This movie gets off to a strong start with an engaging, rich-action, rich-plot set of inital scenes, and the return of Matt Damon (as Jason Bourne). We’re also treated to the return of an aging Julia Stiles (as Nicky Parsons) although she’s killed quite early, on top being treated to the additions of an aged Tommy Lee Jones (from Men In Black, acting here as Robert Dewey, CIA boss) and Alicia Vikander (star of Ex Machina 2014, joining us here as Heather Lee, CIA team leader – responsible for tracking down Bourne & Parsons).
Having said that, once the strong first 10 minutes are out of the way, the next 10 minutes are little more than messy irritating noise and moodfest. But this builds into a decent action scene around half an hour in.
In the end, with its mix of strong-ish bits and extended weak patches, with a strong-ish cast and decent genre, I’m going to rate this movie just Above Average.
15 minutes in and we’ve had nothing but boring political drama. No action, and not an action hero in sight – at least not a credible one we can remotely admire. This movie series has really turned to faeces since Matt Damon called it a day.
The drama is kind of watchable but one may lose patience with it.
By half an hour in there’s been a little action, but it’s only mild.
Fortunately the action does get a little interesting in the second half hour, but it soon goes back to its boring political drama show waffle.
The star of the show this time round, while not receiving much screen time early on, is Jeremy Renner who seems like some kind of dollarstore Daniel Craig and I’m no Daniel Craig fan! Renner plays the archer in the Marvel Avengers movies. He’s no action hero though – he’s literally the worst one in those movies by a country mile.
In the second hour it becomes clear where the motivation for this sub-standard movie came from: it’s pushing transhumanism via virology, thus killing two birds with one stone. Hats off to Matt Damon for wanting no part of it — that’s one better than Statham who totally shilled for virology in his cool Transporter trilogy.
Rachel Weisz plays the lead female and does a respectable job of it.
Although the action did pick up in the second half of the movie, it never reached the level of the first good action scene from shortly after half an hour in. The action is a bit dull and one dimensional, and of course led by a sub-par star, so in the end I’m going to settle on a So-So rating here.
Much like the previous movie in the series, this one has some cool bits and a lot of grit between times, with some very dark low-contrast scenes, a lot of flicking camerawork, and a lot of messy fussy suspense-style action-drama with irritating persistent musical effects. So it deserves a similar rating to the last one: just Below Average.
This movie gets off to a slower, more boring start than the original. Obviously there’s no cool new creative plot to get going with, since the cat’s out the bag, but good sequels usually manage to come up with some originality — this one is lacking.
The fight scene around 40 minutes in is quite memorable for how bad it is. If there were an award for worst fight scene, it would be that. The camera literally doesn’t stay still for half a second, much of the time. It’s clear from the previous movie that Matt Damon can’t fight, and clear from early on in this movie that he’s a plodding flat-footed runner, but if this fight scene really magnifies the problem by being so terribly coordinated and filmed with the worst kind of constant flickering possible in order to mask the lack of substance — a common fight choreography tactic but this is really the worst case example of it. Immediately after that fight scene though, the quick trick Bourne does to lose his tail and mash up the crime scene is tactically on point and well executed — there’s life in the old dog yet (the Bourne saga).
There’s a very cool bit from about 45 minutes in, when Jason cleverly tracks down the agent in charge of tracking him down. It only lasts a few minutes before the mood dampens again, but worked very well while it lasted — it had great momentum and an impressive climax.
In the end due to its long dull parts and the real excitement being rare, I’d say gritty drama lovers might like it — especially the kind of people who like political TV shows — but personally, as someone who prefers smooth vibes and plenty of rich action, I have to rate this particular movie Below Average although you may feel it deserves a slightly better rating to the success of the original Bourne movie which complements this one since this is a smooth continuation. As a standalone movie though, I think it warrants a rating of just Below Average although the odd piece of it is very good.
The action scene near the end is particularly long and hollow – lots of action, but all virtue-signally — it’s messy and momentumless and goes on far too long without significant change of pace or spirit.
This is not a bad movie, it’s consistently entertaining, but the highs are never very high, so I can’t rate it any higher than slightly Above Average considering the many movies reviewed thus far and how they’ve been rated, including many classics rated Bang Average and just Above Average already.
If you enjoyed this movie and wish to see more, you’re in luck, since Bourne Identity is only the first of a 5-movie saga, including a trilogy starring Matt Damon (The Bourne Identity 2002; The Bourne Supremacy 2004; The Bourne Ultimatum 2007), then he skips the fourth (The Bourne Legacy 2012) since he felt the saga had run its course, but then he comes back for the fifth (Jason Bourne 2016). He looks very young in this first movie and is semi convincing in his role but still a bit green.
