The Fifth Commandment [Import]

The Fifth Commandment was a fun, somewhat mesmerizing film. The cinemtography was awesome, giving a really immersive feeling, although there's a blue tint to it that occassionally threw me off, but it was still a beautiful film to watch. And that's something really special coming out a straight up action movie.

The story follows an assassin who is troubled with his choices in life who is contracted to kill a troubled young pop star. The problem is that his adoptive brother, who his adopted father told him was dead, turns out to be part of her bodyguard troupe. So he passes the assignment, and protects his brother and the target from the next duo of assassins who are given the job leading to the main conflict of the movie.

And the conflict was top notch. Every burst of gunfire felt powerful, the car chase sequence jarring, the fistfight sequences grueling and damaging. All of it was choreographed and filmed expertly, and there was plenty of it at just the right pace. It's everything an action junkie could ask for. The finale even takes place in a FLAMMABLE MATERIALS WAREHOUSE!

The story and characters give the film a sort of classic 70s grindhouse action feel too, so this separates it from being a run of the mill action movie. Even though the story's not all that gripping, and the dialogue is 100% typical action movie lines (no one-liners but lots of melodrama) it all meshes. It's a really, really fun film and definitely packed full of grade A action.

The soundtrack is great too. It calls back to the glory days of the late 90s/early 00s when anytime something exciting started to happen exciting songs would start playing. So leading into almost every fight we get some bass-heavy music or excitable violent rap songs playing. It may sound, tacky, but it's not overused and the songs are very well chosen and fit nicely.

All in all, a very solid action flick.

Choking with laughter as I read all the other reviews here on this flick I wondered, gee, were we watching the same movie? Had I traveled to an alternate dimension? Come on now. If you're a guy between 18 and 34, you'll enjoy the booty shaking, brawls and bikinis - but there's not all that much of these scenes. However, "The Bangkok Bad Guys" have some fine cutlery. As far as the martial arts, no way is Bokeem as good as he wants to be, Rick certainly fulfilling that part nicely, and Dania? I just wanted to reach into the screen and smack her a couple of times - figuratively speaking, of course. I kept wondering, is it her or her character that felt like someone scratching fingernails on a blackboard...I wasn't impressed. No specific reasons - she didn't act well in this film, the voice over for her oh-so-fake concert was off track, her character actually made me angry a couple of times with the complaining, she's an acceptable singer - not a great one, and did I mention she was actorically challenged? (Yes I made that phrase up) Many scenes had clothing as the main character - for instance, Dania's undies had a great loooong shot, during a chase scene Bokeem's jacket would be around Dania's shoulders, then not, then back again, him finally removing it and re-placing it once more at a Buddhist temple. Yep, two professional assassins and a whining female stop to stroll leisurely through a temple. A big one. And the bad guys still lurking aren't considered, but Bokeem putting his jacket around Dania's shoulders again was. That jacket should have had a mention as a cast member. Oh well. Now the main bad guy, the one who was responsible for Rick and Bokeem's pseudo brotherhood? His acting? Oh, dear. His beard was a fairly good one though. Plus, I'm not going to even mention the actor's name who played Rick and Bokeem's father image - he's been in some fair to good movies in his time, even though he resembles Huggy Bear in the beginning of this movie. Maybe if I don't mention him, he'll not have been in this flick. Wow. I'm actually hoping I traveled to some other dimension and the reviews I read complimenting this flick so highly are from another place and time.

I'll watch an old Chuck Norris flick from the 70's, turn off the sound, put on a current CD, and get a better movie experience than this. All I kept doing was checking to see HOW much LONGER it was GOING to TAKE before it was OVER. And please, when reading this, bear in mind I really love martial arts movies - and martial arts, for that matter. I was disappointed in this, though again, Rick was excellent in a couple of fight scenes. Rick led the pack as far as acting quality, and that meant someone with a can of hairspray, off camera, spritzing his eyes in order to make it look as though he was on the verge of crying.

I bet I get cyber-throttled for this review - but it's my take, not everyone's. I always welcome other opinions. Not that my mind would be changed...I'd still recommend this; hey, wait for this one to hit the cable, folks. Be well - everyone.

Rick Yune has all the makings to be a good action hero: he's good-looking, legitimately athletic, and can act Van Damme under the table. "The Fifth Commandment" should have been the ultimate expo of what he can do in a starring role, opposed to the supporting parts he had in Ninja Assassin and Die Another Day, but I'm sorry to say that his first solo vehicle is lacking. At first glance, it's a promising DTV film that avoids several of the more obvious mistakes plaguing the genre, but at some point, you realize that it's only going to get so good and no better. I really hope that Rick gets a few more chances to refine his craft in starring situations; he really could be the next big thing, but for now, this one will have to stick with a limited audience.

The story: an orphaned boy is brought up by an aged master assassin (Keith David, The Thing) to learn the trade of killing; now a man, Chase (Yune) finds himself being hunted down by the murderer of his parents (Roger Yuan, Shanghai Noon) for interfering in his plans to assassinate a struggling pop singer (Dania Ramirez, Heroes).

Man, I like this cast for some reason. Ramirez has the potential to get on your nerves when she starts whining and causing scenes, but you can push her into the background for most of the movie. Roger Yuan, veteran of B-movies, makes a great villain opposite of the inimitable Keith David, whose very presence in any film seems to better it by at least 10%. He really gets to milk his crotchety mentor role here, gets the best lines of the movie, and proves himself to be a badass even at age 52, so count your blessings. Bokeem Woodbine, who's as serviceable in low-budget fare like this as he was in Ray, plays Chase's brother with charm and flair as the opposite side of the coin. Yune doesn't exactly have his work cut out for him as the two-note hero, but proves himself capable of versatility and generally makes it work. Yes, the ensemble is definitely the best feature, here.

Production values are surprisingly strong throughout the picture: in a rare feat for the low-budget medium, director Jesse Johnson (Pit Fighter) goes beyond the bare necessities and skips superficial cover-ups and shortcuts to give the movie a legitimately stylish look and tone. However, in a special features interview, Yune admits that frequent rewriting of the script was required, leaving it less streamlined and offering a head-scratching scene wherein Chase discovers that his brother isn't dead like he had been told...but the audience was never made aware of this presumption priorly, so there's a bit of head-scratching. Also, the whole point of what Keith David does in the ending also continues to baffle me, but you'll have to check that one out for yourself. The fight scenes are the biggest letdown of all: shootouts are old-hat but generally passable, but three of the four hand-to-hand battles fall resoundingly short of matching the rest of the production quality via an overkill of quick-cut cheat editing...just like any old Steven Seagal movie these days. The final fight between Rick and Roger takes a noticeable leap forward in quality, helping to end the movie on a high note, but it's not great enough to make up for the laziness of the other encounters.

It goes without saying that Rick Yune is destined for greatness, even if he stays within the DTV realm, but only if he can get over the debilitating slip-ups that plague this movie in the future. You can definitely go worse than this one with your low-budget movies, but if you're looking for a solid action movie, consider this one merely reserve material.