Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Thursday, February 23rd, 2023
Watching Ryuhei Kitamura’s latest THE PRICE WE PAY this week reminded me to finally catch up with his previous one, THE DOORMAN (2020). I remember I was excited that he did a Ruby Rose action vehicle, but I heard some negative things and it scared me off. I shouldn’t listen to that stuff, because I like so many movies that normal humans hate, but I’m susceptible to rumors of poor action scenes.
That criticism is fair. Many of the action scenes are pretty choppy, they’re certainly not up to the state of the art in the 87Eleven era. And I do think this is a movie that could go over really well if it had a couple knockout fights. So that’s too bad. But I still enjoyed it on a story and character level like I would, say, a Liam Neeson movie where you’d have way less of the real shit than this. So if you’re okay with that, I recommend it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aksel Hennie, Dan Southworth, David Sakurai, Delianne Forget, Die Hard on a ____, Easter, George Gallo, Hideaki Ito, Jean Reno, Juju Journey Brener, Julian Feder, Kila Lord Cassidy, Louis Mandylor, Morgan Freeman, Nick Vallelonga, Patrick Muldoon, Petre Moraru, Philip Whitchurch, Ruby Rose, Rupert Evans, Ryuhei Kitamura, Simon Rhee
Posted in Reviews, Action | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, February 21st, 2023
SENTINELLE is a pretty good 2021 French revenge movie that’s mostly made out of cliches, but benefits from a dedicated performance by its star Olga Kurylenko (HITMAN, MAX PAYNE, QUANTUM OF SOLACE, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS, OBLIVION, THE NOVEMBER MAN, BLACK WIDOW) and the artful direction of Julien Leclercq (THE ASSAULT, THE BOUNCER). You may also be interested to know that it’s only 80 minutes long. I don’t really subscribe to the “movies are too long these days” conventional wisdom, but I was looking for something to watch kind of late and I have to admit that brevity was one of the selling points for me in this instance. (It’s on Netflix.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Carole Weyers, French action, Jerome Gaspard, Julien Leclercq, Marilyn Lima, Melissa Humler, Michel Nabokoff, Olga Kurylenko, revenge
Posted in Reviews, Action | 9 Comments »
Thursday, February 16th, 2023
You may be surprised to hear that I had never seen IRON MONKEY (1993) until now. I rented it many years ago but it turned out to be some Miramax dubbed and chopped version, so I decided to hold off, and I guess I got sidetracked. Now, upon the occasion of a new blu-ray release, I finally watched it. So I’m happy to be the last to tell you this is a straight up martial arts classic!
It’s directed by Yuen Woo-ping (he followed it with TAI CHI MASTER and WING CHUN – that’s a hell of a trilogy!) and written and produced by the prolific Tsui Hark. I could also say “the visionary Tsui Hark” or “the lovable weirdo Tsui Hark,” but I said “prolific” this time because THE EAST IS RED and ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA IV (which he wrote) and ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA III and GREEN SNAKE (which he wrote and directed) all came out that same year.
The titular Iron Monkey (Yu Rongguang, TSUI HARK’S VAMPIRE HUNTERS) is a Zorro-meets-Robin-Hood-meets-kung-fu folk hero known for leaping around on rooftops at night, stealing the ill-gotten gains of corrupt government officials, and leaving his loot as gifts for refugees and the poor. Our story begins with the authorities battening down the hatches to catch Iron Monkey if he comes for the new governor (James Wong, TIGER ON BEAT), who is cowering in a bed with his mistress (Cheung Fung-lei) and a net set up for protection. But Iron Monkey flips in in his black costume and gaiter and defeats the guards and Shaolin monks guarding the governor. (He either implies the monks are imposters or sell outs, I’m not sure which.) He gets the gold and escapes through the ceiling. Don’t fuck with Iron Monkey. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Donnie Yen, James Wong, Jean Wang, Tsui Hark, Wong Fei-hung, Yen Shi-Kwan, Yu Rongguang, Yuen Shun-Yi, Yuen Woo-Ping
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts | 11 Comments »
Wednesday, February 15th, 2023
THE RED-WOLF (just RED WOLF on the DVD cover) is a 1995 movie directed by Yuen Woo-ping that’s kind of like his take on UNDER SIEGE and/or SPEED 2. Thieves infiltrate a cruise ship and kill the captain in a plot to steal uranium from the boat’s safe; a lone security guard (with help from a waitress/pickpocket) must stop them. It’s far from Yuen’s best directorial work, but of course it has some very good action in it, and I can’t help but enjoy seeing him inject his style into a favorite subgenre of American action.