Franka Potente as the lead female kind of works — she has a Swiss vibe about her, perhaps with a touch of French. Her and The chemistry between her and Matt Damon kind of works and comes across on screen, but not in a big way.
This movie features Hackers style music & visuals, which is not surprising since it’s from the same year (1995).
It also features agents in long black leather coats, and probably inspired many things about The Matrix, except that this movie is about the data being stored inside a cybernetically enhanced human, rather than the human’s mind being captured by a virtual matrix. Although there is one woman who lives on in a virtual realm after dying, like a kind of AI. Keanu Reeves‘s character Johnny even does a bit of Tai Chi in this movie, early on, to help cope with brain capacity overload.
Dina Meyer plays Jane, the cybernetically enhanced bodyguard Johnny hires to save his life and help him get where he needs to be. They become quite close.
A youngish Dolph Lundren (in his mid to late 30s) with long messy hair plays one of the main baddies.
Udo Kier (the pureblood burnt in the sun, in Blade) plays one of the main characters early on, who double crosses Johnny then is killed by the Yakuza when Johnny gets away.
This movie was probably great in its day, and is still quite memorable but the pace is a bit slow and the action is a bit mild by the best of modern standards. Still, the acting quality is real even if they seem to be slightly winging it with a shallow plot and loose script put together on the fly.
By half way through, this movie looks set for a Below Average rating, but that’s no knock on the acting level, it’s more due to the datedness of the special effects and the tameness of adrenaline, and with all that considered, it’s quite a respectable rating. Some bits are of course better than others. But the second hour is very trashy throughout — barely watchable in fact. So I think a final score of So-So is plenty fair, if not generous.
This is a classic — one of very few from the 90s with this genre and level of execution, if not the only one of that combination. Whether it skyrocketed the careers of Banderas, Buscemi, Hayek and Trejo or just highlighted them doesn’t really matter — what matters is they all shined individually and came together to make this a smooth movie with good acting, good action and good cinematography.
For such a simple and (in a way) boring style of opening, it did fantastically to sustain attention, buy you into the characters and lure you into the simple yet intriguing plot.
While there are still interesting scenes as the movie progresses, the density of intrigue dwindles with the odd bit of talkative drama. For this reason, instead of the potentially higher rating that this movie was probably capable of after the first half hour, it seems like it deserves a rating of Decent after the first hour is through.
Joaquim De Almeida does well as the chief baddie. Danny Trejo does well as the main hired gun. Salma Hayek does well as the lead female. Steve Buscemi does great as the lead character’s sidekick although he dies quite early on. And of course Antonio Banderas does great as the main star of the movie.
It seemed like it was losing steam with about half an hour to go, but a couple of interesting plot twists kept us on our toes and made it continually quite watchable.
Considering the balance of its dated simplicity vs its intrinsic strengths, I rate this movie Pretty Good – just 2 or 3 levels shy of the best action hero movies of all time.
Sequel
If you enjoyed this movie, you may wish to check out its sequel — Once Upon A Time in Mexico (2003) — although that sequel is countless levels weaker than the original — it’s Barely Watchable for me — so you might be disappointed.
Utterly boring first 10 minutes — highly skippable. To say this movie is slow to get going would be an understatement.
By half way in the action has become interesting. But by half way through it’s clear that the movie is still quite hollow — lacking depth of characters or plot. Endless plain combat scenes laced with disco lights and death metal music, and monotonous discussions between action scenes, doesn’t really constitute a good movie in my view — for this reason I give it a Below Average rating, contrary to all the marketing hype around this movie series. It’s like a messy version of Hitman, without the atmosphere, without the attractive woman, and pretty much without anything whatsoever.
Sequels
If you love this movie, you’re in luck because there are many sequels.
The first 20 minutes of this video are a reminder of everything that was wrong with the last movie — pure mindless violence, with no plot or concept behind it. And that’s coming from a Keanu Reeves fan.
By 45 minutes in, Wick’s been given his mission and starts preparing for it, and we start to meet the woman he’s tasked with killing. Literally nothing else has happened in this movie yet. By an hour in, he’s done the job, and back at the hotel, drinking with the guy who was trying to kill him.
By 75 minutes in, there’s an open contract out on John Wick — every assassin in the network is not gunning for him, and things have just become interesting — but it took more than half the movie to get here, and that’s the length of a short movie in itself.
