Why
not just call it “Vague Chief?” It is the name of an international security
firm funded by a Russian heiress as a favor to a CIA veteran, but its only
business plan is avenging a comrade murdered in the line of duty. Technically,
the killer is already dead and his organ and gun-trafficking boss does not even
know Jake Alexander and his team exist, but whatever. Steven Seagal needs to
keep films flowing into Moscow theaters, so here’s another one. Alas, the once
formidable action star continues to show his age in Ross W. Clarkson &
Philippe Martinez’s General Commander,
which releases today on DVD.
For
some reason, Alexander and his ragtag team of agency “assets, not agents” were
running a sting on a Southeast Asian organ harvesting operation overseen by Orsini,
a Camorra renegade. One of them gets killed (along with all of Orsini’s men),
so the CIA station chief pulls the plug. Of course, they all go rogue after
telling her to go to Hell in the ludicrous “you-want-the-truth-you-can’t-handle-the-truth”
debriefs the film constantly flashes back to.
Katarina
Sokolov sets Alexander up in business because he once saved her life and because
she finds him attractive (which is so gross). From there, Alexander’s
right-hand man Tom Benton just has a few of his seedy contacts set-up some
meetings with Orsini’s lieutenants and soon there all shooting at each other on
the streets of Manila.
You
have to give Van Damme and Dolph Lungren credit for aging gracefully,
especially whenever you watch a Seagal movie. They still look credible kicking
butt, whereas he does not. His direct-to-DVD movies definitely suffer for it,
but they are also several cuts below in terms of screenwriting and production
values. Keep in mind co-director Martinez previously helmed Viktor, in which Gerard Depardieu plays
an art thief looking to avenge his son, when not resting and recuperating in
the safety of Chechnya (seriously).
There
are some watchable moments in General
Commander, but they have little to do with Seagal. Byron Gibson nearly
redeems the film with his high energy turn as Benton and Mica Javier shows a
fair amount of action movie potential as Maria Lopez, Alexander’s motorcycle
driving associate. Unfortunately, Seagal has lost his mojo, which undermines
action journeyman Ron Smoorenberg’s big fight scene against him.