It takes place on New Year’s Eve (the December one, judging by the number of Christmas trees around) on a luxury cruise ship called the White Whale. That’s a literary reference in my opinion, but most of its influences are cinematic. If you know your important filmic art you know that in the film UNDER SIEGE the captain of an aircraft carrier is killed by one of his underlings, who’s working for a guy who gets on board disguised as the singer for a corny blues rock band. This is kind of a variation on that – the ship’s captain (Steve Brettingham, KNOCK OFF) is a sleazeball who expects to hook up with singer Elaine Wong (Elaine Lui Siu-Ling, THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR), so she gets into his private quarters to whoop his ass and steal his security card. She’s working with the ship’s treacherous first officer (Collin Chou, THE MATRIX RELOADED), who kicks in the door and helps. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christy Chung, Collin Chou, Die Hard on a ____, Digital Native Dance, Elaine Lui, Habby Heske, Hong Kong action, Kenny Ho, Mandy Chan, Mary Hon Ma-Lee, Mike Miller, New Year's Eve, Robert Samuels, Roy Filler, Steve Brettingham, Wu Fung, Yuen Woo-Ping
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
“My dad died fighting Nazis in Germany, but he died fightin the wrong ones, huh?”
THE FINAL COMEDOWN is a 1972 drama starring Billy Dee Williams as an angry young militant who leads some sort of small uprising. It has been categorized as blaxploitation, and that makes sense – it’s a low budget movie with a funky soundtrack, and a sex scene (maybe to please producer Roger Corman), and it co-stars that bad D’Urville Martin (director of DOLEMITE, played by Wesley Snipes in DOLEMITE IS MY NAME) and Raymond St. Jacques right after COOL BREEZE. But despite having many bullets fired and quite a few falling-off-a-building stunts, it’s not exactly an action movie or empowerment fantasy. It’s a very earnest issue movie, with the unvarnished rage and radicalism of THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR, plus an editing style and non-linear storytelling that seems more in the arty vein of stuff like SWEET SWEETBACK and TOP OF THE HEAP than all the ones that were trying to cash in on the success of SHAFT and SUPER FLY. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Allan Arkush, Billy Dee Williams, Celia Kaye, D'Urville Martin, Ed Cambridge, Grant Green, Maide Norman, Oscar Williams, Pamela Jones, Raymond St. Jacques, Roger Corman
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime, Drama | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 8th, 2023
Recently, events converged to remind me there was a (sort of) remake of John Carpenter’s ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 back in 2005. Well, really what happened was that movie PLANE came out – the Gerard Butler one with the plane – and that’s from the same director, Jean-François Richet. He did a couple gritty French crime movies in the ‘90s and then his phone rang and Hollywood said, “Hello, this is Hollywood, would you be interested in remaking ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, or as you call it in France, ASSAUT?” I imagine he very thoughtfully said “Oui” and then hung up.
According to his commentary track they didn’t have the script yet when they hired him. He chose James DeMonaco to write it because he’d just seen THE NEGOTIATOR, a movie this does seem kinda similar to. DeMonaco had also written a film for Francis Ford Coppola*. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aisha Hinds, Brian Dennehy, Dorian Harewood, Drea De Mateo, Ethan Hawke, Gabriel Byrne, Graeme Revell, Ja Rule, James DeMonaco, Jean-Francois Richet, John Leguizamo, Kim Coates, KRS-One, Laurence Fishburne, Maria Bello, New Year's Eve, siege movies, Titus Welliver
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime, Thriller | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, February 7th, 2023
THE THOUSAND FACES OF DUNJIA is a 2017 FX-laden wuxia movie from the super team of director Yuen Woo-ping (TAI CHI MASTER, WING CHUN) and writer/producer Tsui Hark (A BETTER TOMORROW II, VAMPIRE HUNTERS), their first collaboration since 2002’s BLACK MASK 2: CITY OF MASKS (which was directed by Tsui with Yuen as martial arts director).
This is a type of modern Chinese blockbuster that seems to be very off-putting to some people because it’s absolutely slathered in digital bells and whistles: fiery bombastic credits, virtual camera pulling back from a spider’s leg to an asteroid in outer space, humans morphing into animated monsters, magic shit twirling around all over the place, clearly designed for 3D. Also it has lots of broad humor, cartoon physics, exaggerated facial expressions – the kind of stuff Stephen Chow perfected and nobody else, even these legends, can easily match.
