One in the Chamber

One in the Chamber_360P

Hopefully they didn't pay the screenwriter too much, because he wrote this story with his hands tied behind his back in a long night session. What a simplistic insignificant story. Short summary: Mafia Boss 1 employs hit-man 1 (Cuba) to eliminate Mafia boss 2 Hit-man 1 misses the under boss of Mafia boss 2 Underboss employs hit-man 1 to eliminate Mafia boss 1 (plus entourage) Mafia boss 1 employs hit-man 2 (Dolf) to eliminate the under boss (plus entourage) The boss of hit-man 1 betrays hit-man 1 Confrontation between hit-man 1 and hit-man 2 Hit-man 1 saves hit-man 2 his life Confrontation hit-man 1 (+ his boss) with Mafia boss 1 Hit-man 2 assassins Mafia boss 1 (Yep I didn't really see that one coming) and saves hit-man 1 Hit-man 1 & 2 become best buddies And there you have it. I could have made that up easily in one night. Mix that with an idyllic story of a handsome chick who lives in Prague, who was the daughter of someone who was eliminated by Cuba and the picture is complete. Nevertheless it started really well. The opening credits looked almost like "Se7en". The scene in which Cuba uses a huge sniper rifle and the way it's filmed, is fantastic. And then it slumps down and transforms into a common "Terence Hill & Bud Spencer" story, but with guns and machine guns instead of fists. More reviews at http://opinion-as-a-moviefreak.blogspot.be/

A Title that Announces this DTV Action Movie as if Anyone who would be Remotely Interested in this B-Movie would Need such an Exclaimer. There is the Teaming of Two Has-Beens that Now Pay the Rent by Making Low-Budget, Mostly Foreign Filmed Fodder. These Actors Usually Make Watchable, Never Released to Big Screens Movies that are High on Bloody Shootouts and Low on just about Everything Else. In this One Dolph Lundgren Stays with His Mentally Damaged Character that seems to have a Lot of Fun Blasting Away Bad Guys for Big Pay Days. The More the Merrier. Dolph Supplies the Comedy Relief but Mostly He just Relieves the Bad Guys of Their Scummy Lives. Cuba Gooding Jr. Plays it Perfectly Straight with a Haunting Past an Obsession with a Child He Traumatized. Overall, Worth a Watch for its High-Energy and is Good Enough to Recommend to B-Movie Action Fans, Followers of the Two Stars and those not Expecting Anything to Sophisticated.

Over the last few years, it seems that Cuba Gooding Jr. has been downgraded to the straight to video action market. He has had numerous films hit the shelves out of nowhere, but they are all a far cry from his Oscar winning A-list days. Dolph Lundgren has been doing them for years with only a couple forays into the big screen lately with the Expendables series. Their latest One in the Chamber throws these two guys together in an assassin cat and mouse game, but can they deliver something worth checking out or just another forgettable actioner. One in the Chamber follows an assassin playing both sides of the Russian mob. When he fails to complete a hit, another assassin is called in to finish the job and him. This is a pretty simple film with very little plot, but to be honest not much is needed to make it work. The little bit of story they try to force on you outside of the assassins story fills unnecessary and out of place. Lundgren pretty much plays the same character from the Expendables films and does so with the fun stiff charm he somehow brings along with it. He seems to be having a good time stealing the show every time he steps on screen. The same can't be said for Gooding who does a fine job with his character, but just seems to really not be having any fun doing it. This has been a trend with his last few films that leads you to wonder if he is just delivering so much anger to bring out the characters or is really just not feeling it anymore. Either way, the character works decently for this film as he really needs very little emotion or feelings other than the need and ability to kill and there is no shortage of that here. There are a lot of old school shoot outs in this film that continues to up the body count very similar to the action films from the 90's. There is even and fight between Gooding and Lundgren that seems a bit far-fetched, but manages to work on some level. This isn't a great movie by any means, but it is one that renters are sure to get exactly what they think from it, action. If you like either of these guys or just mindless action films, then check this film out its worth a rent. http://www.examiner.com/movie-in-dallas/bobby-blakey

