Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Thursday, November 9th, 2023
I think it’s safe to say that Olga Kurylenko is one of our reigning Queens of Action. She’s been in the trenches for many years, in many different sizes of roles and films (HITMAN, MAX PAYNE, QUANTUM OF SOLACE, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS, OBLIVION, THE NOVEMBER MAN, SENTINELLE, THE PRINCESS, EXTRACTION II), and she only seems to get better and better, especially when she’s headlining.
Like some of her male counterparts she has unattainable looks but such a strong screen presence she can still read as tough and/or relatable. She’s often required to portray a wider range of emotions than the fellas usually are, while also looking good kicking and stabbing and scowling. And in the tradition of Scott Adkins and others, when they finally put her in one of the big super hero movies (BLACK WIDOW) they gave her kind of a ho-hum character unworthy of her abilities. So she’s definitely one of our people. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: barbarians, Clive Standen, Dominiquie Vandenberg, female barbarians, historical drama, Jesse V. Johnson, Leo Gregory, Lucy Martin, Nick Moran, Olga Kurylenko, Peter Franzen
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, November 7th, 2023
BABY ASSASSINS is a 2021 Japanese film that I really enjoyed on Hi-Yah! a while ago and it has a sequel coming out soon (it already played at Fantastic Fest), so I figured I better get off my ass and finish writing the review. This is a movie that has some really well-executed fighting and bloody violence, but it’s really not focused on action. It’s mostly a very dry comedy about the lives of two freshly-graduated-from-high-school roommates, Mahiro (Saori Izawa, stunt double in the last two RUROUNI KENSHINs and SNAKE EYES) and Chisato (Akari Takaishi, MY HAPPY MARRIAGE), whose “main job is killing.”
The movie opens in the back room of a convenience store, where Mahiro is badly interviewing for a job, which turns out to be an undercover mission to kill the manager. She shoots him and fights the rest of the staff on her way out, until Chisato shows up to help finish them off and joke about how annoying the manager was. Just a couple of friends getting through life together.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Akari Takaishi, Akitani Mone, Kensuke Sonomura, Masanori Mimoto, Saori Izawa, Satoshi Uekiya, Yasukaze Motomiya, Yugo Sakamoto
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs | 2 Comments »
Thursday, November 2nd, 2023
JUSTICE NINJA STYLE is a shot-on-video but very enthusiastic independent action picture made in 1986 in the town of De Soto, Missouri (population 6,449 as of 2020), that came out on an extras-packed blu-ray earlier this year courtesy of the Vinegar Syndrome partner label VHShitfest.
Most of the regional movies like this that I’ve come across have been horror, and usually if those aren’t shot on film I turn them off, but I’m glad I gave this one a chance. It has the right balance of amateurishness, lack of self consciousness, underdog competence, and capturing of a particular time, place, and group of people, to be a fun one of these. And it soars by in 70 minutes (though the blu-ray includes a 15-minutes-longer alternate cut I didn’t get a chance to watch called NINJA THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Missouri, ninjas, regional action, shot on video, VHShitfest
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, September 27th, 2023
In the early ‘80s, the English ad director Tony Scott, fresh off of his movie debut THE HUNGER, wanted to adapt the A.J. Quinnell book Man on Fire. According to some of the vague reports I found, producer Arnon Milchan got some other guy for the MAN ON FIRE ultimately released in 1987 because he didn’t have faith in a director who was only on his second movie. 17 years later, when Milchan decided to try again, he was like “okay, yeah, I guess you can make it as your 12th movie.”
Times were different, so Scott had screenwriter Brian Helgeland (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4, HIGHWAY TO HELL, THE POSTMAN, PAYBACK, BLOOD WORK, MYSTIC RIVER, LEGEND) change the setting from Italy to Mexico, where the sorts of kidnappings in the story had become more common. Nevertheless, Quinnell found it a much better and more faithful adaptation of his book. I haven’t read it, but as a movie Scott’s version obliterates the other one in every category I can think of. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A.J. Quinnell, Arnon Milchan, Brian Helgeland, Christopher Walken, Dakota Fanning, Denzel Washington, Giancarlo Giannini, Jesus Ochoa, Marc Anthony, Mickey Rourke, Rachel Ticotin, revenge, Roberto Sosa, Tony Scott
Posted in Reviews, Action, Drama | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, September 26th, 2023
“A kid. I didn’t know it’d be a kid.”
