DVD review: Nato Commando (Video 2005)

Alex Lommo (Ville Lähde) is the toughest commando in Nato. He is an ex-commando since he left his job due to the personal reasons and went to his cottage to live in peace. However his old pal from army, Colonel Fägerlund, manages to find him and he has a new mission for Lommo, but a group of terrorist kidnap Fägerlund right in front of Lommo's eyes. Lommo decides to personally find out what is going on... Nato Commando is written and directed by Ville Lähde. There is horrendously bad acting, the camerawork and editing is pretty decent (in effect not good but not too bad) and I must say that the frequent use of slow motion is very annoying. Nato Commando looks very much like a group of friends got together and decided to try to make a feature flick on a shoestring budget and in that way it´s reminiscent of Reckoning Day (2002) and Dragonetti the Ruthless Contract Killer (2010) . The soundtrack is decent. The pace is pretty decent, the running time is 82 minutes, there´s heavy use of flashbacks and I suppose that the purpose of the gratuitous slow motion is to padd out the running time. There´s a lot of both intentional and unintentional comedy in this, and Alex might just be the most unfit commando ever to grace the screen. Nato Commando is very violent, plenty of shootouts, a few fightscenes and there is even a scene where a car is chased by a helicopter gunship. The action isn´t very good and the low budget is evident throughout the flick. There´s gore, some of it is pretty decent, as people get shot, cut, stabbed, pierced through by pitchfork and so on. There are some creature fx, I won´t go into details, the concept is cool but they sure look cheap. There´s plenty of computer rendered fx, used for helicopters, some explosions and so on. There´s brief topless nudity in this.
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This review is based upon the region all (Region 0) release from Trash Video. It´s uncut and english subtitles are available.
Rating: 1 out of 7. Nato Commando has many flaws, the bad acting, it isn´t very well made and the overuse of slow motion are just a few examples but it is pretty entertaining and is never dull. If you have a soft spot for trashy low budget action you might wanna check this one out.

/JL