I’m going to rate this movie Below Average, on a par with the original and for all the same reasons.
85 minutes in we meet an overweight Laurence Fishburne in some kind of Matrix cast reuniting.
This movie follows on seamlessly from the last one, as if it’s one double length movie — similar to The Matrix 2 & 3 in this regard.
This movie gets off to a much quicker start than he previous two, although John Wick, played by Keanu Reeves, seems to have found himself in quite a dilemma from the outset, and the violence is rather longwinded, hollow & chaotic. A bit of plot wouldn’t go a miss here.
40 minutes in, while Wick is seeking refuge, we meet a middle aged Halle Berry.
Interesting plot twist 90 minutes in as Wick & Winston go up against the High Table from their deconsecrated hotel. It’s at this point that the movie looks set to earn a higher rating than those before it, but 90 minutes is already the length of a short movie, so surely it’s too little too late and this movie deserves a rating equal to the previous two: Below Average. In the end, Below Average it is, since even after the interesting plot twist, there’s so little to this movie but mindless longwinded violence.
This movie is a good half hour longer than any previous John Wick movie — it’s nearly 3 hours long! And the others had little plot between their very longwinded hollow violence scenes, so let’s hope this one isn’t just an extra dose of the same.
This movie kicks off with a very basic continuation of the very cool cliffhanger the previous movie ended on. The first 20 minutes proceed to indoctrinate us toward wimpy subservience to authority and to political correctness, to the detriment of our personal standards.
By 20 minutes in we’ve already met Keanu Reeves (John Wick), a fat old Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus from The Matrix), an ugly old Donnie Yen (from the Ip Man movies), Ian McShane (New York’s Continental Hotel Manager from the previous John Wick movies), Bill Skarsgård (who looks like a secret son of Steve Buscemi) and Hiroyuki Sanada (from Mortal Kombat 2021, and the planned 2026 sequel — as well as The Wolverine 2013 — and 47 Ronin 2013 alongside Keanu — acting here as Osaka Japan’s Continental Hotel Manager).
Soon we’ll also meet Scott Adkins (who should need no introduction) and by 25 minutes in we also meet Marko Zaror (from Undisputed III 2010 alongside Scott Adkins) who really shines in his role here — Zaror may even be the understated star of this show.
Donnie Yen’s been given quite a hotshot role here, as a blind man who fights better than practically anyone else, but he doesn’t impress me personally — he’s got quite a fish face on him, like Elon Musk and (Musk’s possible secret father) Pol Pot. Considering his star-power vs stardom imbalance, I’d expect he’s half Jewish, and the lead female in this movie probably is too, for similar reasons. Indeed, these Hollywood guys like to keep it in the family, even while representing different races with the help of their half-breed relatives who so often stick out like sore thumbs due to their lack of true talent.
In the end, I rate this movie Bang Average which is a level above all the previous John Wick movies since it has a slightly more interesting plot than those before it — it’s not just long scenes of hollow violence this time round, there’s a bit more to it. Still a bit thin, but not quite as bad as the others were. It has several new interesting characters too. Well done to the John Wick team for the improvement — this saga was a slow burner — hopefully they can improve it further if they ever make a fifth movie.
This movie is set within the Josh Wick universe, with many of the familiar faces including John Wick himself played by Keanu Reeves, and it’s pretty much a carbon copy of the same movie format, but this time Wick is just a supporting character near the end, while Ana De Armas playing Ballerina is the star of the show.
To its credit, its story may be better than some of the John Wick movies, but it’s not better than them all. And since it has the typical dry action and slow pace, I’m going to rate it Bang Average after weighing up its mix of pros and cons.
This movie begins looking shockingly bad, as it follows a bunch of misfit would-be superheroes. But the story comes together eventually, and it actually becomes quite interesting, although there still continue to be extended patches of weird boring irritating dialogue.
It’s slightly off-genre in the direction of a parody, and anyone particularly fond of that genre will probably rate this movie much higher than I did; but for its balance of pros and cons, as an action hero movie, I rate this movie Below Average and am in no hurry to rewatch it, and that’s an understatement.
This movie gets started with some annoying music overlaying meaningless messy violence. An irritating warm-up. But after 10 minutes it becomes more engaging, as an agency boss dies with Find The Accountant written on his arm — then we meet an aged Ben Affleck.
This movie benefits from another semi-strong key cast member in Jon Bernthal (The Punisher) playing The Accountant’s brother.
