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‘The Commando’ Review: Mickey Rourke, Still Standing, Barely

In this risible action thriller, a house on a dirt lot is catnip for criminals who know there’s a fortune under its floorboards.

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By Glenn Kenny

A spectacularly atrocious, ostensible action thriller, “The Commando” is distinguished by an incompetence that extends even to locations. The title protagonist, a PTSD-riven agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration played by Michael Jai White, lives with his family in a house that sits on an unusually barren plot of land. The movie, directed by Asif Akbar, was shot in New Mexico, where xeriscaping is in vogue, but this place is, for all intents and purposes, a dirt lot. There’s not even a driveway, which makes things convenient for the baddies who stage a sodden, tedious home invasion near the movie’s end.

The reason for the invasion is a stash of bank-robbery money hidden in the house. (“Hidden” is generous; the dough is largely stuffed under floorboards that aren’t even nailed down.) The home’s prior owner, Johnny (played by Mickey Rourke), put it there before going to prison. It seems no authorities thought to search the residence of a bank-robbing felon before the place changed hands. Meanwhile, the teenage daughters of the D.E.A. agent have found some of the cash and are enjoying it.

Once an actor of considerable appeal and charisma, Rourke here struggles to stand up. The work of other cast members is enough to frequently draw guffaws. At one point, a member of Johnny’s inept gang (played by the Scottish actor Gianni Capaldi) swallows a bunch of pills, observes that “this is the calm before the storm” and, seconds later, begins grunting as if experiencing the effects of a strong laxative.

“The Commando” will appeal only to connoisseurs of “how bad can it be?” cinema, as part of a control group.

The Commando Rated R for violence, language, grunting. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV , Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.

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The Commando Reviews

A spectacularly atrocious, ostensible action thriller, "The Commando" is distinguished by an incompetence that extends even to locations.

Full Review | Jan 12, 2022

Director Asif Akbar puts a lot of faith in our desire to see James and Johnny finally square off, but I must confess that if I wasn't professionally obligated to sit through a film until the credits, I probably wouldn't have bothered.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 8, 2022

A talky and lethargic home-invasion thriller, The Commando amounts to an inept crime drama stuffed with banal dialogue and irrelevant supporting characters to pad its feature-length running time.

Full Review | Jan 6, 2022

The Commando contains a number of egregious implausibilities and cliches.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 4, 2022

‘The Commando’ Review: A Robbery Goes Awry in Misshapen Thriller

Michael Jai White and Mickey Rourke play cops and robbers in this inept crime drama filled with too much blab and not enough action.

By Rene Rodriguez

Rene Rodriguez

• ‘Brother’ Review: Fate Deals an Unforgiving Hand in Director Clement Virgo’s Memorable Debut 8 months ago
• ‘Kandahar’ Review: Gerald Butler Loses His Way in Plodding, Overly Serious Thriller 11 months ago
• ‘A Little White Lie’ Review: Michael Shannon Is Much Better at Role-Play Than His Opportunistic Character 1 year ago

A talky and lethargic home-invasion thriller, “ The Commando ” amounts to an inept crime drama stuffed with banal dialogue and irrelevant supporting characters to pad its feature-length running time. Even Mickey Rourke devotees will find the movie exhausting, since the actor disappears from the film after the first 20 minutes and doesn’t return until the anti-climactic finale, where everyone involved seems to be glad the thing is finally over with.

Shot over 11 days in New Mexico during the COVID pandemic, the film tries to make do with limited locations. This is why a third of the movie is comprised of people spouting nonsense while sitting inside cars.

Rourke plays Johnny, a freshly sprung convict who reunites with his old crew to retake the $3 million of stolen money he hid inside a house before he was arrested. Michael Jai White is James, a DEA agent suffering from PTSD after inadvertently killing three hostages during a gun fight with drug traffickers. James happens to live with his wife and two daughters in the house where Johnny stashed his loot. Many confrontations ensue, but none of them involve the two leads until the film’s closing minutes. The wait is long and arduous.