I think we’re all familiar with MAN ON FIRE, the 2004 Denzel Washington/Tony Scott movie. I didn’t like it much at the time, but seeing Washington’s reunion with Dakota Fanning in THE EQUALIZER 3 got me wanting to give it another shot. Before that I thought I should finally watch the earlier version I’d never seen, the 1987 adaptation of the same 1980 A.J. Quinnell book. Scott actually tried to adapt the book in the early ’80s. Producer Arnon Milchan said “nah dude, I produced ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, I’m getting Sergio Leone to do it” (paraphrase) but that didn’t work out – it went to French director and comic book writer Élie Chouraqui, his followup to LOVE SONGS starring Catherine Deneuve and Christopher Lambert. Chouraqui did share adaptation credit with Sergio Donati, one of the writers of FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and DUCK, YOU SUCKER! (plus ORCA and RAW DEAL), so that’s something. But he’s no Leone, no Scorsese (Milchan produced THE KING OF COMEDY) or Terry Gilliam (he also produced BRAZIL) or Tony Scott’s brother (he produced LEGEND). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A.J. Quinnell, Arnon Milchan, Brooke Adams, Danny Aiello, Elie Chouraqui, Franco Trevisi, Gerry Fisher, Jade Malle, Joe Pesci, Joe Scott, Scott Glenn, Sergio Donati
Posted in Reviews, Action, Drama | 13 Comments »
Monday, September 25th, 2023
EXPEND4BLES is the official title, not just the internet nickname, for the fourth EXPENDABLES movie. It’s hard to believe that this series has now been going for 13 years – the first one is as old as COP LAND, ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA AND AMERICA, THE PEACEKEEPER, THE JACKAL, BATMAN & ROBIN and DOUBLE TEAM were when it came out. So most of us have long since given up on our dream of what we thought an all-star team up of iconic action stars could or should be. THE EXPENDABLES was never a return to the glory days of ’80s and ‘90s action, always hamstringing itself with misguided attempts to appeal to some other audience. It was never an amplification of the stars’ powers, as they had to work so hard to fit them all in that most of them didn’t get a chance to shine. And it was never the action genre at its best, as the scripts were never focused enough, they were often too winky, with jokes that were so basic they arguably don’t even count as jokes, and even the one Stallone directed had him trying to fake some bullshit modern style instead of do what he did best.
Surprisingly for a part 4, and one that came out a full 7 years after part 3, EXPEND4BLES is not trying to reinvent the wheel or correct any of those missteps. It’s just like yeah, we’re stilling doing these, why wouldn’t we? It looks cheaper than the others (with the most generic settings imaginable, even when they’re just fake looking green screen backdrops), but for the most part not all that much worse or better than I remember the others being at the time, though admittedly I haven’t rewatched them. This has a few funny ideas, a few okay fights, some funny splatter moments (digital), but mostly its strengths are that it still has some of the same guys, who I enjoy seeing in movies, and also it has some new guys who I enjoy seeing in movies. Even though this is none of their best work. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 50 Cent, Andy Garcia, Brian Smrz, Dan Chupong, Daren Nop, Dolph Lundgren, Eddie Hall, Iko Uwais, Jacob Scipio, Jason Statham, Kurt Wimmer, Levy Tran, Megan Fox, Mike Moller, Randy Couture, Scott Waugh, Spenser Cohen, Sylvester Stallone, Tad Daggerhart, Tony Jaa
Posted in Reviews, Action | 58 Comments »
Tuesday, September 19th, 2023
GUY RITCHIE’S THE COVENANT really is the official title of Mr. Ritchie’s 2023 Afghanistan War action drama. You know – in the tradition of LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER. The backstory is they were gonna be straight forward and call it THE INTERPRETER, but then they decided to get a little pompous and change it to THE COVENANT, but that meant they had to add the GUY RITCHIE’S to distinguish it from Renny Harlin’s warlock movie THE COVENANT. That’s okay, this is one he can be proud to put his name on. It’s a good one.
Let me tell you this. A few years ago I hit my breaking point with War On Terror films. I felt like even when they weren’t pro-war or militarism propaganda they were still perpetuating our complacency on this unending war. Then we finally pulled out of Afghanistan, so that sort of changed the ethics of using it in action movies, but I still wasn’t anxious to revisit the topic. When I started seeing trailers for these new Jake Gyllenhaal and Gerard Butler movies where they’re a soldier trying to get their interpreter to safety I thought “oh jesus, this how they’re gonna keep milking this thing?”
