Excellent but underrated film

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The Peacekeeper starts as air-force pilot Major Frank Cross (Dolph Lundgren) is given a stark choice, either face a court marshal for disobeying a direct order or become a military aide for the President (Roy Scheider). Not much of a choice really. Frank's new job is to carry & protect the President's 'black bag', a black suitcase containing a computer & the codes that can launch America's nuclear missiles. Sounds an easy enough job right? Well, on his first day Frank gets into all sorts of trouble when terrorist's strike, kill all his security men mates & steal the black bag. Frank manages to survive the attack & becomes America's only hope when the terrorist's launch a nuclear missile that is targeted on Washington...Made under the alternative titles of Hellbent & Red Zone this Canadian American co-production was directed by Frédéric Forestier & sees Sweedish action star Dolph Lundgren in what turns out to be quite a fun little action thriller that isn't any sort of masterpiece but entertains for the right reasons & passes 100 odd minutes harmlessly enough. I suppose the easiest way to describe The Peacekeeper that most people will be able to relate to is that it's a Die Hard (1988)/Under Siege (1992)/Sudden Death (1995) style action thriller where Lundgren has to fight a bunch of terrorist's or bad guy's or whoever in an isolated cut off location as they hold something or someone to ransom in order to make lots of money. However I will say right now that The Peacekeeper is nowhere near as good as Die Hard, Under Siege or Sudden Death but it is quite fun a cheesy sort of way, it moves along at a decent pace & there's a fair amount of action in it too. There are a couple of moralistic concepts like would the men in power who send soldiers to their death in war be prepared to lay down their own lives, the validity & ethics of stockpiling nuclear weapons for defence purposes but it's hardly that deep or life changing stuff & it plays second fiddle to the action thankfully. All in all not a bad effort at really which somewhat (pleasantly) surprised me.The action scenes are quite good actually, there's a particularly ambitious car chase that eventually ends up with cars jumping from roof to roof. It's a sequence that wouldn't look out of place in a big budget Hollywood action flick. There are a few decent shoot-outs & fights too although the car chase is the stand out sequence. The film has a slightly cheap look about it, the sets look cheap & the cast is missing a strong central villain. The violence is fairly tame, there's not much blood, there's nothing that graphic going on & I would have preferred it if Lundgren killed the main villain rather than him just commit suicide for no apparent reason. Interestingly the helicopter scene in this was edited almost in it's entirety into the absolutely horrible Dennis Hopper/Tom Sizemore/Steven Seagal action thriller Ticker (2001).According to the IMDb this had a budget of about $10,000,000 which is actually a bit bigger than I thought considering that it does have a slightly cheap look to it although the action scenes are quite good. Despite being set in Los Angeles & the US this was shot entirely in Montréal, Québec in Canada. The acting is alright considering the material, Dolph Lundgren (who was apparently paid a hefty $2,500,000 for this) has definitely lost his harsh accent & you can actually understand him in this, the late Roy Scheider plays the President in a fairly small role while Emmy award winning talk-show host Montel Williams plays the black comedy relief sidekick.The Peacekeeper isn't the best action thriller ever made but there's enough fun to be had here to make it worth a watch, not as good as the more well known terrorist action thrillers but not too bad all the same.

A surprising assemblage of talented actors came together to make this not unusual Dolph Lundgren military thriller. The story tells a neocon version of Dr. Strangelove with hints of The Rock. Rather than lampooning military paranoia, dysfunction and bureaucracy, The Peacekeeper presents us with a psychotic ex-military man who is hell-bent on personal vengeance against the president of the United States. How? by wiping out a third of the U.S.' population.Lundgren is charged with protecting the 'black box' - a briefcase which controls the launch of a massive nuclear arsenal. On his first day on the job, the briefcase is stolen and he begins a chase which will comprise most of the remainder of the film.Not surprising considering the cast - The Peacekeeper is better-acted than one would expect given the average quality of the script and the rather redundant and silly story. Lundgren, rarely challenged, gives the film his standard performance, Scheider and Montel Williams are very good, and Sarrazin plays the heavy well. But the entire production is hamstrung by the weak script and not very believable storyline.The cinematography is above average for this sort of film. The directing is OK.Recommended for Lundgren fans and fans of military fantasy.

One does have guilty pleasures in life and one of mine is watching Dolph Lundgren films (actually and Stephen Seagal films but I'm having counselling on that one). I'm not sure why I like Dolph. He can sort of act and he does action scenes OK. Most of his films are low budget. Yet I can't resist them. 'The Peacekeeper' is about a missile base being hijacked and it is up to Dolph to save the day which of course he does, spouting one liners and shooting and punching. Not subtle, there's just something about the man. Left field charisma, or something.There are two good actors in the film, Roy Scheider and Michael Sarrazin who almost seem in a different movie. Quality shines through. Their conversations by radio are the best bits in the film. Sarrazin as a one eyed ex-soldier is scary but also tragic. Not a great film but it fills the time. Dolph has made better films though (and worse).

This movie surprised me. I usually shy away from any movie Dolph Lungdren is in, especially in the last few years. But, for some unknown reason, this movie interested me because the video box didn't give away too much of the plot and I was actually expecting an action thriller, not a Die Hard clone. As I said this movie was impressive in the way the plot was executed (except at the end, but I won't give that away) and the action sequences, although there weren't many of them, were filmed quite well. A stand out scene I guess is a car chase scene involving rooftops! (I'll say no more, its quite original). As well as that, Dolph gets some funny one-liners scattered at random throughout the movie. Not academy award winning material but worth a rental for the sheer entertainment value alone. 7/10