General Commander - reviews

DiDa

Super Moderator
Staff member
I have seen General Commander. Here is my short review. Feel free to ask me any questions

The opening 20 minutes are fine and pretty exciting. Then the movie is fun again in the last 20 minutes. What's in between feels really like TV series material. The different team members are highlighted and all get their thing to do. For a TV series just fine, but for a movie this part doesn't work. And that's where General Commander fails.

What I do like is the use of colour and the cinematography of Ross Clarkson. The film is really shot on location. That is very positive for the movie. Also Seagal is clearly motivated. No stunt doubles and Seagal really is acting again instead of mumbling his dialogue. We knew that he would not have a lot of screentime, but I think he was spread out well through the movie. I thought his sceentime would be much less.

Also there is not a lot of action. It's basically the first and the last 20 minutes. And you have seen almost everything in the trailer. But when the action kicks in it's very decent. Seagal only has 2 short fighscenes. One with Ron Smoorenburg and the one with the main bad guy. The main bad guy was great in my opinion. Very intimidating and his acting was good.

Seagal also gets some cool bad ass dialogue when he threatens a guy on the phone after this guy was trying to kill him. I started to laugh because of this Seagal coolness.....

Talking about the acting: not everyone was acting good. Some of the teammembers were and some were not. But Megan Brown (Phillippe Martinez' wife) was acting very bad as the CIA director who is trying to break up Seagal's team. Also the Russian woman acted very bad.

By the way, the ending is a little bit strange.

So overall a decent film. But you can feel that this was suppose to be a TV series. And that makes the movie somewhat dull sometime.

Not one of Seagal's best but also definitely not one of his worst.
 
I have seen General Commander. Here is my short review. Feel free to ask me any questions

The opening 20 minutes are fine and pretty exciting. Then the movie is fun again in the last 20 minutes. What's in between feels really like TV series material. The different team members are highlighted and all get their thing to do. For a TV series just fine, but for a movie this part doesn't work. And that's where General Commander fails.

What I do like is the use of colour and the cinematography of Ross Clarkson. The film is really shot on location. That is very positive for the movie. Also Seagal is clearly motivated. No stunt doubles and Seagal really is acting again instead of mumbling his dialogue. We knew that he would not have a lot of screentime, but I think he was spread out well through the movie. I thought his sceentime would be much less.

Also there is not a lot of action. It's basically the first and the last 20 minutes. And you have seen almost everything in the trailer. But when the action kicks in it's very decent. Seagal only has 2 short fighscenes. One with Ron Smoorenburg and the one with the main bad guy. The main bad guy was great in my opinion. Very intimidating and his acting was good.

Seagal also gets some cool bad ass dialogue when he threatens a guy on the phone after this guy was trying to kill him. I started to laugh because of this Seagal coolness.....

Talking about the acting: not everyone was acting good. Some of the teammembers were and some were not. But Megan Brown (Phillippe Martinez' wife) was acting very bad as the CIA director who is trying to break up Seagal's team. Also the Russian woman acted very bad.

By the way, the ending is a little bit strange.

So overall a decent film. But you can feel that this was suppose to be a TV series. And that makes the movie somewhat dull sometime.

Not one of Seagal's best but also definitely not one of his worst.
DiDa, thanks for your review. By the way have you any idea why they didn`t launch the pilot instead of editing that stuff in a movie?
 

DiDa

Super Moderator
Staff member
DiDa, thanks for your review. By the way have you any idea why they didn`t launch the pilot instead of editing that stuff in a movie?

Actually they did not edit it into a movie. Basically these are the first 2 episodes that were put together. So there is no other footage. They just filmed the first 2 episodes and made it into one movie. So the movie is actually the pilot....
 
Actually they did not edit it into a movie. Basically these are the first 2 episodes that were put together. So there is no other footage. They just filmed the first 2 episodes and made it into one movie. So the movie is actually the pilot....
I wonder what went wrong causing they had refused of series and made THAT fast-cutted flick?
 

J.Lucas

Active Member
I wonder what went wrong causing they had refused of series and made THAT fast-cutted flick?
What went wrong is Seagal....even tho' Lawman 1' took off with a great rating on Reelz TV season 2 got cut short after 8 episodes(can't even buy it on DVD in the US) after Seagal and company(mainly Bing Danh's doing) got hit with a 'sex trafficking' charge(there's plenty of info about it, it could be a whole topic about Seagal degrading and having no respect for women at all)..this was when the show was being filmed in Louisiana(after the hurricane Katrina devastation)
So Seagal and company moved the show to Arizona(Joe Arpaio territory) where it was changed to help with border control.
This one also ended with only 8 episodes after another lawsuit claiming Seagal and company 'staged' the incident with raiding the guys property and damaging and killing some chickens(this episode is included in the run as episode 7).
So by the time True Justice started filming....no one would touch it with a 'ten foot pole'(some US stations claimed it was un-original)
it did get picked up for a station in Spain(which is whee I first viewed it on-line)
then Reelz TV picked it up and ran it along with the series 1 being released as DVD' movies.
it was Reelz TV that took it up for a season 2...which after 13 episodes left us all hanging.
Reelz TV did not pick it up for a season 3 ...which I believe morphed into the General Commander concept...
so by this time no TV station on the planet wanted it...so of course to recoup some expenses they had to release it on DVD.
Seagal does not work well with others in a TV show format...this goes all the way back to the SNL show ...which got the producers so pissed off that you can't even see it in re-runs nor buy it in any SNL collection sets.
 

theeverlasting

Active Member
After reading your post above J.Lucas I wondered what the SNL thing was. I did some reading and it sounds hilarious. I found one clip on Youtube where he's been a protective father against Chris Farley and man alive, it's so awkward to watch haha, it's amusing for all the wrong reasons. I'd love to see more from the show he hosted.
As for General Commander, I'll watch it at some point, not really in a rush. Maybe at the weekend with a few beers.
 

J.Lucas

Active Member
I've got the full SNL episode downloaded....but was unsure how (or if) I could upload it here?
Well....we aren't really uploading it to this site...but if they want me to take it off fine but no one got on me about uploading the Season 3 of Lawman and posting the link
Oh man....I see the links actually show the video...I thought it would only show the link address
 
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jackcole145

Member
Snl are such sticklers with there videos. They won't release certain sketches but take them down if they are uploaded. There used to be a great sketch with Stallone and Norm MacDonald on YouTube but they took it down. Such a shame.
 

theeverlasting

Active Member
So I just watched the film. It was... okay at best, but it's pretty all over the shop and some of the acting made me laugh in places, and the awful looking CGI blood really takes you out of it. Some strange editing at times, weird filters and fades, and I kept chuckling at that 'boss' lady who only ever seemed to ask "Where is Jake? Where is Alexander?" haha, even at times when her mouth didn't move, like she was talking telepathically. All amusing stuff. I didn't really like any of the cast apart from Seagal. I think I'll watch this again some time when drunk and get a good laugh out of it. Doubt that many people will ever see this, let alone know about it. Oh well, here's hoping his next project will be better made...
Oh, as for the videos above, it just says "publishing in progress" on a black screen, but thanks for your efforts man :)
 

DiDa

Super Moderator
Staff member
I also think a lot of review sites do not know that this is suppose to be a pilot for a tv series and is edited as a movie.
 
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