Cuba plays an assassin for hire. He's hired by one Czech mobster to take out the rival faction. When he fails at killing his main target this one knows what's up and a war between mobsters break out. Cuba meanwhile thinks his job is done and goes back to what he does in his spare time, follow and watch over a pretty girl. Turns out that on one of his missions years ago, he was hired to kill her dad, and the girl saw him. It's something he never got over. What he doesn't know is that the surviving mobster and his brother have hired Dolph to take revenge, kill mobsters and Cuba. They also get a hold of Cuba's handler. Cuba eventually is forced to come out of the shadows when some thug gives the girl a hard time. Of course she doesn't recognize him but she's attracted to him. Dolph is in the meantime wreaking havoc and killing mobsters left and right. When they finally meet, Cuba decides to let him live (!). That's when Cuba decides to finish the job and kill some more mobsters, setting things up for a second meeting with Dolph and the eventuality that the girl will find out the truth. One In the Chamber is a great B action movie. And it looks like the B movie universe survives only thanks to action movies. Erotic B movies have completely disappeared, and so have B horror movies leaving us only with C-and-below horror movies. Hollywood is busy spending half a billion dollars making the umpteenth CGI movie about something silly destroying entire cities. This movie is your good, honest, old fashioned mano-a-mano action movie. No CGI, no anorexic girls beating up on bouncers, no nonsense. The script is very good, the direction is excellent, the locations beautiful (Romanian streets), and the cast does very well. Dolph as always just enjoys every role he gets. Cuba can act but frankly is just a tad bit outmatched by Dolph who must be 3 times the size of Cuba so I doubt that a knee to Dolph's abdomen would even be noticeable to him. The secondary cast also does well, especially Louis Mandylor and Andrew Bicknell. And Claudia Bassols is just gorgeous. Is One In the Chamber perfect? No, but it's so much better and much more entertaining than almost all the stupefying summer blockbusters and action movies Hollywood cranks out by the dozen.

I guess that with both Cuba Gooding Jr. and Dolph Lundgren being prolific direct-to-DVD stars, it was inevitable that someday they would make such a movie together. Almost all of Gooding's movies for the past few years have been awful, but Lundgren is a lot more dependable - it was primarily his presence that made me rent this movie. While it's low budget, the movie is executed in a pretty slick manner that never makes the movie look cheap. There are some serviceable action sequences, and the movie also has the occasional sense of humor that I found welcome. Apart from those things, though, it's hard to build any enthusiasm for this movie. Gooding is miscast, to say the least - it's hard to accept him being a professional hit-man who casually kills and can pull off martial arts moves. Lundgren gives a relaxed and likable performance, but for some reason it's pretty clear that in his fight scenes he is being doubled for 90% of the fight footage, despite the fact that Lundgren has a black belt in martial arts in real life. (Needless to say, it's obvious that Gooding is being doubled as well.) The biggest flaw of the movie is that it is pretty slow for the most part, with a lot of boring chat. The slack pacing of the movie makes it hard to build a huge amount of resentment to the film, but you'll be falling asleep long before the end.

One in the Chamber movie review – One in the Chamber is a 2012 Action movie staring Dolph Lundgren (Expendables 2, Command Performance, Icarus) and Cuba Gooding Jr. "A seasoned assassin plays both sides in a Russian gang war and becomes the target of an unknown enemy." The blurb pretty much says it all. Lundgren plays Alexie, or the Wolf, A freelance hit-man. He is contracted by a Russian mafia family boss to destroy another rival family after their first hit-man failed to eliminate all the targets. Enter Cuba Gooding Jr. Gun fights, knife fights, fist fights and explosions ensue and the two rival hit men face off. Cuba Gooding Jr plays a good role, his age has helped him 'sell' that hit-man look and he slips into the role nicely, he is physically fit and quick, allowing me suspend my disbelief enough to able to accept him in the role. His character appears to be pieced together haphazardly, there is a cutscene at the beginning that shows a guy being shot whilst holding a bible with a young girl watching. Gooding Jr has this bible and appears to be stalking a mid-20′s woman that is inferred to be the girl from the cutscene. It turns out she is the girl from cutscene and that Gooding Jr is trying to apologise to her for executing here daddy. It doesn't go well. Lundgren is as fierce as ever as the lone-hit-man Wolf but what really makes the role is the character itself. He is regarded as faery tale around Eastern Europe because he is a ghost, its difficult to imagine Lundgren as inconspicuous. The mafia family he is sent to destroy soon realise he is no Humpty-Dumpty and begin to wish they could all just live happily ever after. The addition of Billy Murray as Gooding Jr's handler is brilliance because his delivery is always so good. You can really imagine him in the role he plays and he carries it all off very well. The plot is weak in places, the underlying 'dad-was-executed' story arc is confusing and never explained but the Russian mob war is executed with grace. Ludgren's character is priceless and had this been an English movie I can see Vinny Jones as the star. The action is good too with some great gun fights and car bombs. Although, there are numerous times where people are firing automatics in broad daylight and no-one seems to care, there are also some hand grenades involved that the Police don't seem too bothered about! On the whole I really enjoyed it. Lundgren and Murray were the mainstays of the movie because their characters were so well developed, Gooding Jr acted his role well but the character was weak. One in the Chamber movie Give it a watch!

