Cast
- Gerard Butler as Mike Banning, a Secret Service agent and Special Agent in charge of the Presidential Protection Division.[6]
- Aaron Eckhart as Benjamin Asher, the President of the United States.[6]
- Morgan Freeman as Allan Trumbull, the Vice President of the United States.[7]
- Alon Moni Aboutboul as Aamir Barkawi, a terrorist mastermind who is #6 on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list.[8]
- Angela Bassett as Lynne Jacobs, the Director of the United States Secret Service.[6]
- Robert Forster as US Army General Edward Clegg, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[8]
- Melissa Leo as Ruth McMillan, the United States Secretary of Defense.[9]
- Radha Mitchell as Leah Banning, Mike’s wife and a nurse.[6]
- Charlotte Riley as Jacqueline “Jax” Marshall, a British MI6 agent.[10]
Review- Hands up all those who ever wanted Commando to have a sequel?
Now keep your hands up if you wanted it to be dark and gritty with all the one liners stripped out?
Yeah, me neither.
After a gathering or world leaders is attacked by a (legitimately) ticked off arms dealer with more money, power and influence than some nation states, Mike Banning (played by Gerald Butler) must escort The President (played by Aaron Eckhart who I used to think was going places) across a London populated with roughly 850’000 people who can’t seem to decide whether their highly trained operatives or expendable red-shirts.
This really is film as video game, and whilst I can enjoy films where the lone hero mows down countless enemies, at some point I was screaming for Mike to say a one liner, smile, raise an eyebrow or at the very least pretend that he wasn’t the reincarnation of Leonidas!
Within the first five minutes the ‘good guys’ have bombed a wedding party in order to take out a target which it then immediately forgot about. Unfortunately I didn’t and it left a bad taste in my mouth that refused to go away for the rest of the film.
At 99 minutes its as long as a film of this type should be, but even then it seemed to take too long to get going and when it does, Mike has clearly activated the cheat codes as he never really seems to be in any danger I was getting fidgety towards the end. It didn’t help that I could set my watch by all the ‘plot’ points.
If they had remembered to put in a few one liners this could have been an enjoyable 80’s throwback. As is? It’s a dark, violent, repetitive mess that starts off on the wrong foot and never recovers.
My Score- Poor
danielsdunkings 