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I don’t know why I do it. Maybe I’m a masochist. But here I am reviewing another Steven Seagal DTV movie. There are so many of them by now, none of them good. And yet I watch them all. The completist in me requires me to do so. So with great reluctance I put on General Commander. A movie I chose above China Salesman because it’s only 85 minutes long. I’ve come at a point where the running time is the deciding factor when picking a Seagal movie to watch.
In General Commander Seagal is a CIA operative Jake Alexander and he’s introduced in his now usual way: sitting behind a desk. He’s being interrogated for the death of some guy in this story told in flashback. The most surprising thing about this scene is that he actually puts some effort in his line delivery. A step up from the usual monotonous whispering. But sadly that’s the only highlight in this movie when it comes to Seagal. He’s mostly delegated to a secondary role. There are scenes in which other characters are talking and he’s just sitting there in a chair as an unnamed extra.
At the time of writing it’s been 2 days since I’ve seen this movie and I already have a hard time remembering what the plot was all about. Mostly because nothing much happens while the movie tries to convince you that it does. There is a plot about some Italian mobster who runs an organ-harvest operation. An undercover operation goes wrong and one of Seagal’s team members dies as a result. This sends the whole team into a depression and the team is disbanded by the government. Somewhere halfway throughout the movie Seagal has a meeting with someone wealthy willing to put up 5 million dollars so he can bring back the team as an elite private army. The name of the army is General Commander hence the title of the movie.
While the movie is only 85 minutes long it feels much longer. Nothing much happens. Most of the time is dedicated to how all of the team members are mourning the loss of one of them. Pondering their life choices and talking with friends and family members. In preparation of this review I was scrubbing through the movie and all I came across was just one scene after another in which people are talking to each other. Often while sitting down. Not something you would expect from a movie which has a Seagal holding a gun and another guy holding a rocket launcher on the poster. To be honest, those moments are in the movie, but between those two scenes is about 70 minutes of people just talking.
The only memorable element of this movie was Alicia Faubel as a woman in a red dress. She’s only in a handful of scenes, but she has a magnetic screen presence. I don’t see her winning any awards for acting any time soon, but for a brief few minutes she made this movie actually watchable.