Although the Autism/Savantism trait impersonation is often accurate, it’s also often taken a bit too far / out of context in a kind of insulting way.
One key example of something they should have definitely fixed, is showing The Accountant’s walking as wobbly heavy floppy arms thing with a small reserved swagger — this is how an autistic person might walk if they are physically poorly coordinated, but when an aspie savant masters empty handed martial arts they move with a very stable head and shoulders, no swagger, like Bruce Lee did in his latest movies, or like a cat might move through hostile territory — so they got the dropped hands part right but the lack of contraction and centredness of the arms and torso is badly wrong here.
In the end, I rate this movie Bang Average. Reason being, it’s got a mix of strengths and weaknesses. Some of the concept and some of the action is great, but there’s way too much annoying drama, and most of the action is too noisy, messy and irritating — hardly good viewing.
The original was a bit better, albeit showing many of the same flaws, because it had more coolness as we got to know the main character — that movie was less full of irritating longwinded noisy messy scenes which I won’t call chaos only because chaos originally referred to something divine.
Hanna delivers a great genre and a memorable core theme. Not least because it’s so unique. Having a child as the action hero — much less a super hotshot assassin survivalist type hero — is really quite rare, especially in a movie that’s otherwise quite mature.
I’m not so impressed with the actress, Saoirse Ronan, who has a face like Rosamund Pike. This is a movie that anyone could have pulled off equally or better than her, so it should be no surprise that Amazon Prime’s miniseries reboot of this concept is just as good.
Eric Banna, playing her father, is a class act, while also being a bit hollow or skin-deep, if that makes sense. Maybe it’s his fake accent that throws things off, and his lack of real combative coordination doesn’t help things.
Cate Blanchett is also strong in her role as the agency boss tracking them both down (having killed her mother long ago).
The first 25 minutes are excellently built, with continuing momentum until Hanna thinks she’s cunningly killed the woman who her father taught her to kill.
The pace changes very well, through her escape, to her meeting new people.
Various scenes in foreign languages lower the value of this movie until you have outstanding subtitles to translate it all.
The underage LGBT agenda is clear and quite distasteful for me at least.
Although it doesn’t completely die off, it certainly loses a lot of steam by around half way in, and becomes an inferior movie, focused more on suspense and agitation than cool action, with a lot of irritating background music and sound effects.
All drawbacks aside, I’m going to rate this movie Bang Average on the basis of its value early on, considering the last half hour was several levels below average and highly skippable, but the quality of the first half hour was several levels above average.
If the lead actress were significantly better cast that would have helped too, but you can’t please everyone. I’m sure some people thought she was great, but she’s no Jessica Alba (even though there’s a similar theme to Dark Angel here, with Hanna being a genetically enhanced super-soldier child). In fact she’s more like Greta Thunberg — she’s probably some influential person’s daughter or friend’s daughter and that’s only reason she got the job. Upon checking, her parents are indeed actors too, so they’re obviously keeping it all in the club in one way or another, to the detriment of the movie’s quality in the end.
Reviving their partnership from Hotel Artemis, it’s a pleasure to see Dave Bautista and Sofia Boutella working together in another strong assassin-themed movie. Unfortunately, the quality isn’t as good as the last one though.
Popping pills, pushing chemo, and promoting suicide as a response to hearing from the top of a search engine that there’s no cure to a disease… Callous murder left, right & centre, with blood splattering everywhere… There’s plenty wrong with this movie. It’s all typical of Hollywood though.
On the plus side, Dave Bautista is a convincing alpha male, playing a very well trained & well skilled assassin. And his new found love, Sofia Boutella, is not a bad actress either. So if you can overlook the usual BS – it’s a pleasant, well made story, which seems to be some kind of late prequel to the mild classic that was Hotel Artemis.
It gets a bit dull at times – it has some slow patches and lacks serious plot early on as well as later on.
Several bits of filthy smut too – mainly but not exclusively verbal. Hollywood is increasingly promoting degeneracy these days and this movie proves it – it’s meant to be a cool action hero movie.
Interesting plot twist shortly after 40 minutes in, when Bautista’s doc texts him and says the diagnosis is wrong, he’s going to live. But he’s already put a hit contract out on himself, so his girlfriend can get his life insurance payout, and the hit is due to begin in less than 5 minutes, and assassins are coming from far & wide to take him out.