So I’m thankful to the Action For Everyone podcast and others that have kept praising THE COVENANT and KANDAHAR and explaining why they’re more interesting than I assumed. I don’t know about that second one, but I’m glad I didn’t go with my initial plan to skip THE COVENANT. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Afghanistan War, Alexander Ludwig, Antony Starr, Dar Salim, Emily Beecham, Guy Ritchie, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jonny Lee Miller
Posted in Reviews, Action, War | 54 Comments »
Monday, September 18th, 2023
OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE is the first of two Guy Ritchie films released in 2023. They came out so close together because this one was delayed more than a year for reasons reportedly including the pandemic, the bad luck of featuring Ukrainian gangsters right when Ukraine was invaded, and restructuring of distributor STX. I swear I heard it was going straight to video at one point, but then it suddenly hit theaters pretty much out of the blue, with predictably poor response.
It’s another Ritchie-Statham collab (their fifth), but not a gangster movie. Instead it’s a light-hearted spy caper, not an all-out comedy, but very jokey. It’s got the usual spy stuff: planting trackers, facial recognition software, meeting with buyers, pulling people into vans. And their mission takes them into the world of the super-duper rich, on yachts, in mansions, private jets, charity parties, bodyguards, art collections, jewelry auctions. A team of crafty good guys have to earn the trust of billionaire arms dealer Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant, CLOUD ATLAS) before he sells a dangerous device called The Handle. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aubrey Plaza, Bugzy Malone, Carey Elwes, Eddie Marsan, Guy Ritchie, Hugh Grant, Jason Statham, Josh Hartnett, Lourdes Faberes, Max Beesley, Peter Ferdinando, spy
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs | 26 Comments »
Wednesday, September 13th, 2023
“Ultraman’s the closest thing the modern world has to a god. No wonder people cling to him.”
SHIN ULTRAMAN (2022) is #2 of 3 in Hideaki Anno’s Shin series, which are not narratively connected, but are his takes on iconic Japanese sci-fi characters. The first one was the excellent SHIN GODZILLA and the third was the recent SHIN KAMEN RIDER. I was really excited to see this in its theatrical showing but it was two nights only and it turned out night two was dubbed. But now it’s on blu-ray (ironically with kinda messed up subtitles on my copy, but apparently they’ve fixed that).
Though this one is written by Anno, it’s directed by his SHIN GODZILLA co-director Shinji Higuchi. While Anno had done live action movies before (such as CUTIE HONEY), he’s primarily known as the anime visionary behind Neon Genesis Evangelion. Higuchi is maybe a more natural choice for something like this – he did storyboards for some anime, but he came up in the world of kaiju movies, starting as an assistant modeler on THE RETURN OF GODZILLA, and then as effects director of the excellent GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE, GAMERA 2: ATTACK OF LEGION and GAMERA 3: REVENGE OF IRIS, where he was a real pioneer in the field of combining traditional rubber suit monsters and animatronics with early digital FX. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Hideaki Anno, kaiju, Masami Nagasawa, Shinji Higuchi, Takumi Saitoh, tokusatsu
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, September 12th, 2023
disclaimer: Netflix sucks, needs to admit that their business model is a scam and figure out how to pay the artists who make their shit.
HEART OF STONE is Netflix’s attempt at an action franchise for Gal Gadot (TRIPLE 9). It’s certainly not as well executed as EXTRACTION or EXTRACTION II, and I think THE GRAY MAN is trying to do a few more interesting things visually and otherwise, but I enjoyed this one for its straight-faced use of hokey action/spy movie tropes with a fun tone and high production value (though not compared to the somewhat similar and obviously way better MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies). I really think this is the best way to explain it: it’s called HEART OF STONE and it stars Gal Gadot as “Rachel Stone.” If that makes you say “fuck yeah” like it did for me, you may enjoy it. If it makes you roll your eyes, then you know what to do (watch it anyway and then complain about it).
It opens mid-MI6 mission, a team stakeout at an elite ski resort/casino in the Alps, with agents Parker (Jamie Dornan, ROBIN HOOD) and Yang (Jing Lusi, Gangs of London) trying to catch a notorious arms dealer. Stone is in the van, doing computer nerd stuff – she’s the Simon Pegg. But she loses her connection, realizes she could hack the head of security’s phone from the blackjack table, and disobeys Parker’s order to “stay in the van – you’re not a field agent!” (read the rest of this shit…)
Posted in Reviews, Action | 6 Comments »
