Sadly the festivities are interrupted by a group of rogue dissidents thirsting for vengeance against the president for actions he committed during the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
It falls to Joe to save the audience and the president before it is too late...
Die Hard is my favourite action movie. There is something about action in a confined space that gets my juices flowing. When I heard the longline for Dolph Lundgren's Command Performance - heavy metal drummer saves the Russian president from terrorists at a concert - nine years ago, it sounded right up my alley. I finally found a copy floating around and watched it.
I haven't seen that many Dolph joints, but then ones I have seenI really enjoyed - I Come In Peace is a fun mashup of buddy-cop movie and science fiction, with Dolph as a cop going after an alien drug dealer; Men of War is a solid men-on-a-mission riff about a group of mercenaries who turn on their corporate employers to protect an island tribe who refuse to give up their mining rights (the script was co-written by John Sayles).
This is a long way of saying my expectations might have been too high going into this movie.
DTV releases like this do require a different set of expectations in terms of aesthetics. You cannot expect the same production values as a theatre release, but DTV action subgenera does have its compensations: more violence, fewer special effects and pretty short runtimes. If you are a fan of old-school action movies, or just fancy a palette cleanser from the excesses of modern blockbusters, these movies are great (and if you take the time, you can find talented filmmakers like Isaac Florentine, director of the Undisputed sequels and Ninja franchise, who has made a name for himself as a talented genre filmmaker).
The biggest problem is the direction. The movie was released during the height of the 'shaky-cam' craze, and it really shows here. The camera whips around so much, and features so many unnecessary cuts to different angles that it is hard to follow what is going on, even during dialogue scenes.
The big problem I had with Command Performance was that it did not lean on the more ridiculous aspects of its story - drumsticks as murder weapons; the shallow headliner Venus (Melissa Molinaro) who has the hots for our over-aged hero; the hero's baffling, half-remembered backstory involving a dead brother and Colombian cartels (or something like that). With these elements, there is a version of the movie that brings them together in a more satisfying way.
The movie's biggest sin is that it is boring - once the terrorists take over the concert venue, the movie just slows to a standstill with all the principal characters scattered. In any other Die Hard-style movie, either characters would band together to - if they were captives - try to outwit the villain to save the other hostages until the protagonist can get to them.
Watching the trailer, there was so much focus on the 'relationship' between Joe and Venus that I was expecting something like Under Siege (Navy Seal + Playboy playmate(?!?) taking on terrorists), with Lundgren and Molinaro teaming up to take down the terrorists with their murderous musical talents.
The movie even sets her up for a fall as a spoilt pop star - sadly the catalyst for bringing her down is having her watch her brother take a million bullets to the face and chest. Molinaro does a good job of conveying Venus's utter despair and blind rage in this moment, but it sets the tone for the rest of the movie. You can't really have an escapist action movie and have characters deal with serious trauma like this. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
In the fun version of this scenario, Venus's brother would be wounded, and Venus would spend the movie trying to save him. On the way she would learn to grow up by killing 10-15 terrorists (as you do).
Nope. Instead we get people wandering around not killing people, or planning to kill people, and a couple of unnecessary subplots involving traitors within the terrorists' ranks (great way to undermine you bad guy, movie!).
And we only get one scene of Dolph Lundgren impaling a bad guy with a drum stick. And if you are thinking it is the terrorist leader, you would be wrong. It's just some random cannon fodder. For shame!
Here's hoping Isaac Florentine rips this movie off and casts Scott Adkins as a hard-bitten SAS man-turned-dance choreographer who has to team up with a self-obsessed pop starlet (insert flavour of the month here) to save the Chinese President from hardliners intent on World War 3.
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