Although this movie has a lot of potential, considering its on-point genre, its intriguing early plot and its strong star power (with supporting roles from the likes of Scott Adkins and Mark Zaror – a nice partnership from the Undisputed movie saga); by the last half hour it becomes clear the overall performance is actually sub-par, no thanks to the script having disappeared long ago, and the constant bad music is kind of irritating. Certain actors are over-doing it too, making it veer on the edge of satire, and Scott Adkins is one of those guys but the worst offender is the Ali G impersonator whose name I don’t even wish to look up, and that’s coming from an Ali G fan – but Ali G has poise and class in his acting down, unlike this guy who seems best suited to B movies and soap operas – god knows how he got so much screen time here. So while I initially thought this movie were set for a score somewhere Above Average – maybe even Decent – I have to conclude in fact it’s slightly Below Average overall in the end, and that may even have been too generous a rating, but the very ending its its saving grace. The ending is on a par with the best of when the plot thickens early on. In this way, the movie really swings between a bit strong and a bit weak, but considering all the classics I’ve rated Bang Average and even less for many, I can’t justify rating this one any better than slightly Below Average, so there it is.
Terry Crews adds good value to this movie, as do several other cast members.
This movie is a classic example of excitement mixed with boredom. On the one hand it’s got some very cool action and backstory, while on the other hand it’s got a very one-dimensional plot – they don’t even leave the one parking lot for the vast majority of the movie. Of course it’s not all shot in one take and one scene, but it’s pretty much one stageset for the whole movie with the exception of the very beginning and the very end. Naturally, this makes it a bit boring throughout, even if it’s also quite exciting thanks to a good genre, a good lead actress (the beautiful Olga Kurylenko from Hitman, although she’s now pushing 40), plus a reasonable supporting cast and respectable screenplay & cinematography. But whatever happened to the plot! For this reason, even while it’s got potential to be rated a lot higher with a bit more scene diversity, it’s ultimately been dragged down to a Below Average in my view. I mean it’s not ‘bad’ bad, but it’s not ‘very good’ either. There’s a few gory scenes in the back half too – beyond unnecessary for the smooth action hero fan, but Hollywood can’t help itself with stuff like that can it.
This movie is a bit depressing to begin with. In the first half an hour, Liam Neeson‘s character, Dr Martin Harris, gets ruined by a car accident that all coincides with an elaborate scheme to steal his identity that even his wife plays along with, and this situation somehow manages to gaslight him into admitting that he’s not really who he says & knows he is, after only a few minutes of argument – or so it seems, until we see it was just an excuse to avoid arrest. But then by 35 minutes in, he seems truly gaslighted – even calling himself insane and asking a doctor for help, who only gaslights him further and drugs him up, which is sad to see but is an accurate reflection of how such a person is likely to be dealt with by such an other person in the real world.
Some folks might think this movie were commissioned to scare people into getting maximum IDs & verifications, in theory for their own protection, but in fact making them most easily scrutinised & controlled. The caving in to gaslighting, and the medical preprogramming, probably appeal to the same sponsors too; as does the GMO promotion at the very end, which I would say is quantity-minded and quality-ignorant on top of short-sighted – but that’s just a bluff – these folks know what they’re doing and it’s quite nefarious.
Fortunately, the real action picks up by 40 minutes in – if it didn’t get going soon, this movie wouldn’t appeal much to action movie fans like those who enjoyed Neeson’s performance in Taken (2008). Bearing in mind this movie was made prior to Taken 2 (2012).
In the end, Unknown (2011) paints a powerful but depressing story. It has some good acting, some good action and some good plot substance, but is still a bit thin on all these fronts, and it’s a bit heavy on dispiriting drama and the BS pushing, so for conscious connoisseurs of slick action hero movies, I have to rate this one Below Average at best. About equal to Taken 2 which was released just 1 year after this one and was pushing a similar amount of BS but of a different sort.
Diane Kruger does a decent job in the main supporting role here – as a woman called Gina who drove the taxi that crashed, then saved Dr Harris’s life, then when he found her again, she helped him some more, and they became quite close. She’s not a bad actress here – she helped make the movie what it is. Several other decent actors contributed too, but didn’t get so much screen time.
There’s an interesting plot twist half an hour before the end, which explains where Dr Harris’s combat skills come from, but it’s not until the final few minutes of the movie when he gets more of his memory back, that he really becomes an omnipotent fighting machine reminiscent of Liam Neeson’s performance in Taken.
