Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Wednesday, February 27th, 2019
a.k.a. THE BODYGUARD
a.k.a. SUPER BODYGUARD
IRON PROTECTOR (2016) is a fun and pulpy if not groundbreaking modern Chinese martial arts picture with a little bit of a throwback feel. The opening credits are throbbing with kung fu, c.g., three dimensional letters, fire and explosions, and the movie maintains that level of shameless flash, but it’s old school in the sense that it has lines like “Brother, your iron fist has improved alot,” and “Brother, everyone in my bodyguard company is a champion in his own right,” and “I let you help me start my bodyguard company because I wanted to develop the spirit of the Iron Kick,” and “You must live on for the spirit of the Iron Kick.” Also they make a big deal about writer/director/star Yue Song doing all his own stunts and not using wires.
It’s style is not unimpeachable. It has a cheesy transition effect that I think is supposed to remind you of a comic book. I always hate that shit. I guess that’s why reviews like this one on Cinapse call it a superhero movie, but it doesn’t seem to me like super powers as much as just classical martial arts mythology. Our hero Wu-Lin (Song) is the last master of a secret fighting style, the Iron Kick. His feet have stayed encased in metal boots for ten years as part of mastering the technique, so that’s where the Iron comes in. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Xing Yu, Yue Song, YuFei Li
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 3 Comments »
Thursday, February 21st, 2019
NIGHTSHOOTERS is a low budget 2018 UK action movie that starts out feeling like a broad indie comedy but turns deadly serious when its regular non-warrior characters start getting killed. It takes place over one night as a small guerrilla film crew shooting without permission in an about-to-be-demolished office building happen to witness gangsters setting a guy on fire and have to fight for their lives.
Like so many movie-within-a-movie movies, it opens with their horror movie in progress, a zombie action film called DAWN OF THE DEADLY. It’s interesting because there are plenty of horror movies about people making a horror movie and encountering real horror (DESTROYER, SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, DIARY OF THE DEAD, CUT, THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING, FURRY NIGHTS), but I don’t know of any other action ones. And this very much has the feel of a homegrown horror movie, from the type of characters (a little overly dickish, but eventually turning sympathetic) to the references to favorite movies. In this case, though, they’re not tipping the hat to horror movies – they talk about wanting their cinematography to look like JOHN WICK, and their star brags about being in a scene with Scott Adkins. It’s a weird feeling to see movie characters who know who Scott Adkins is. Even in the real world you gotta run in the right circles for that. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jean-Paul Ly, Michael Price, Richard Sandling
Posted in Action, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, February 19th, 2019
Man, we’ve been hearing about James Cameron doing this manga/anime adaptation since 2005, well before AVATAR. We’re talking Obama’s first year as a United States Senator, Christian Bale’s first year as a Batman, three live action Spider-man actors ago, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe even started, when Chris Evans was still The Human Torch, George Lucas was still making Star Wars movies, Saddam Hussein was still alive, the word “sexting” was just invented, Youtube was just starting, and Twitter didn’t exist yet. A long time ago.
So I can’t say I was thrilled when, after that decade plus of hopes, Cameron announced “Just kidding, Robert Rodriguez is gonna direct it.” Fresh off of SIN CITY 2. But also I wasn’t stupid enough to scoff at it. Cameron co-wrote and produced the thing. The only other time he did that was STRANGE DAYS, and that turned out pretty good. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Casper Van Dien, Christoph Waltz, cyborg, Diana Lee Inosanto, Ed Skrein, Edward Norton, Jackie Earle Haley, James Cameron, Jeff Fahey, Jennifer Connelly, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Keean Johnson, Laeta Kalogridis, live action anime, live action manga, Mahershala Ali, Marko Zaror, Michelle Rodriguez, Robert Rodriguez, Rosa Salazar
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 51 Comments »
Thursday, February 14th, 2019
It’s fair to say that earlier in the century The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was a pop culture phenomenon. Stieg Larsson’s three novels, posthumously published starting in 2005, were worldwide hits. I enjoyed the stories through their 2009 Swedish movie adaptations (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST) which launched their star Noomi Rapace (PROMETHEUS, PASSION, DEAD MAN DOWN, THE DROP, CLOSE) into international movie stardom, and their leading man Michael Nyqvist into spending his last years playing bad guys in Hollywood movies including ABDUCTION, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL and JOHN WICK (where he delivers the best syllable: “Oh.”). David Fincher’s 2011 English language take on the first book was pretty great and even got Rooney Mara an unlikely but well-deserved Oscar nomination.
