![\"command](\"http:\/\/www.allouttabubblegum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/commandperformanceposter-729x1024.jpg\" "\\"command")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Die Hard<\/a> at a concert.\u00a0 An ex-biker gang member (and current rock band drummer) is trapped in a concert hall with a group of Russian terrorists who have kidnapped the President and his daughters.<\/p>\n Lundgren’s had a spotty directorial record, The Defender<\/strong> isn’t much to talk about, The Mechanik<\/strong> being actually pretty decent, Diamond Dogs<\/strong> interesting but ultimately lackluster, and Missionary Man<\/strong> rather bland.\u00a0 But Command Performance<\/strong> puts the big guy back on track, being violent, fun, loud, and damn good.\u00a0 As the title card explodes, you know this one’s gonna be a blast.<\/p>\n Though most of the ‘Die Hard<\/strong> on a _____’ movies died out about ten years ago, this one comes out guns blazing, never looking back.\u00a0 This fearlessness helps to distract from the old ideas, and allows the movie to move forward with its sense of humor and bloody goings on.\u00a0 Dolph performs well here, probably better than he has in a long time.\u00a0 He gives his character a sense of humor and a past that makes sense, grounding him as more likable and believable than I think we’re accustomed to seeing from the Swedish giant.\u00a0 And it’s been far too long since I’ve seen a good lock and load montage.\u00a0 So hell yeah!<\/p>\n Watching the movie, which Lundgren also spent time writing, one gets the idea that they must have been having a blast putting in all sorts of these awesome ideas.\u00a0 There are people being killed or foiled by musical instruments, little girls embarrassing their presidential father by gyrating to plastic pop music, and a weed-smoking Dolph, seeming less like a band member and more like a roadie.\u00a0 And everything still seems to gel, including his hair.\u00a0 The humor sets the mood for such a wild time you can’t help but enjoy the results.<\/p>\n That’s not to say it’s all good news.\u00a0 Some of the acting is a bit distracting, Russians are speaking English a bit too often, and the ending comes as a bit of a letdown.\u00a0 I’m not saying it was disappointing, but rather that it didn’t quite reach the excellent fun that was Command Performance<\/strong>‘s first hour.\u00a0 The use of shaky cam in a few scenes also detract from the enjoyment of the movie, but the fight scenes are done well enough to make up for it.<\/p>\n This is DTV, but it is good DTV.\u00a0 At only an hour and a half, the film is a breeze to sit through.\u00a0 The action, Lundgren, and the humor are all thoroughly entertaining.\u00a0 This is Dolph’s best in a long time.<\/p>\n Dolph Lundgren<\/a> is Joe, the Drummer<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Joe has played the toughest gigs, ridden in a Californian biker gang, and killed Columbian drug dealers to avenge his brother’s death.\u00a0 He can kill with all rock instruments, literally.\u00a0 Of the people he kills in this film, only two are slain with guns.\u00a0 He is a brute, preferring to beat his opponents to death with blunt objects.\u00a0 Rock and roll, he’s a bad-ass alright.<\/p>\n Dolph Lundgren is, quite possibly, the deadliest Action hero of all time.\u00a0 All tallied up, he has killed over 600 people in his films.\u00a0 As this is so, it will come as a bit of a surprise that he only kills 10 people<\/a> over the course of Command Performance<\/strong>.\u00a0 This doesn’t mean the total count is low, however.\u00a0 In one of the more violent DTV flicks yet produced, the villains manage to rack up most of the film’s 120 kills.\u00a0 Most of the victims die from gunshot wounds, but there are also impalements, stabbings, slit throats, and deaths from repeated blows to the head.\u00a0 All of which are shown in violent, bloody ways.\u00a0 In one scene, the terrorists fire into the crowd, bodies are dropping from the balcony and people are fleeing and screaming.\u00a0 So my count is as close as I think is possible.<\/p>\n With all the terrorists running about, it’s strange that I gained the most satisfaction from the death of one of the hostages.\u00a0 There’s this reporter named Ali Connor, an opportunist bitch who ignores her interview subjects and schemes, while people are dying, to become rich from the incident.