This is a strange movie – 20 mins in and we’re still following around the life of a guy who doesn’t remember anything about his past. He’s played by Kane Kosugi, who wasn’t in the previous Tekken movie (he’s most recognisable as Scott Adkins’ adversary from Ninja II) but based on the name of this movie one might guess he’s the replacement actor for Kazuya Mishima – Heihachi Mishima’s son and Jin Kazama’s father. Not only has he completely forgotten where he is and who he is etc, but he seems to have a bomb implanted inside his chest and if he wants to live he needs to follow the orders of a strange man who calls himself The Minister (played by Rade Šerbedžija) who runs a cult of assassins all bound by the same threat.
It’s not until 25 minutes in that we see the familiar face of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa who played Heihachi Mishima in the last movie, that the plot appears to be beginning to very slowly unravel. And when I say very slowly, I’m not exaggerating, since another 25 mins later we’re still none-the-wiser as to who this guy is and how he came to be in his current situation.
It’s not until near the end of the first hour that we finally learn, beyond doubt, that the lead character who we’ve been following around for nearly an hour, who’s lost his memory, is indeed Kazuya Mishima, when he remembers the location of his old apartment suite – he asks the receptionist what name he checked in under, and heard he used the initials K M. That still leaves a lot of unanswered questions, but at least we’re making progress since it’s already two thirds of the way through the movie. The big reveal doesn’t actually happen until 10 minutes before the end of the movie, and even then it’s not a big reveal – it’s bare minimum to keep the air of mystery going even beyond the end of the movie.
One thing’s clear though – this movie has a very different genre to the original Tekken movie, which had a much faster tempo and practically none of this slowly unravelling mystery vibe. It works quite well here though – it stays quite intriguing from start to finish, if you’ve not seen it before or at least can’t remember how it goes. The general standard of production, the quality of the action scenes, and the power of the mystery factor are all quite effective here. The acting isn’t terrible either.
It’s quite good from an educational standpoint too, for those who can read the subtle undertones and can already see the synergy with the kinds of methods used by shady agencies to control people in the real world. When I say quite good, I mean it offers a basic level of something to think about, minus the usual warp factors, which is refreshing.
Having said that, there’s still such little going on here, that I can’t fairly rate it on a par with the original. Especially when it comes to rewatching this movie – if you have any memory of what’s going on, that already leaves practically no substance left to enjoy upon rewatching it. For this reason I have to rate it Below Average but only just. There are a lot of respectable movies in & around this kind of rating, so I wouldn’t call it a failure per se – it’s just not something to be recommending too much.
The lead female in this movie – a fellow assassin called Rhona Anders played by Kelly Wenham – has the constant facial expression of a tantrum-throwing teenager, and the voice of a middle to upper class Brit trying to talk like a commoner, so typical of domestic British TV dramas. She’s also built with a stronger frame than the lead male – very butch, no finesse, just like her voice – as if she comes from WWE, and the other females in this movie are no different – this theme hasn’t changed since the first movie. The other main woman in this movie is the landlord of a cheap hotel, called Laura, played by Paige Lindquist, who has a quiet and alluring demeanour but is still physically butch enough to overpower the lead male.
This movie gets off to a great start, with a funky yet chilling opening delivering vibes reminiscent of The Matrix or Equilibrium which both came out just a few years prior. It’s a relatively simple opening scene but sets the atmosphere very nicely – not perfectly, but not far off either – it’s got to be one of the best opening scenes ever made in an action hero movie I think. You could call it an understated masterpiece thus far.
The following scenes are quite interesting and captivating, and carry an element of the same vibe from the opening scene, but to a lesser degree, as the antagonists pose a real threat to Elektra, and the movie turns out to be Decent but not nearly as good as it could have been. I would rate this movie just one level down from the best action hero movie with a female lead (such as Wonder Woman which has a better plot as well as better peak adrenaline moments, but a similar level of horror and drama creeping in).
Jennifer Garner stars as Elektra in this movie – she’s an assassin with subtle superpowers. Aside from lacking the animalistic side, her character has a lot in common with Halle Berry’s Catwoman which came out the year before this movie, and the year after Daredevil where Elektra was also featured as a major character. That’s three years running of this type of lethal female action movie heroine. There was also Æon Flux in 2005 and Ultraviolet in 2006 – both respectable female assassin movies from around the same time, with similar levels of martial arts and athleticism too, although not on the same level as Marvel’s Elektra and DC’s Catwoman production-wise.
Elektra has some kind of Spidey Sense, like Daredevil’s super hearing ability, giving her an early warning when anyone potentially dangerous is approaching from very far away. But much more than that, she has the ability to see the near future, giving her the chance to change it and catch people by surprise.
