A tedious modern warfare story made on an indie budget. Endless chit-chat between uninteresting characters interspersed with by-rote shooting sequences. A big international cast here spearheaded by Will Yun Lee and supported by old-timers Chris Mulkey and Stephen Lang, but it's all for nothing when a film's this bad.

I was discussing films with a friend the other day and espousing the worst film I think I've ever seen: "Mesa of Lost Women" (1953) when he said that I should try out this little military triptych. Well, I hate to admit it, but he was correct - this is dreadful. A sort of International A-Team from the US, UK, China, Russia and France are in the "Middle East" trying to prevent a latter day Mahdi from taking over the world. There is, frankly, nothing at all to redeem this. The budget allows for some interesting photography of helicopters landing, taking off etc; but thereafter we are in the realms of bad writing, acting and directing matched only by the almost video game special effects (the baddies even have different coloured uniforms to better facilitate the target practice). Worryingly, this one sees one of their number captured so there must be a sequel....

I've been around the B movie block many many times in my lifetime, so I am usually more forgiving of shortcomings in these kinds of movies than regular moviegoers. However, I found "Rogue Warfare" to be incredibly badly done in any angle you look at, so I can only imagine what regular moviegoers will think about it. The production values were pretty skimpy and threadbare, though that did not bother me as much as the other problems in the movie. The characters are terrible; there is no effort to give any personality or dimension to anyone in the military team, and the bad guy pretty much just makes endless speeches about the evil of the west and how the west is doomed without exploring in depth why he feels that way. (And I must add the acting by everyone, regardless of role, is pretty amateurish.) The action scenes are directed to have no excitement at all, and making matters worse is that even those viewers who are not experts on how Special Forces members will act in the battlefield will see that these Special Forces soldiers make a number of unprofessional and downright stupid actions. (And why on earth do these Special Forces never have any air support such as drones?) To add insult to injury, the movie stops midstream in its story to announce that viewers will have to track down the sequel to find out how the story concludes. But I can't imagine anyone will feel the urge to see what happens, even those who have relatives that worked on the movies.