It’s not my very favorite type of movie, but it’s something I can have fun with. The unbridled joy for putting cool and/or preposterous things on screen – fantastical shit for the sake of fantastical shit – always makes me smile, even if I can’t follow all of it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aarif Lee Chi-Ting, Da Peng, Ni Ni, Tsui Hark, wuxia, Yuen Woo-Ping, Zhou Dongyu
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, January 25th, 2023
STEP UP: YEAR OF THE DANCE (a.k.a. STEP UP CHINA) is a Chinese production developed by Lionsgate as an official entry in the STEP UP franchise, though it’s not connected by any characters. It was released in China in 2019 and apparently here (digital only) in 2020, but I didn’t find out until recently. I watched the English-dubbed version that’s on Tubi because I wasn’t sure if the VOD release would be different. (That’s not the ideal way to watch it, I imagine, but I got over it.)
My podcast friend Michael Scott of Action For Everyone shares my love of the STEP UP series and the dance movie genre, and we’ve talked about doing a STEP UP episode some day. He always says that dance movies are martial arts movies, and this one really literalizes that notion. It actually starts with a fight, and has more of them later, and the central dance crew find their success by starting a fad of “kung fu street dance.” So it makes sense that YEAR OF THE DANCE is directed by the great American stunt veteran and martial artist Ron Yuan, who you’ve seen in many movies including DOUBLE DRAGON, BLOOD & BONE, THE ACCOUNTANT and THE PAPER TIGERS, and who recently directed BLADE OF THE 47 RONIN.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: dance movies, Ron Yuan
Posted in Reviews, Action, Drama, Music | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, January 24th, 2023
You know me – I’ve always been fascinated with DTV sequels. One of their endearing qualities is that their modest budgets allow for a different type of crass commercialism than regular Hollywood – they try to cash in on familiar (or even unfamiliar) titles that would never fly on the big screen. That gave us the miracle of the UNDISPUTED sequels, but mostly just stuff where it was funny that it existed – loosely connected followups or branded rehashes of CRUEL INTENTIONS, WILD THINGS, ROAD HOUSE and HOLLOW MAN, for example, many of which I reviewed for The Ain’t It Cool News at the time.
Thanks to Universal’s direct-to-video division, 1440 Entertainment, that tradition is still going strong, and arguably making a comeback. Back in the aughts they brought us SCORPION KING and DEATH RACE sequels, they revived Chucky in the great CURSE OF CHUCKY, they started making JARHEAD sequels for some reason, and brought to life such unlikely part 2s as THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS 2, KINDERGARTEN COP 2 and HARD TARGET 2. In 2018 they even made a DTV sequel to UNBROKEN, that war drama directed by Angelie Jolie, and in 2019 they did BACKDRAFT 2, INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED, DOOM: ANNIHILATION and UNDERCOVER BROTHER 2. That last one I tried to watch because Michael Jai White is in it, but I gave up when his character went into a coma near the beginning. Still, I appreciate its existence because it keeps me on my toes. It reminds me that any movie, no matter how old, no matter how forgotten, no matter how how-the-fuck-would-you-make-a-sequel-to-that, could suddenly have a DTV sequel. And it would already be filmed and have cover art by the time I found out they were doing it. You gotta be aware at all times. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A.J. Mendez, Aimee Garcia, Alec Puro, Anna Akana, Chris Pang, Dai Tabuchi, Dan Southworth, DTV, DTV sequels, Dustin Nguyen, Eniko Fulop, Joe Hahn, John Swetnam, Mark Dacascos, Mike Moh, Nino Furuhata, Ron Yuan, Teresa Ting, Yoshi Sudarso
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts | 13 Comments »
Thursday, January 19th, 2023
THE WOMAN KING has an irresistible hook that made it a hit: Did you know there was an all-female military regiment in 1800s West Africa, “THE MOST EXCEPTIONAL FEMALE WARRIORS TO EVER LIVE”? Now that you do, wouldn’t you like to see them kicking ass on screen, fighting off the invading “Europeens,” with Academy Award winner Viola Davis as their badass leader?
For me the answers to those questions were no, I don’t think I did, and yes, of course I would. I meant to see it in theaters, but I missed it. Reviews were mostly positive, but I remember them seeming a little subdued. Maybe I misread them, or maybe they wanted it to seem more like a Very Important awards season type movie to really get behind it. I think it has plenty of substance to it, but director Gina Prince-Bythewood (THE OLD GUARD) doesn’t treat that like the main attraction, and she shouldn’t have to. There’s a precedent for crowd-pleasing historical action dramas winning best picture, but BRAVEHEART and GLADIATOR could pass for highfalutin without having to address any issues, you know? They just had to make a rousing speech about bravery and killing a motherfucker, nobody expected them to say something deep about the world’s problems. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dana Stevens, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Jimmy Odukoya, John Boyega, Jordan Bolger, Lashana Lynch, Maria Bello, Sheila Atim, Terence Blanchard, Thuso Mbedu, Viola Davis
Posted in Reviews, Action, War | 24 Comments »