But it wasn’t a big enough hit to justify a sequel budgeted for Fincher, Mara and Daniel Craig, so after years of haggling they went with plan B: a lower budget sequel with new director and cast, based not on the next in the trilogy but a continuation written by new author David Lagercrantz. And nobody really seemed to be waiting for that.
Except me! Selling point #1: director Fede Alvarez, who really impressed me with EVIL DEAD and DON’T BREATHE. Selling point #2: less grim and rapey, more fun and actiony. You still got the trademark fucked up and fetishy shit of the snow-bitten Larssonverse, but in this one our heroine is never sexually assaulted, but does have high speed chases on multiple vehicle types. Hot move: ditching police cars by jumping your motorcycle onto a frozen lake. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Camron Britton, Claire Foy, David Lagercrantz, Fede Alvarez, Jay Basu, LaKeith Stanfield, Mikael Persbrandt, Stephen Merchant, Steven Knight, Stieg Larsson, Sverrir Gudnason, Sweden, Sylvia Hoeks
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 36 Comments »
Monday, February 11th, 2019
COLD PURSUIT – which could be called HELLY HANSEN PRESENTS ‘COLD PURSUIT’ in my opinion – is an odd duck of a Liam Neeson vehicle. His character Nelson “Nels” Coxman is a man with a very particular set of skills, but they mostly involve driving a snow plow. He lives a simple life in a big house in a tiny ski resort town 3 and a quarter miles from Denver, Colorado. It’s one of those places where people have to be kinda rugged but they’re also laid back and individualistic. It’s always cold outside so they mostly just find ways to relax in their big houses. Nels’s wife Grace (Laura Dern, WILD AT HEART) smokes a joint while cooking up some meat from the reindeer that Nels and their son Kyle (Micheal Richardson, VOX LUX) hunted a while back.
Nels is a little nervous about having to make a speech after winning Citizen of the Year. Otherwise they seem to have a nice comfortable lifestyle going when all the sudden Kyle turns up dead – we know he was murdered by drug dealers, but the coroner (Jim Shield, SHANGHAI NOON, who looks like a more hard living Chris Pine) says it was a heroin overdose. Nels is so broken up he puts a shotgun in his mouth but when he’s interrupted by Kyle’s bloodied and apologetic friend Dante (Wesley MacInnes, POWER RANGERS) and learns what really happened, it’s not long before he’s sawing off said shotgun to fit in his jacket and go trying to find the people responsible. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Domenick Lombardozzi, Emmy Rossum, Frank Baldwin, Hans Petter Moland, Julia Jones, Laura Dern, Liam Neeson, Michael Eklund, Micheal Richardson, revenge, Tom Jackson, William Forsythe
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews | 36 Comments »
Wednesday, February 6th, 2019
Well damn, I had been hyped to see PEPPERMINT in theaters but I lost the urgency after everyone told me it was bad, and it left before I got to it. Turns out it’s the type of shit I like. Shoulda trusted my gut.
Admittedly it is guilty of that troublingly prevalent action movie problem of our era: vicious Mexican gang/cartel bad guys at a time when the ruling party in this country wants us to be having nightmares about that shit to justify their cruel, racist policies and moneymaking scams (see also SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO). As if left over from another time, the movie casts John Ortiz (CARLITO’S WAY, NARC, MIAMI VICE, AMERICAN GANGSTER, FAST & FURIOUS, FURIOUS 6) as the lead investigator, the one Latin good guy that’s supposed to offset the stereotype. To be fair, they also have the cartel conspiring with local cops, judges and lawyers, so Corruption In The System is as guilty as The Other.
Anyway if you can stomach that then the only other action movie sins are the type that I just laugh at and enjoy, like the ludicrous TV coverage of our anti-hero’s rampage (details later). I think the best way to explain the appeal of this movie is to say that I have enjoyed all of the PUNISHER movies, including this one. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Annie Ilonzeh, Cailey Fleming, Chad St. John, Jeff Hephner, Jennifer Garner, John Ortiz, JUan Pablo Raba, Method Man, Pell James, Pierre Morel, revenge, vigilante
Posted in Action, Reviews | 32 Comments »
Thursday, January 31st, 2019
Liam Neeson is… The Commuter, starring in his self-titled, totally solid addition to the catalog of Neeson vehicles directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (UNKNOWN, NON-STOP, RUN ALL NIGHT). Written by previously unknown Byron Willinger and Philip de Blasi, this is a gimmicky suspense thriller taking place almost entirely in the limited location of a New York City commuter train, but it manages to also mix in a couple of impressive action exclamation points, not to mention the director’s endlessly playful computer-assisted camera show-offery.