That’s not even the height of unrealism in this movie – there are also demons taking the form of ninjas (within the antagonist ninja clan called The Hand) who turn to smoke when they die. And there are some weirder demons looking like oddball mercenaries, having special powers to do certain magic tricks. For example, one called Tattoo, played alright by Christopher Ackerman, has tattoos of animals that come to life. Another, called Typhoid Mary, played adequately by Natassia Malthe, blows kisses and waves hands that suck the life out of plants and people. Then another, called Stone, played alright by Bob Sapp, is big bulletproof black man, like Marvel’s Luke Cage, while also throwing sticks powerfully enough to chop down big trees. This team of weird demons is led by the boss’s son (from The Hand), played adequately by Will Yun Lee whose scenes work well in a way, but he’s also a bit too fresh faced for the role, like some kind of K-Pop boyband member, unlike his father played more convincingly by the scorched face of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. Fortunately, they’re still not quite good enough to kill Elektra.
Garner pulls off the lead role pretty well. She’s a talented actress and is not terribly unattractive either (although the beauty contest in this movie is won by Norwegian-Malaysian actress Natassia Malthe playing Typhoid Mary). Garner’s a bit of a tomboy, but no more so than most female leads of action hero movies. She’s is quite athletically built and this makes her well suited to the role of Elektra – a martial arts expert and assassin who moves like few others in the world can (due to camera tricks).
It’s also good to see Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Shang Tsung from the 90s Mortal Kombat movies) playing the leader of The Hand (the ninja clan that’s been trying to kill or capture Elektra for a long time). He does a great job as usual.
Croatian actor Goran Višnjić (with vibes of a cross between Charlie Sheen and Matt LeBlanc, minus the comedic touch) does a good job as the father of a teenage girl who is being hunted because she’s “the treasure” – the main prodigy child within her generation showing great potential to be a top assassin. Kirsten Prout plays the girl adequately – she’s a decent young actress who has plenty IQ for the role but not nearly so much athletic talent as would be ideal. She has a puffy goldfish face, poor coordination and a gormless bratty demeanour – the sneaky, impatient bratty side of her seems intentional but her lack of athletic poise stands out when she’s meant to be a top ninja prodigy with partly established skills.
Terence Stamp does an alright job as Elektra’s former ninja clan master, called Stick, who comes to her rescue when she’s on the verge of defeat, and takes her back to the dojo along with the father & daughter she was sent to kill but decided to protect – her contract was sponsored by Stick, somehow knowing Elektra would protect them instead of kill them. These are some cool scenes to enjoy – from the near assassination to the protection to the rescue to the training back at the dojo and the feeling of it being a safe place for a while.
In stark contrast to the awesome opening for action movie junkies, the last 5 or 6 minutes of this movie is little more than an extended soppy mess for drama mushes. What a missed opportunity and switch up of genres. These drama-loving directors just can’t help themselves, even when they have 95% of a good action movie completed already. Given the lack of depth to the plot, the excessive dose of horror genre creeping in as the movie matures, and the undesirable soppy ending, I have to rate this movie no better than Decent, on a par with movies like Daredevil (which came out 2 years prior and also featured Jennifer Garner as Elektra in a major supporting role). Just one level down from the best female-led action hero movies of all time (like Wonder Woman), even though from the outset Elektra clearly had the potential to be so much better – it just went gradually downhill as the movie progressed and unfortunately shifted genres from smooth action to borderline horror to soppy drama in the end.
The chemistry between Roger Moore (as James Bond) and Lois Maxwell (as Moneypenny) is getting quite revolting by now. They both look like someone’s grandparents. Lois even looks like she could be a cross dresser. But she’s been in that position since the start of the Sean Connery era and stays throughout the Roger Moore era. We only get a new Miss Moneypenny when the Timothy Dalton era begins. Still, better late than never.
After a nice ski chase in the opening of The Spy Who Loved Me, Roger Moore does another one in For Your Eyes Only, but this time with a bit more context. It works quite well. It includes some brushing through alpine trees, and may have somewhat inspired Timothy Dalton’s epic snow chase on a cello case in The Living Daylights (1987).
For a movie that’s trying to be more romantic than usual, there’s a lack of attractive women in this one. Still, French actress Carole Bouquet plays Melina Havelock, the lead female, and makes for a slightly interesting character.
One of the best things about this movie is when Bond teams up with a well resourced guy called Milos Columbo – someone who Bond initially thought to be his enemy – played quite well by Chaim Topol.