Director Asif Akbar (“Smoke Filled Lungs,” “Ace and the Christmas Miracle”) was obviously working under a tight deadline: The extras playing no-name baddies in the shootout that opens the film wince while waiting for the squibs taped to their bodies to go off. But that doesn’t excuse the utter lack of visual style or even basic framing that plagues the entire picture, which is filled with scenes where someone insisted the first take was good enough to print. Akbar fares worse with the plentiful dialogue scenes, in which the actors often perform at mismatched pitches, giving some sequences the feel of a comedic skit. This is not intentional.

The basic premise of the screenplay, credited to Koji Steven Sakai, pits a broken law enforcement agent against a criminal getting back into risky business. But the bulk of the movie centers on a group of teenagers having a party while their house is stalked by buffoonish criminals waiting for the right time to swoop in. The ensuing chaos has a high body count but a low suspense ratio. You also wonder when the stars of the film are going to re-enter the fray.

In his few scenes, Rourke is engaged and lively as a crusty criminal who hasn’t lost his edge. The movie needed more of him. White doesn’t fare as well as the remorseful DEA agent, because the character’s paralyzing guilt over the accidental shooting seems misplaced and overblown. Yes, the incident would be traumatic for any law officer, but as presented, this baggage feels like a writer’s crutch. Like the rest of “The Commando,” there’s nothing true or resonant about it.

Reviewed online, Jan. 2, 2022. Running time: 93 MIN.

• Production: A Saban Films release of a Saban Films, Premiere Entertainment Group production, in association with Bondit Media Capital, Al Bravo Films LLC.
• Crew: Director: Asif Akbar. Screenplay: Koji Steven Sakai. Camera: Jorge Gomez. Editor: R.J. Cooper. Music: Mauricio Yagizi. Producers: Asif Akbar, Elias Axume, Al Bravo, Koji Steven Sakai, Philip Tan. Executive producers: Stuart Alson, Shanan Becker, Bill Bromiley, David Coppa, Grady Craig, Robert Dean, Tyler Gould, Matthew Helderman, Tom Hillery, Kimberly Hines, Nicole Holland, Carlos Rincon, Mickey Rourke, Jonathan Saba, Ness Saban, Dan Shultejann, Luke Taylor, Ian Troy, Michael Jai White.
• With: Michael Jai White, Mickey Rourke, Brendan Fehr, Jeff Fahey, John Enos III, Donald Cerrone, Gianni Capaldi.

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The Commando review – a risible crime drama that needed more action

I’m quite a simple man, so perhaps I’m in the minority in wanting actors who’re very good at one specific thing to just stick to the thing they’re good at. In other words, I don’t tune into a Michael Jai White movie called The Commando expecting to see him spend most of the runtime discussing his PTSD with his therapist over Zoom.

Jai White’s character in this, James, is a DEA agent who has PTSD from a stilted opening firefight in which he accidentally guns down three innocent hostages. He’s a tough family man who is forced to reckon with the idea that he’s tactically and emotionally fallible, which would be a worthwhile theme in a different film. The Commando , though, isn’t all that interested in James’s interiority. His mental health struggles mostly manifest as lethargic one-sided conversations and ill-timed flashbacks. A later scene in which he becomes suddenly capable again when it’s time for the action is intended as a fist-pumping bit of catharsis but mostly undermines what little idea the script had about PTSD in the first place.

The villain here is the ghoul formally known as Mickey Rourke, who plays Johnny, a robber who has spent years of his lengthy incarceration dreaming about recovering the hefty pile of loot he stashed under the floorboards of a house. Finally free as of the movie’s earliest scenes, he assembles his old crew, which includes UFC fan-favourite Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone, who commits a bit of overacting that had me absolutely rolling, to recover the dough. It turns out James and his family, including his two daughters, are living in the house where the money is.

The Commando was shot in just 11 days, and you can tell. It employs limited locations, and each scene seems to be strung together from first takes. Perhaps this also explains the surprising lack of action, which is notoriously complex to film (at least if you want it to look good). What’s there is okay, I suppose, but hardly worth the effort of plowing through the interminable scenes of badly written dialogue one must endure to reach the fisticuffs. Director Asif Akbar puts a lot of faith in our desire to see James and Johnny finally square off, but I must confess that if I wasn’t professionally obligated to sit through a film until the credits, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. And I probably would have been better off.