The Commuter is Michael McCauley, an ex-cop who is suddenly fired from his current job at an insurance company, and then finds himself under siege in dark territory on the ride home. It’s the train he’s been riding for ten years, and most of the passengers know him by name, make small talk with him and ask about his wife (Elizabeth McGovern, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, CLASH OF THE TITANS) and kid (Dean-Charles Chapman, Game of Thrones). The usual sameness of his mornings is cleverly illustrated in an opening scene that shows him getting up, having breakfast, talking to the family and getting dropped off at the train, jaggedly cutting between seasons, emotions and conversations to show the passage of time without interrupting the flow of the daily routine. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Elizabeth McGovern, Florence Pugh, Jaume Collet-Serra, Jonathan Banks, Letitia Wright, Liam Neeson, Patrick Wilson, Shazad Latif, Vera Farmiga
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 56 Comments »
Tuesday, January 29th, 2019
POLAR (a new Netflix original, exactly like ROMA) is one of these movies about a legendary hitman trying to retire. And it’s the type that takes place in a very exaggerated world where murder-for-hire is a thriving business populated with many quirky and talented individuals possessing a flair for fashion and creative violence. It seems like if it’s not inspired by the JOHN WICK saga it’s at least given aid and comfort by it, but technically it’s based on a comic book that started in 2012. Polar was a web comic, improvised by writer/artist Victor Santos in black, white and orange, and posted one page at a time, with no dialogue until it was later collected into a graphic novel by Dark Horse Comics. The movie is far from silent or monochrome and it’s more structured than that sounds like it would be, but when you hear it’s based on a comic book it makes plenty of sense. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dark Horse Comics, Deadmau5, Fei Ren, hitman, Johnny Knoxville, Jonas Akerlund, Katheryn Winnick, Mads Mikkelsen, Matt Lucas, Netflix, Ruby O. Fee, Vanessa Hudgens
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Crime, Reviews | 30 Comments »
Thursday, January 24th, 2019
There’s this weird psychological thing about the availability of movies. I looked at IMDb and determined that I’ve seen every Coen Brothers movie since THE HUDSUCKER PROXY in the theater, most of them probly on the first day or opening weekend. That’s thirteen films over a period of 24 years. But when THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS went straight to Netflix I let it sit there for more than two months before I finally got to it. Because, you know, every weekend I wanted to go see WIDOWS or CREED II or on and on, and I rented THE FOREIGNER I needed to watch that and return it and then I wanted to watch some Christmas horror, that was more timely, that had a sell by date. I procrastinate more when it feels like it’s accessible at any moment between now and the day whatever black magic they’ve been using to stay in business wears out.
I bring this up to explain how surprised I am at myself for seeing an article mentioning the release date of the Netflix original CLOSE and realizing it had gone up 18 minutes ago and then spontaneously actually watching it. I sorta did that for THE NIGHT COMES FOR US too, but that came with the pedigree of HEADSHOT. This one I had seen a trailer and knew Noomi Rapace (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, PROMETHEUS, PASSION, DEAD MAN DOWN, THE DROP) was a badass in it so it seemed like some DTV shit I could get behind. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: bodyguard, Indira Varma, Netflix, Noomi Rapace, Sophie Nelisse, Vicky Jewson
Posted in Action, Reviews | 32 Comments »
Wednesday, January 16th, 2019
(as in a bust during a buy)
Every so often in the world of action movies something or someone comes along that throws down the gauntlet and inspires others around the world to try to match it or top it. THE MATRIX, TAKEN and JOHN WICK are three that might qualify based on imitation alone. I think ONG BAK really started something with its insane stunts and flying knees and elbows originating from a country not previously known for movies. More recently THE RAID ignited an Indonesian action film scene and inspired people in other parts of the world to push the envelope in their own ways.
I’m not just talking about copycats. They might even become classics in their own right. Case in point: the amazing 2018 Philippine drug raid epic BUYBUST, which would’ve definitely made my best of the year write-up if I’d seen it in time. It’s kind of like THE RAID meets ELITE SQUAD. A highly trained team of drug enforcement agents go into a favela-like part of town tailing an informant (Alex Calleja) who is wearing a wire for a transaction with the vicious druglord Chongki (Levi Ignacio) in an attempt to draw out his boss, the elusive Biggie Chen (Arjo Atayde). It turns out to be a setup, the drug gang guns down most of the team and the surviving agents have a long, grueling night battling their way through endless attackers in a labyrinth of narrow, crowded passages and corrugated roofing while trying to figure out who betrayed them and where to find Biggie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anne Curtis, Brandon Vera, Erik Matti, Philippines
Posted in Action, Crime, Martial Arts, Reviews | 20 Comments »
