The small Eastern European country of 'Moldavia' has recently seen some political unrest – a new prime minister has been elected by a landslide victory but there is still a faction out there that wants to take him down and gain control of the country for themselves. In order to do this, they place a sniper in such a position that when he opens fire on a crowd outside the palace, it looks like the prime minister's guards did the shooting. Of course, this makes things look really bad and a riot breaks out. Good thing for the prime minister then that an American Marine named Sam Keenan has just shown up at the American Embassy. He and a few of the Marines now under his control break the prime minister out of his office and bring him to the embassy where they hole up and try to figure out just what on Earth is going on.

Once Keenan has the prime minister safely stashed away, he and his soldiers do a bit of investigating and find out that there's actually a militia group behind the planning of the riots and the murder of an innocent civilian. They've also taken a few hostage, including Keenan's girlfriend – an English reporter, to ensure that they Americans are willing to negotiate. Adding to that is the fact that this militia group has ties to the military and have called in a few favors and as such, are in process of having the embassy surrounded. Keenan and company have called in for reinforcements but Washington says it'll be a good six hours before they arrive, meaning that he and his dozen or so Marines are going to have to work together to fend off the advancing enemy and protect the prime minister from those who would see him dead.

Sound kind of familiar in the plot department? It should, because Second In Command is very much like The Alamo except with Van Damme in the lead instead of John Wayne, and an Eastern European setting instead of a Texan one… and with more tanks and helicopters. You know what, though? Originality aside, it works and it works well. Second In Command starts off pretty quickly and it builds very nicely right up until the ending. It's predictable and we more or less know how it's going to finish but it is still a lot of fun getting there thanks to some very solid direction, strong action set pieces, and some genuinely cool screen presence courtesy of the Muscles from Brussels himself.

Say what you will about Jean Claude, the man has made many a bad film, but age has been unusually kind to him in that now that he's a little older, he's got this sort of weathered look to him that works well in the roles he has recently been choosing. Check out Ringo Lam's In Hell or the more recent Wake Of Death for performances similar to the one he delivers here, that of the more world weary and down to earth hero rather than the untouchable kickboxer type he's handled in the past. These parts are definitely a step in the right direction for him, proving that, while he'll probably never be Orson Welles or Humphrey Bogart, the guy isn't a half bad actor when he gets parts that play to his strengths, such as the part he has in Second In Command.

But how does the action stand up? Let's face it, that's the real reason anyone is going to be checking this one out, right? Well, thankfully the action scenes are strong. There's surprisingly little martial arts action here and most of the excitement comes from the gun play or from the well built scenes of tension that occur before said gun play, but there are a couple of moments where JC snaps a few bones. Lots of shoot outs, sniper scenes, and explosions courtesy of air attack vehicles and hand held rocket launchers bring a whole lot of boom to the movie and there's certainly no shortage of onscreen violence and carnage. Thankfully, underneath all of that is a surprisingly good action thriller.

Video:

The picture is presented in a pretty good-looking 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer (mastered in high definition, so says the packaging). There are some mild compression artifacts present during a couple of the darker scenes, as well as some mild edge enhancement but none of it is overly severe. Colors look pretty bold and robust without coming across as overcooked except for a few of the combat scenes where they've been intentionally muted, and the flesh tones in the film remain life like without turning too pink or too orange. It isn't a perfect transfer with the aforementioned authoring issues, but there isn't any print damage worth complaining about (the image is almost pristine in that regard). The movie looks very good.