Fans of both Rourke and Jai White will wish they saw more of both, but it’s the former who surprisingly makes his presence felt. It helps that he’s playing to his strengths, while the latter is saddled with an overblown guilty conscience that doesn’t suit him. If The Commando were a 15-minute short comprising only the final few scenes, it would have been a better showcase for both actors, and a mercy for the fanbases who make a point of checking out their work.

Article by Jonathon Wilson

Jonathon is one of the co-founders of Ready Steady Cut and has been an instrumental part of the team since its inception in 2017. Jonathon has remained involved in all aspects of the site’s operation, mainly dedicated to its content output, remaining one of its primary Entertainment writers while also functioning as our dedicated Commissioning Editor, publishing over 6,500 articles.

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The Commando

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Mickey Rourke (Johnny) Jeff Fahey (Sheriff Alexander) Michael Jai White (James Baker) Brendan Fehr (Sebastian) Gianni Capaldi (Dominic) John Enos III (Trey) Donald Cerrone (Ray) David Lea (Thug 2) Robert J. Fox (Parole Officer McDonald) Noa Maes (Natalie)

A DEA agent returns home with PTSD after a botched mission and must now protect his family from a home invasion when a recently freed convict and his henchmen come after their stash of millions hidden inside of the agent's home.

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The Commando (2022)

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The Commando – Movie Review (2022) | Michael Jai White, Mickey Rourke

The Commando review by Big Gold Belt Media

– This Movie synopsis: In this edge-of-your-seat crime thriller starring Michael Jai White and Mickey Rourke, an elite DEA agent (White) returns home after a failed mission when his family makes an unexpected discovery in their house – a stash of money worth $3 million. They soon face the danger and threat of a newly released criminal (Rourke) and his crew who will do whatever it takes to retrieve the money – including kidnap the agent’s daughters. Stakes are high and lives are at risk in this head-to-head battle as the agent stops at nothing to protect his family against the money-hungry criminals.

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The Commando (2022): Is the Action Movie Based on Real Life?

‘The Commando’ is an action-thriller film directed by Asif Akbar and released in 2022. It stars Mickey Rourke (‘Sin City’) and Michael Jai White (‘Arrow’) in the lead roles. The movie tells the story of James Baker, a DEA Agent whose family discovers $3 million. However, when lethal criminals target the family’s house and take his two daughters hostage, Baker must set aside his trauma and fight the invaders. The high-octane action flick packs plenty of emotional punches, making viewers question its connection to reality. If you are wondering whether ‘The Commando’ is inspired by true events, here is everything you need to know!

The Commando is an Original Story

No, ‘The Commando’ is not based on a true story. The film is based on an original story co-written by director Asif Akbar. The director is known for his work on the 2021 family-comedy movie ‘Ace & the Christmas Miracle.’ Akbar co-wrote the story treatment for ‘The Commando’ alongside Al Bravo, a producer mostly known for R-rated action movies, and Koji Steven Sakai, a writer/producer. Sakai later converted the story treatment into a screenplay that Akbar directed.

Speaking about the conceptualization of the film, Akbar noted the change in the film production landscape in 2020, during the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. Akbar was between projects as a producer and was looking for concepts that would be simple to shoot and get quickly greenlit by producers. In an interview, Akbar revealed that Al Bravo, who serves as a producer on the film, came up with the original idea for ‘The Commando.’

Bravo devised a concept for a film with only one location and minimal characters and compared it to home invasion movies . The writing team further developed the story idea into a screenplay which a studio later greenlighted. “In between projects, a producer I work with came to me and told me he was interested in action films and would like me to direct. He wanted a movie like The Expendables. An action-packed, typical shoot ’em up with a few action stars and great action, fights, etc.,” Akbar told The Action Lite about the film’s creation.

In a separate interview, Akbar stated that the film primarily explores the impact of PTSD . He noted that the story’s simplicity drew him to the project. The writing team later moved away from the home invasion thriller as Akbar wanted to shed light on the PTSD-related issues in society.

