Second in Command Movie Download

4 / 10

“Give them hell… that’s an order!” More Eastern European lensed straight-to-DVD JCVD nonsense.
Second in Command is set in the civil war torn Eastern European country of Moldovia, there the situation is at critical as the newly elected President Yuri Amirev (Serban Celea) tries to Govern his people. However he has a huge insurgent problem, a 500 plus strong group of militia lead by Anton Tavarov (Velibor Topic), while trying to storm the Presidential Palace & seize control of the country several civilians are shot & killed by Palace guards which sends the angry mob into a violent frenzy. At the US Embassy ambassador George Norland (Colin Stinton) & his second in command, ex navy seal Commander Sam Keenan (Jean-Claude Van Damme), organise & carry out rescue mission in which President Amirev is saved from the insurgents & sheltered in the US Embassy. With US relations already low in Moldavia the Embassy becomes the point of attack for the insurgents who are determined to overthrow President Amirev…

This American Romanian co-production was directed by Simon Fellows & as far as I am concerned Second in Command is pretty poor even by JCVD standards whose films are usually fun & watchable if nothing else. The script is a sort of poor mans cross between Black Hawk Down (2001) with it’s story about US military soldiers trapped in some anti American country up against local militia with the base under siege plot of Assault on Precinct 13 (1976, 2005) & there’s even a Zulu (1964) style against all the odds fight at the end where the good guy’s are badly outnumbered by the enemy but still carry on under impossible odds. To give Second in Command some credit I thought the story was alright & it certainly moves along at a good pace, there isn’t much boring exposition but that obviously comes at the expense of the character’s & the marines in particular suffer in this regard as it’s very difficult to tell who is who since they all look the same & aren’t even given names. The action is quite small scale, JCVD doesn’t get to use his moves very often, there’s that whole somewhat cheesy American patriotism in the face of overwhelming odds type sentimentality & was it just me or did it seem like no-one else lived in Moldovia apart from US soldiers & heavily armed insurgents? Where were the local population?

As usual JCVD gets to be the hero, despite all the evidence pointing to one solution & one way JCVD opposes it for no good reason & then turns out to be totally right & he gets to save the day, save the US civilians, the Moldovian President & therefore the entire country. Just in a days work for JCVD really. The storyline in Second in Command is very topical & could be said to be based on some sort of realistic foundation, or you could say Second in Command uses the current political climate to hang a less than average JCVD action flick on. Whichever way you want to look at it I suppose. The single most annoying & irritating aspect of Second in Command is the cinematography, it’s awful shaky hand-held camcorder stuff which I just hate anyway. You know, it’s when the camera twitches, jerks, sways & just feels like it’s being operated by someone who is drunk. I hate hand-held shaky camcorder cinematography, it’s used quite often these days yet I don’t know a single person who likes it. Why do filmmakers continue to use this style? Where’s the evidence that people actually like it? The action set-pieces aren’t great, there’s a few shoot-outs, a couple of fights, an exploding bus & that’s about it.

With a supposed budget of about $12,000,000 Second in Command feels very cheap, the awful hand-held cinematography, the small scale action & some poor CGI work don’t help either. Although set in Moldovia this was filmed in Bucharest in Romania. The acting isn’t anything to write home about & JCVD seems to be on autopilot here & pretty much phones in his performance.

Second in Command is very much second rate JCVD, if this is anything to go by his Universal Solider (1992), Hard Target (1993), Timecop (1994) & Sudden Death (1995) days are long behind him. Still, he has made worse than this although that’s certainly no recommendation.Read More