A Major Disappointment

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

In my mind there's nothing worse than a boring war film, and this Indonesian attempt at creating an all-out actioner is as dull as dishwater through and through. The predictable, often mind-numbing antics introduce us to a bunch of sweaty men, who go on a mission to bring down the Dutch imperialists who have been causing so much trouble in Indonesia for the past four hundred years. After a number of close encounters (in those beloved wooden villages in the jungle), the finale involves an all-out assault on a mountain-top military base which is admittedly impressive in terms of sheer on-screen destruction; it really does look like the crew drove out to some old decrepit building and bombed the hell out of it in slow-motion! Sadly the rest of the film is almost worthless, lacking in direction, photography (nearly every action shot is in close-up, rendering any excitement to zero level) and acting.The uninteresting characters are played by uninteresting actors who are dubbed very badly, and who don't even overact as much as I had hoped, on the strengths of previous Indonesian films. Even the action is relatively bloodless and always seems to take place in the dark, making eye strain a probability. The cast is led by the always-dashing Barry Prima (THE WARRIOR) but sadly he is given little to work with here, instead he just dashes around with his weapon and tries to look tough. The attempts at romance serve to drag the slow pacing down even further and the only highlight (aside from the epic finale) is the absurdist moment in which the commandos, sitting together in a hut, burst into a solemn song about saving Mother Indonesia! It's enough to make your sides split.

Energic mixture of solid (but cheap of course) war action, few wtf-moments and always great Barry Prima. Situated in the late 40s'Indonesian freedom fighting, the historical context of Daredevil Commandos makes its subject slightly more interesting than in average Indonesian trash-film of the 80's. Story consists of group of freedom fighters (Daredeveil Commandos of the title) fighting against the evil dutch rulers. Plot is basic, straight forward, war movie stuff: "We got a mission," blah blah blah. But. Everything is filmed with care and heart and the movie goes fluently forward, although the pace lacks a little bit in the mid section. The narrative of DC combines genuinely powerful (even touching) scenes with the whole bunch of sequences coming straight from the "bad enough to be good" -department.Not an easy movie to find probably, so I suggest you give it a try - if you got a chance to watch it.

Okay, so this story takes place in Indonesia, where a bunch of rebels want to get rid of the Dutch rulers.But this is what I don't get: "Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch for over three centuries but declared its independence in 1945" - so this story allegedly takes place somewhere in the 1940s, but there are no Nazis, and there are no Japanese occupying forces.. and there's no background information told in the movie, other than there are a lot of evil Dutch soldiers who have conquered the land by brute force (killing a lot of innocent civilians in the process, it seems).. Now, I'm no historian, but this looks like some sort of anti-colonization propaganda, which has just come about 40 years too late.. if it was an historical movie, it lacks a bunch of facts to make it work. Anyway, the story is like this: The Indonesian rebels want to rid themselves of the evil Dutch occupiers, but they are too strong, so they must created a super commando force with their best soldiers, and about 1 hour into the movie, there's a great scene with the 6 daredevil commandos preparing for battle, with two scenes shot in on take, of them putting on camouflage, loading their guns, and singing a patriotic anthem. Of course this is done with atrocious dubbing, so it comes out a bit unintentionally funny.The daredevils are these six men: Sgt. Hasyim, Corp. Abimanyu, Sgt. Dulmanap, Lt. Widodo, Capt. Abadi, and (Pvt?) Jaim. Their cause doesn't begin for real until their (previously unnoticed and unmentioned) buddy Darso is killed in a raid. Then they pull out the heavy machinery, like rocket launchers, flamethrowers, and hand-grenades. The ending of the movie is one big explosion-fest. In one funny scene a daredevil shoots a rocket against a cliff, which then results in a major avalanche, and when he shoots it off, it's pitch black, but when it hits, it's bright daylight! Guess the time just went too fast for the crew when they shot that scene.. The movie is clearly shot in widescreen, but has been given a really ugly video-transfer with lots of PAN & SCAN that disturbs the viewers. My version (Danish VHS called "Commander I Helvede" - Commander in Hell) cut off the end credits, so I couldn't update more info than what's already on the site. If anybody reads this review, please vote for it! But I sincerely doubt anyone will ever read it.. 3/10