<\/p>\n As all the rest of the hostages are being rescued, she alone seems to think, because she has a data disc with the events recorded onto it, that she deserves special treatment.\u00a0 The Russian special forces members order the hostages to lie down, but Ali does not, instead just raising the disc into the air and yapping about, as if it were some badge of magical safety.\u00a0 She is promptly mowed down.\u00a0 Ha! Ha!<\/p>\n I keep trying to figure out Joe’s sexuality in this film.\u00a0 In a flashback sequence, we see a man shot and an emotional Dolph clutching and hugging him.\u00a0 Later it is shown the man was his brother, but it set the ball rolling.\u00a0 There’s a funny scene where Dolph and another man get into a fight and Lundgren shoves a drumstick up through the guy’s head and out his eye socket.\u00a0 “Don’t touch the hair,” he quips.\u00a0 Then he puts his face eerily close to the dead man’s.\u00a0 I don’t know why.<\/p>\n Dolph manages, even in his fifties, to run around the stadium either shirtless or nearly shirtless for almost the entire picture.\u00a0 This, even during scenes where he’s hugging and cuddling with his male bandmates.\u00a0 He also seems reluctant to bang the little pop singer who clearly wants a personal drumming lesson.\u00a0 Still, after all is said and done, the Dolphster rides off into the sunset with the girl.\u00a0 I guess the life or death situation showed him what was important in life. Plus, his badmates were all dead by this point, so what else is the guy gonna do? At least she can further his career, right?<\/p>\n Without going too far into the specifics of pop music in general, I’ll just say that it’s a misogynistic machine that turns kids into sex objects and adults in perverts.\u00a0 This film only reinforces that interpretation.<\/p>\n The main bad guy frequently refers to every woman simply as “bitch”.\u00a0 This is done several times during the film and is actually pretty damn funny.\u00a0 Especially with his accent.\u00a0 With the sole exception of a military woman who is seen several times throughout the film, the women of Command Performance<\/strong> are all shown as either mindless followers, superficial, or unsympathetic opportunists.\u00a0 The movie’s pop star character, Venus (so, you know, right there…), sells out her looks and talent for millions of dollars rather than do anything creative.<\/p>\n …Of course, now that I think of it, that’s probably not such a bad idea.<\/p>\n The terrorists have taken some of the hostages to the stage, where they plan to execute them.\u00a0 But rock and roll drummer Joe is having none of that.\u00a0 He cranks the amps on the stage, plugs in a guitar, and takes out the bad guys with the power of ROCK!<\/p>\n I’m not kidding.\u00a0 Dolph then proceeds to smash a guitar over a terrorist’s head, breaking it, and then killing the guy by stabbing him with the broken axe’s bridge.\u00a0 It’s fucking beautiful.\u00a0 Eat your heart out, Jason Voorhees! This was easily the single best guitar-as-a-weapon kill I’ve ever seen, and that includes all of Slumber Party Massacre II<\/strong>.<\/p>\n As for the one-liner, Mr. Lundgren’s got that one set up from day one.\u00a0 The pop singer, one of the President’s daughters, and Joe are outside of the room where the terrorists are holding the President.\u00a0 Venus, seeing Dolph getting ready to storm the baddies, says, “Joe, don’t get killed.”<\/strong><\/p>\n He replies, “And when this is over, I wanna renegotiate my royalty rate.\u00a0 I may need your contacts.”<\/strong><\/p>\n “How can you talk about business at a time like this?\u00a0 Those bastards are trying to kill us!”<\/strong><\/p>\n Cool as only he can be, and before rushing in on the bad guys, he responds, “Dying’s easy.\u00a0 Rock and roll is hard.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Rock isn’t dead, it’s deadly.<\/p>\n * <\/strong>There are long empty corridors and a huge arena, so I think I can get away with this one.<\/p>\n Command Performance (2009) \u00a9 Nu Image Films<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [THE CHALK-OUTLINE] Command Performance (2009): Breakdown by Kain424 Die Hard at a concert.