When people that can’t play drums try to play drums whether in real life, on film or whatever but you can’t hear what they’re doing (you can only see them play), you can usually tell they can’t play for shit. I think it’s pretty obvious if you look closely. I was shocked to find when this movie kicked off that Mr Lundgren can clearly play drums. Having looked this movie up on IMDB apparently Dolph is a drummer in real life. That’s Wicked, I didn’t know that. But, I could tell from watching him play in this movie, that he had a natural posture and actually was co-ordinating his body to play something that could pass as a drum beat.
That’s right, Dolph Lundgren is the drummer in a rock band in this one. He must be the oldest member of the band, but he plays without his shirt and in a pair of aviator sunglasses and looks as cool as fuck!
Command Performance basically rehashes the Die Hard formula but does it in a way where it doesn’t really matter, there are enough subtle differences and the movie is entertaining enough that you just go with it and enjoy it.
So basically Dolph is the drummer in a rock band playing as the support act for an American pop star at some sort of benefit concert in Moscow. The Russian president Alexei Petrov (Hristo Shopov, Undisputed 3) is in attendance along with his two daughters, one of which is played by Dolph Lungren's daughter Ida Lundgren in her screen debut. I thought it was strange mixing Rock bands with crappy pop singers at such a concert, it usually is, but the film actually plays with this by having Dolph say to the American pop star Venus (Mellissa Molinaro) “You’re actually talented, why do you waste your time with that cheesy techno pop crap”, There’s also a shot of an angry looking rock fan whilst the pop group is playing. This whole show is about to go to shit as the concert is going on, a group of terrorists have breached security and are shooting their way into the concert arena, the pop show is stopped, and in quite a disturbing scene allot of people are killed as the terrorists spray the crowd with bullets. Being a passionate fan of Dimebag Darrel from Pantera, I personally find this act of violence quite hard hitting.
The President and his daughters are taken hostage along with the American pop singer Venus and a bunch of other people including the news crew present at the show. Luckily Dolph is in the toilets smoking pot so manages to avoid the action, but similarly to John Mclaine soon figures out the place has been over ran by terrorists. The motivation for the terrorists initially seems to be ‘money’ also like Die Hard, but it turns out this is about revenge against the president for some political crime that isn’t really detailed but resulted in the deaths of the Lead terrorist’s parents. But I suppose he needs to throw a cash demand in there as I doubt he’d be able to gather enough men together without an incentive for them, but this doesn’t really matter as the movie doesn’t go into this too far. It’s all plain and simple, you give me what I want, I’ll get my revenge, and you get the hostages back. But Dolph has teamed up with a Russian security agent and is slowly picking off the terrorists with his clearly superior fighting skills.
Dolphs gives his character a slight bit of history and a personal tragedy that add a bit of depth to his character, he doesn’t like using guns as his brother was killed years earlier by gunshot wounds to the chest. He also reveals he was part of a vicious California motor bike gang which is where he learned to fight. Dolph is thoroughly entertaining in this film, his dialogue is pretty funny at times and he’s a really likeable over-confident although slightly egotistical hero.
The pace of the movie is frantic, the action is also frequent, graphic and relentless. The simple concept of Dolph and his new Russian partner having to eventually take down this huge group of terrorists is engaging and kept me going with the movie until the end scene. I personally think this is one of Dolphs best in recent years.
The Leader of the Terrorists is played by Dave Legeno (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt’s 1 & 2) and is an awesome menacing bad guy. It’s pretty normal with these sorts of movies but, just like diehard, he’s constantly in communication with the cops outside the concert making his demands and his threats. It obviously goes without saying that he’s no Hans Gruber, but I’ll say it anyway. He’s not the intelligent and sophisticated type, he’s the muscle bound angry type with a short fuse. He executes the American ambassador in a very graphic scene, but he always put me on the edge whenever he appeared with a threat, you know that ‘is he gonna kill someone’ feeling you get, well the hostages get little time to develop their characters, but the acting is solid and you clearly sense their fear, and you fear for them just as much as you would any group of hostages in a well put together action movie. Talking about the quality of acting, I couldn’t name a single bad performance in this movie, all the players are excellent in their roles.
The final moments of the movie are intense with shit loads of action onscreen, Dolph has a fight with Dave Legeno, there’s a couple of typical ‘tension building’ clichés present but like I said the sheer entertainment value and strengths of this film outweigh any of its shortcomings.
At times it seems like Dolph was shooting in a documentary style, at the very beginning of the film it actually looked like he acknowledged the camera with a cheeky smile. I think this was done as a build up to the whole “musician thing”, you know. these characters are kind of famous in this world. Once it got to the tense sneaking through corridors, hiding in rooms, behind corners taking out terrorist’s en-route to rescue hostages, the movie gets really fucking tense and is very cinematic in style. Although this is DTV, this is quality DTV and wouldn’t for a second be considered out of place if this was shown theatrically.