“When we first came up with the concept, it was supposed to be more of a home invasion thriller with a little bit of PTSD issues that our hero goes through, but as we developed it more, getting closer to the shoot and with the casting and everything, we went deeper on the psychological effects of dealing with PTSD – not only for the person with PTSD but how it also affects their families and their relationships and how everyone as a unit can cope with it,” Akbar told the Script Magazine .

Ultimately, ‘The Commando’ is not based on a true story. The film tells a fictional story that revolves around a DEA agent’s struggles with PTSD. However, he faces the external conflict of protecting his family, giving the character a layer of emotional resonance. Although the film leans into the tropes of the action thriller genre, it remains grounded in reality as it explores the issues related to PTSD and highlights the psychological struggles faced by police officers, soldiers, etc.

Read More: Best Action Movies of the 2010s

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The Commando (2022)

Genre: action / thriller, duration: 92 minuten, country: united states, directed by: asif akbar, stars: michael jai white , mickey rourke and jeff fahey, imdb score: 3,3  (1.647), releasedate: 7 january 2022.

The Commando plot

"Only one will survive." A drug brigade agent with post-traumatic stress disorder returns home after a failed mission. He must now protect his family from a burglary at his own home after a recently released convict and his accomplices chase their multimillion-dollar stash. It's in the agent's house.

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Io Capitano review – chilling indictment of the refugee exploitation economy

Two teenage boys star in Matteo Garrone’s passionate exposé of how greed, trauma and corruption drive the modern-day slave trade in would-be migrants

M atteo Garrone’s new film is part adventure story, part slavery drama; the slavery which did not in fact vanish with the end of the American civil war, but thrives in the globalised present day without needing to shapeshift too much, driven by the age-old forces of geopolitics and the market.

Seydou and Moussa, played by nonprofessional acting newcomers Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall, are 16-year-old cousins in Dakar, Senegal , dreaming of escape to the fabled land of the EU as refugees, where they expect to go viral and make a fortune as music stars like the people they’re watching on TikTok. For years they have been writing songs and secretly working on building sites while pretending to go to football practice, amassing cash savings which in the succeeding months they will hand over to various gangmasters, fixers and corrupt gun-wielding soldiers.

The boys get into Niger on fake Malian passports whose obvious inauthenticity generates a handsome bribe-income for crooked border guards. They pay handsomely to join a group crossing the Sahara to Libya in an unsafe van; they then have to go on foot in the burning sand, their hatchet-faced drivers and guides ignoring the people who fall out of the vehicle or collapse with exhaustion on the way. In Libya the boys are separated, one taken to what passes for official custody, the other to a prison used as a torture factory and cash slave-farm by Libyan warlords. Here, terrified migrants are told to get their parents to wire their entire life savings over if they don’t want their children to be brutalised and killed; this is a truly terrifying sequence. The official and unofficial jails are brought by Garrone into ironic parallel.

The boys are ultimately able to offer the tiny residue of their savings to join a crowded boat heading across the Med to Italy. The gangsters chillingly agree on condition that the teenage torture survivor, Seydou, will be the boat’s notional captain – hence the movie’s title. The gangmaster pretends to “train” him on how to navigate and use the GPS and he is then put in charge of all the trusting, terrified adults as they put to sea.

This is a movie with passion and sweep, although I was less sure about the fantasy-reverie sequences. Reality is stronger ground. Apart from everything else, Io Capitano delivers some home-truths about the boats used; they are notionally “captained” by one of the passengers, a wretched soul who, due to a nauseating twist of fate, may well be even less qualified and less able than everyone else. And the film shows a gruesome irony at work: refugees are part of a toxic hoax economy. The fixers know well that these people will almost certainly die en masse in the desert or the ocean, and will be in no position to ask for refunds or warn anyone else.

Garrone shows Seydou battling heroically against this bad faith while growing miraculously into his captain status, despite the existential irony at work. Seydou and the others are not exactly masters of their fate, or captains of their souls, to quote WE Henley’s Invictus. They are swept along by power and inequality, but Garrone shows that their humanity and compassion are still buoyant.