\u00a0 An ex-biker gang member (and current rock band drummer) is trapped in a concert hall with a group of Russian terrorists who have kidnapped the President and his daughters. [THE EXECUTION] Lundgren’s had a spotty directorial record, The Defender isn’t much to … Read moreThe Power Of Rock Is Lethal<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/allouttabubblegum.com\/new-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/allouttabubblegum.com\/new-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/allouttabubblegum.com\/new-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allouttabubblegum.com\/new-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allouttabubblegum.com\/new-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/allouttabubblegum.com\/new-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/allouttabubblegum.com\/new-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allouttabubblegum.com\/new-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allouttabubblegum.com\/new-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}[THE EXECUTION]<\/strong><\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Dolph](\"http:\/\/www.allouttabubblegum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/CP12.jpg\" "\\"Dolph")
<\/p>\n![\"Rock](\"http:\/\/www.allouttabubblegum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/CP10.jpg\" "\\"Rock")
<\/p>\n[HOW BAD-ASS IS THE MAIN CHARACTER?]<\/strong><\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Joe\"](\"http:\/\/www.allouttabubblegum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/CP2.jpg\" "\\"Joe\\"")
<\/p>\n[THE BODY COUNT: 120]<\/strong><\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Crowd](\"http:\/\/www.allouttabubblegum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/CP6.jpg\" "\\"Crowd")
<\/p>\n[MOST SATISFYING DEATH]<\/strong><\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Ali](\"http:\/\/www.allouttabubblegum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/CP3.jpg\" "\\"Ali")
<\/p>\n![\"Seconds](\"http:\/\/www.allouttabubblegum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/CP11.jpg\" "\\"Seconds")
<\/p>\n[DUDESWEAT AND MACHISMO]<\/strong><\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"It's](\"http:\/\/www.allouttabubblegum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/CP4.jpg\" "\\"It's")
<\/p>\n[EXPLOITATION AND MISOGYNY]<\/strong><\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Venus\"](\"http:\/\/www.allouttabubblegum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/CP5.jpg\" "\\"Venus\\"")
<\/p>\n[EPIC MOMENT AND BEST ONE-LINER]<\/strong><\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Judas](\"http:\/\/www.allouttabubblegum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/CP8.jpg\" "\\"Judas")
<\/p>\n![\"This](\"http:\/\/www.allouttabubblegum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/CP9.jpg\" "\\"This")
<\/p>\n[THE MORAL OF THE STORY]<\/strong><\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
[THE LIST OF LUNDGREN: 3 outta 5]<\/span><\/h2>\n
[X] Ends The Movie Smiling
\n[\u00a0 ] <\/strong><\/strong>Gets Captured
\n [X] <\/strong><\/strong>Screams While Shooting
\n [X] <\/strong><\/strong>Shows Off Buffness
\n [\u00a0 ] <\/strong><\/strong>Teaches Values<\/h3>\n[THE CHECKLIST: 15 outta 25]<\/span><\/h2>\n
[X] Athlete(s) Turned \u201cActor\u201d
\n[\u00a0 ] Clinging To The Outside Of A Moving Vehicle
\n[\u00a0 ] Crotch Attack
\n[X] Dialogue Telling Us How Bad-Ass The Main Character(s) Is\/Are
\n[\u00a0 ] Ending Featuring An Ambulance, A Blanket or A Towel
\n[X] Factory\/Warehouse *
\n[X] Giant Explosion(s)
\n[X] Heavy Artillery
\n[X] Improvised Weapon(s)
\n[X] Macho Mode(s) Of Transportation
\n[X] Main Character Sports Facial Accessory(s)
\n[\u00a0 ] Manly Embrace(s)
\n[\u00a0 ] Notorious Stunt-Man Sighting
\n[X] Passage(s) Of Time Via Montage
\n[X] Politically Fueled Plot Point(s)
\n[X] Senseless Destruction Of Property
\n[X] Shoot Out(s) and\/or Sword Fight(s)
\n[X] Slow-Motion Finishing Move(s)\/Death(s)
\n[\u00a0 ] Stupid Authoritative Figure(s)
\n[X] Substance Usage and\/or Abuse
\n[\u00a0 ] Tis The Season
\n[\u00a0 ] Torture Sequence(s)
\n[\u00a0 ] Unnecessary Sequel
\n[\u00a0 ] Vehicle Chase(s)
\n[X] Vigilante Justice<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n![\"Command](\"http:\/\/www.allouttabubblegum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/CP1.jpg\" "\\"Command")
<\/h2>\nIn Soviet Russia, The Hand Shakes YOU!<\/span><\/h1>\n