REVIEW: Chain Of Command (2015)

I’m going to go ahead and say that watching this film in its entirety was torturous.  Sometimes, I honestly wonder why I bother.  I figured I’ve started watching this now so I might as well see it through and put a review on the site, to ward others away from this carcass of a ‘movie’.  It’s bad, man, even by direct-to-video standards, few will make it to the end of this one.  And it just goes to show as well that a rotten DTV filmed in Jerkwater, USA, is just as bad as a rotten DTV filmed in Jerkwater, Eastern Europe.  It’s sad that Michael Jai White is caught up in stuff like this. I wish he would just say no.  We don’t even get a Steve Austin (he’s also in the movie) versus MJW showdown.

See if you’ve heard this story before.  A man (MJW) returns from the front to find that his brother has been killed.  He was caught up with some nasty business headed by some nasty people, so they had to get rid of him when things went south.  And now, his brother is looking for answers, so now they have to get rid of him too.  What better way to do that than by hiring one of the top hit men in the underworld, Stone Cold Steve Austin?  If it sounds like it’s MJW versus Steve Austin in a game of cat and mouse, then forget it.  They’re barely seen together and only at the end. The majority of the movie is White scratching his head and taking out weekend actors posing as assassins.

I hate DTVs that get themselves in over their heads and try to break the big one, narratively speaking, by dragging out the old government conspiracy yarn.  Oh yes, this one goes all the way to the top!  And what better way to captivate the viewer’s interest than to use dialogue such as ‘who sent you!’ (gah, tell me these people don’t get paid to write this shit?!).  The film is also dog cheap, with things that can’t be excused by lack of funds (such as downright ineptitude by whoever was in charge of lighting) and with to date the single worst soundtrack I’ve ever heard, to the point of demanding that anyone who scored it or permitted it to never be allowed near film production ever again.  We also must wonder just how long Steve Austin spent on the set.  Did the director think we wouldn’t notice that nearly all of his short scenes throughout the movie were all obviously filmed in the one room, probably in a single afternoon?

Instead of giving this crap nothing, I’m going to give it a few points simply because Michael Jai White never shows up to a job and doesn’t act, even if it’s a poor performance by his standards. And he does a few high kicks.  But seriously, avoid, run, flee…