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Movie Review – The Beast (2023)

April 2, 2024 by Robert Kojder

The Beast , 2023.

Directed by Bertrand Bonello. Starring Léa Seydoux, George MacKay, Kester Lovelace, Julia Faure, Guslagie Malanda, Dasha Nekrasova, Martin Scali, Elina Löwensohn, Marta Hoskins, Félicien Pinot, Laurent Lacotte, and Xavier Dolan.

The plot is set partly in a near future in which artificial intelligence is in control of everyone’s lives and human emotions are perceived as a threat.

An ambitious story of tragic and toxic love sprawled across the past, rearview window present,  and near future, Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast wonders what it would be like if, in one of those three timelines, a well-intentioned man in one of them was also a raging misogynist making deeply disturbing YouTube videos promoting a violent cleansing coming by his hand as retaliation for women having always rejected his advances. This is a love story that is also anything but a love story, which is part of what makes it so compelling.

It certainly makes for a deeply uncomfortable moment when, roughly halfway into the film, present-day Gabrielle Monnier (Léa Seydoux impressively pulling off three variations of the same character, layering them all with a wide range of emotions and one haunting final shot that sticks in the mind sonically and visually) meets that man, Louis Lewanski (George MacKay, also terrific pulling off polar opposite depictions of this character and, at times, scarily finding a bit of humanity in the deranged variant), feeling that unexplainable gravitational connection, urging him to walk her home after a California earthquake. Louis repeatedly declines, insisting that something bad might happen, signifying that his hatred towards women comes less from the way they treat him and is more about his deep-sea-level fears and insecurities. 

While that dynamic does make for some traditional thrills, perhaps the real horror comes from a psychological place that, for anyone fascinated by stories about reincarnation or love across different timelines, there could be an utterly psychotic version of all of us out there. Or that we could be longing for someone so unhinged without knowing it. However, the film is, and rightfully so, much more concerned with Gabrielle’s emotional and physical journey returning to those past timelines as part of an AI-mandated process in the future to eliminate feelings from humans to make them “less dangerous” and more fit for a barebones workforce.  

This Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind reminiscent procedure takes Gabrielle to early twentieth-century France, where she is in a loveless marriage to the wealthy Georges (Martin Scali), encountering Louis at a glamorous party who is taken aback by her, vowing to protect her after she speaks of this inexplicable connection and an intense feeling that something disastrous is eventually going to happen. They remain in contact, and he is interested in her and her fascination with crafting dolls (a recurring motif across the film.) It is also worth mentioning that, yes, George MacKay and Léa Seydoux speak English and French in the respective timelines, only adding to the commitment and depth of these tremendous performances. Essentially, he is her savior in one life and her worst nightmare in the next; it’s a loaded juxtaposition that the filmmakers don’t waste.

There is also an experimental visual style that plays with pixel distortion and the nature of filmmaking, chiming in on how green screen and AI remove realism. The script (written by Bertrand Bonello, Guillaume Bréaud, and Benjamin Charbit, loosely based on aspects of the Henry James novel The Beast in the Jungle ) brilliantly brings some of these conversations back into a portion of the grand, mind-shattering finale, sharply making that point. Without giving away, the ending sequence is a variation of one earlier scene that brings forth immense dread not only because of what is happening but also on a metatextual level in the filmmaking process. 

The Beast is primarily split into two halves, with each containing stops in the future world, which is also fleshed out as a numbing existence overrun by technology and aesthetically detailed nostalgia nightclubs, which does work, especially if one has no idea about the second half-wild direction for George MacKay’s character. However, most viewers might already know about that going in (it’s not worth writing around in a review to be vague about what gives the film such unnerving depth) and become somewhat restless during the slower first half.

The Beast grows on the viewer as it gradually reveals more information and ideas, which is a lot considering the 146-minute running time. Nevertheless, there is love and danger here, packaged together in one cruel, psychologically torturous package. It is sweet and hellish, yet also clued into a depressing future informing its characters and ideas. 

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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