One in the Chamber (2012)

Too many fans seem to be blown away

Brilliant and touching

Better Late Then Never

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

One in the Chamber is o one of the better straight to DVD action films.Cuba Gooding Jr and Dolph Lundgren play assassins for rival Russian mobs. Gooding turns on his paymasters when he fails to complete a hit. Lundgren has been called in to finish the mess.Gooding brings a quiet dignity to his role, now looking older, he has been given a bit of a back-story and plays his role with less histrionics and gets to do some action scenes well.The presence of an Oscar winner means Lundgren has to raise his game and gives a sardonic performance as the lone wolf, almost moving as a lounge lizard. He is even called Sinatra on steroids at one point. You do sense that Lundgren is getting a bit long in the tooth for the action scenes and they do seem to be a tad lethargic or speeded up.There is nothing much of interest in the story, it is a pretty standard gangland mobsters with Russian accents and plenty of tattoos. There is a damsel in distress at the climax with enough fight action and plenty of shooting. An entertaining film of its genre type but not exceptional.

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.

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.

Whether we like it or not we DO often judge movies by the title and/or cover art promo-poster at first. I expected a true 'B' movie here, but what I got was considerably beyond it. It is an intelligent, albeit formulaic plot line, but it also has very intelligent dialog, shot extremely well, and directed substantially better than MANY "Blockbusters" we end up paying far too much for.Here you have the many clichés and standards of an average budget action flick, but what this movie does is engross you from beginning to end. I would NOT consider this a 'B' movie by any means. It stands aside as a well thought out and inspired piece of film making on the merits of writing, casting, crew, production values and certainly Directing!Cuba is truly outstanding here. Best performance in years(I believe). Dolf is...well, still Dolf at his best average, but good casting and acting all around. I recommend this because it surprised me as to certain nuances of actual quality of direction and cinematography AND script writing that is rarely shown in movies of this genre. Note: Many people and critics complain of not being able to 'follow it'. That is likely because a LOT of the story and scenes here are INTELLIGENTLY executed and THAT takes a disciplined attention span to pay full attention to what is going on. On a side note; and part of what makes the 'Love' interest in this movie so good, is that, like 'Remains of the Day', you can truly feel the wistful melancholy of the 'Inapproachable' aspect of 'Togetherness' that, as much as we want it to be, it has another more romantic aspect regarding the questions that it leaves behind.