There is certainly no shortage of straight to video action flicks that usually star former Hollywood heavyweights that can't carry a blockbuster anymore, or some variation of wrestler or athlete. The good news is that it doesn't always mean they are total write offs. However, most of them clock in at the same level as a made for TV movie without a lot of power, money or talent put behind them. One In The Chamber is entertaining. Its probably the most mediocre of entertainment but I still didn't hate every minute of it. At most I can say I was just really disappointed at what could have been if they had a better writer, a better director, just all around a better crew behind the film. If they had this it could have actually been a mainstream theatre released action flick. There are enough well shot action scenes, and some solid gory R Rated kills to make this worthy. But the plot chugs along and never really fills in some key gaps to make the characters worthy of your time. The supposed battle of the titans between Gooding Jr and Lundgren never really happens and instead its almost two separate stories being told of two hit men. There are few former Hollywood stars that seem to have slipped from greatness like Cuba Gooding Jr. He won the Oscar and then gradually began to fall. Now he's a straight to video action fiend. I'm not sure I've seen many of them until this one but I don't imagine any of them are much different for him. He's quiet and brooding and stalking some woman throughout the film. He has no depth and honestly looks bored in the role. However, he does carry a gun well, and he pulls off action scenes pretty good. With all his negatives he does still have good charisma on screen. Cult favourite Dolph Lundgren plays a cheesy, Hawaiian-shirt wearing hit-man known as "The Wolf." Lundgren is old school fantastic at action flicks. He's brooding, barks one liners perfectly, and a talented martial artists. Watching him kick butt is always fun. His character sadly gets too little screen time and not enough arc to be significant. The rest of the cast is made up of a host of B-Movie inevitable "scar on the cheek" type Russian mobsters who all serve their purpose but do not stand out whatsoever. Director William Kaufman has had a little experience but all with basically the same time of picture...this one. According to IMDb his trademark is brutally realistic action scenes and he does indeed score on that aspect. There was some truly brutal action scenes in this film. The problem is that he does nothing to drive the story. Key plot points are missed or ignored. So the film can be enjoyed especially for Lundgren fans but you really have to turn off your brain and ignore the glaring issues with the film. There is a lot of weakness to find the very few strengths. 6/10

As in many movies before, Dolph Lundgren deals with his love for Eastern European / Russian mob themes. And he has always participated in strong feelings movies where love, hate, betrayal etc have been clearly up and vividly performed. Gooding is great as always (Academy Award winner!), but Lundgren does not seem his pale shadow - has he improved so much then? And the guys depicting Russians are equal to the task - if taking into account that none of them is of Russian origin. Alike in other movies by Lundgren, there are lots of long shootings, dead bodies and changing sides - with some unexpected moments, though. If you choose to see this movie, your time will not wasted - although Lundgren has starred in better ones.

Another movie filmed in Romania, even in Brasov the town that I was born and live for twenty-five years but still this fact doesn't save this not even the few cars explosions in it. It's just the same scenario with mobster that seeks revenge for the death of their sons, customary shooting, a few tender scenes involving some beautiful girls that plays the role of the lover of one of the mobsters. It has the same elements seen in 6 Bullets and Assassination Games with Jean-Claude Van Damme, movies also shot in Romania. So, in conclusion it's not worth your time this filling movie with the same scenarios and story that we are all ready use to.