The Plot: Holy shit there is some double cross in this picture, I'm still not really sure what the goal was here but lets go. Scott Wheeler (JCVD) is a deep cover agent who trying to identify a leak within the CIA with his female partner. His partner has a USB drive which contains an algorithm to activate secret agents (what?) whilst Wheeler has the activation key. Naturally Wheeler's partner is killed resulting in him being captured under suspicion of going rogue. Wheeler awakens on-board a CIA blacksite located on a submarine. On-board are various CIA agents, some are genuine and of course some are not. What follows is a convoluted mess as Wheeler and some remaining goodie agents try to escape the sub with the drive.
Again I honesty had no real clue what the hell was happening whilst watching this because it is a real mess. The plot is all over the show and never really makes much sense. I still don't really get what this USB drive could actually do. Activate secret agents? How do you mean? Reveal their locations? Are they under some sort of mental control? I'm not even sure how activating these agents would be of any use, unless they're super agents or something. In the end it doesn't really matter because the drive and its purpose are more of a mcguffin than anything. Its just an object for the various jacked-up agents to fight over.
Oh yeah, speaking of being jacked-up (rather muscular), literally everyone in this movie is jacked-up. Every single agent looks like they've been on a four course meal of steroids for the last six months. Oh and most have cropped hair with tattoo sleeves and long beards, because having a long beard is the thing now apparently. I believe its what you call being a hipster? Only with big muscles.
Anyway the entire movie is set inside this submarine which of course isn't really a submarine but a very very bad selection of sets. Now when I say bad I mean bad. They generally consist of grey painted corridors and rooms with some control panels and every shot being lit in either red or green (because all subs are lit with red and green bulbs you see). Everything is dark of course to hide the bad sets where ever possible, hence the red and green lighting. Every now and then we might get a shot which seems to have been filmed on location, most probably inside a naval ship of some kind, but these are sparse.
All the action is pretty terrible. All the shoots outs are laughable because everyone misses the good guys every time, often at point blank range. If any good guy does get shot its usually in the shoulder, unless they're expendable. I also had to ask myself, surely with all these shoot outs the sub would be in danger of getting damaged badly, maybe springing a leak perhaps. Nah, they just keep blasting at each other and hitting the walls or pipes or whatever, no worries. In between any gun fights Van Damme of course manages to kick some bad guys in the face at close quarters. I say close quarters but in reality these sets are nice and wide so Van Damme is able to perform his usual repertoire of kickassery, because realism.
Oh Christ I nearly forgot about old Dolph. Well clearly the director nearly forgot about old Dolph too because he's hardly in this. He obviously gets top billing on the poster alongside Van Damme to obviously attract the hardcore fans; but its pretty blatant false advertising on said poster (a poster which sees Van Damme blatantly de-aged). Dolph plays another prisoner on-board the sub who is eventually released by Wheeler for help. He then kicks a little butt and literally disappears for the rest of the movie. That is until the very end where we get a completely pointless final scene with him.
The acting is generally bad all round because they've seemingly hired body builders with no experience in acting. The main characters are a tad better but not much. Most are unknown to me but I guess the best of the bunch goes to Al Sapienza who plays one of the main CIA heads who may or may not be Wheeler's friend (intrigued much?). But apparently they only wanted good looking sexy people to aide Van Damme's character. Special mention to Jasmine Waltz and her plastic doll-like face and body (obvious surgery).
The poster does look good for this I can't deny but alas its utter crap my friends. Shoddy all round, very fake looking, poor acting, poor everything! I think this has to be the first really bad straight to DVD type movie I've seen with both Dolph and Van Damme. I know they have made some lower budget things in the past but this really takes the cake.
2/10
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