throughout. With the number and type of conspirators involved, it would have been too easy to take him down.
Lucky for the bad guys, the president sent all his forces out of town for a few hours (two armoured personnel carriers and a truck I think).
As for the embassy siege, fortunately for the good guys, the bad guys just came like lemmings down machine gun alley, one at a time for good measure.
They even took the time to emphasise during the film that they could only defend one side of the compound. Lucky the bad guys couldn't figure that out.
And with trouble brewing in Moldavia (wasn't that on 'Dynasty'?), the US decided to position its fleet several hours flying time away from the action. I suppose there wouldn't have been a story without that.
All that aside, some parts of the action in the film were quite good (or showing promise and just as I was warming to it, something terribly lame would happen).
The plot was pretty good and could have had potential for a bigger budget more mainstream flick.
Being presented as a serious action/thriller, I just couldn't shake off all the continual plot holes.
A bit of a shame really.
At least it wasn't a Seagal movie.
With something of a return to form in recent films 'Wake of Death' and 'In Hell', my expectations may have been a bit high.
Jean-Claude himself didn't do too much wrong (for Jean-Claude)but some of the other actors (or maybe it was their lines) were atrocious. I thought the director seemed a bit lost at times.
He certainly spread his limited budget a bit too thin and it shows, particularly in the mob/crowd and helicopter scenes. For the angry mob scene, this was one film where they should have used stock footage of a real mob (Romania?) and presented it as a news broadcast a-la 'Crimson Tide'.
I guess there must have been a technical adviser in there somewhere (or maybe not).
This film had more plot holes in it than anything I've seen for a long time. I won't touch on them all.
Why that 'militia' didn't just storm the presidential building right at the start of the film stayed with me throughout. With the number and type of conspirators involved, it would have been too easy to take him down.
Lucky for the bad guys, the president sent all his forces out of town for a few hours (two armoured personnel carriers and a truck I think).
As for the embassy siege, fortunately for the good guys, the bad guys just came like lemmings down machine gun alley, one at a time for good measure.
They even took the time to emphasise during the film that they could only defend one side of the compound. Lucky the bad guys couldn't figure that out.
And with trouble brewing in Moldavia (wasn't that on 'Dynasty'?), the US decided to position its fleet several hours flying time away from the action. I suppose there wouldn't have been a story without that.
All that aside, some parts of the action in the film were quite good (or showing promise and just as I was warming to it, something terribly lame would happen).
The plot was pretty good and could have had potential for a bigger budget more mainstream flick.
Being presented as a serious action/thriller, I just couldn't shake off all the continual plot holes.
A bit of a shame really.
At least it wasn't a Seagal movie.