There’s a couple of long diving scenes in this movie, which includes the use of small submarine-type vessels as well as independent scuba diving and some completely unassisted breath-holding diving too. It initially seems to drag on a bit too long for those who have seen it before, but scuba divers and underwater explorers may appreciate it, and gets a bit more interesting after a while (when James Bond and Melina Havelock get caught and tied up but make their escape).
The ending has a nice cliff-climbing and fortress infiltration scene.
John Wyman plays KGB agent Erich Kriegler, the main antagonist in terms of brawn, while Julian Glover plays Aristotle Kristatos, the main antagonist in terms of brains. They both do a fair job but nothing amazing.
I have to say this feels like one of the weakest Bond movies, so I’m going to rate it Lower-OK, below most of the others. It lacks a great enemy or a great female or a great plot, but Roger Moore still pulls it off in his usual style. Although Roger Moore went on to do a couple more Bond movies after this one – namely Octopussy (1983) and A View To A Kill (1985) – the shortcomings in this movie (For Your Eyes Only, 1981) may have inspired Sean Connery to come back with Never Say Never Again, produced outside of the usual Eon Productions team, and released shortly after Moore’s next movie Octopussy in 1983.
Roger Moore delivers a strong performance as always, in this movie, which was his second outing as James Bond.
It’s good to see the return of JW Pepper, the funny sheriff from the previous Bond movie, Live And Let Die, making some funny appearances this time while on holiday with his wife. Just like last time, Clifton James does a fantastic job in the role of Sheriff JW Pepper here.
The main baddies in this movie are Francisco Scaramanga (played quite well by Christopher Lee) and his unforgettable midget henchman-come-butler Nick Nack played very well by Hervé Villechaize.
The lead female in this movie is Britt Ekland who plays Mary Goodnight, and the next main woman is Maud Adams who plays Andrea Anders. They’re both Swedish models, and both do a fair job here. Maud Adams returns as the lead female in Octopussy, even though she was killed off in this movie.
The mirrored maze of a duelling room within Scaramanga’s secret island lair was probably inspired by the secret mirrored room on Han’s island in Enter The Dragon which was released in 1973, just 1 year prior to this movie being released.
I rate The Man With The Golden Gun as an OK movie. Not quite as good as Live And Let Die but not far off. Pretty standard for an old James Bond flick.
This is a weird movie, with some very good attributes and some areas lacking. It’s like an action packed assassins movie crossed with a cheesy slow romantic drama, crossed with satirical comedy.
Brad and Angie are of course legends in practically everything they do, and this is the movie they hooked up on, to become the Brangelina supercouple. So in a way, this movie was the reason Brad divorced Jennifer Aniston, although the writing was already on the wall for Jennifer as she didn’t age too well.
Brad Pitt plays John Smith, and Angelina Jolie plays his wife, Jane Smith. Both are assassins, purely by co-incidence, and working for rival firms. They’re married to each other yet somehow managing to hide their real jobs from each other, until eventually they bump into each other when they have the same target to kill. Then they need to kill each other, and they try to, but then they fall in love again. It’s a simple cheesy story, with plenty of fun to it, a fair amount of good action, and an extremely lighthearted vibe.
This movie had potential to be a lot better as an action movie, but due to its mix-up of genres and its general weirdness and most likely complacency (like we see in practically all movies where multiple superstars come together, although “too many cooks” syndrome is probably a factor too), I have to rate it just OK, no more. I’d rate it a bit higher for first time watchers, but for rewatching after a few years I’d say Mr & Mrs Smith (2005) is just OK.
See also, the new TV series
If you’re a fan of this mix of genres, you may also like to check out the 2024 TV series by the same name (Mr & Mrs Smith) which follows a similar but modified core concept, and has no superstar cast but is getting rave reviews around the internet although no doubt it won’t be to everyone’s taste – I probably won’t bother with it myself.
The Mechanic is a decent little movie starring Jason Statham as an assassin who is betrayed by his employer, tricked into killing his mentor, then trains up his dead mentor’s son who eventually attempts to kill Jason’s character in revenge when he discovers who killed his own father. That’s the plot in a nutshell, with a few interesting assassination scenes.
Jason Statham is his usual self – a cold to luke-warm character with a generally serious demeanour, athletic in fighting and kitted out with some good equipment. His trainee and would-be killer is played by Ben Foster who does a fair job – not amazingly captivating but not a terrible actor either – just somewhere in between. There aren’t really any other actors in this movie who get a good amount of screen time, it’s really quite simplistic. I rate it slightly lower than Assassination Games since that movie had two stars in one movie, and slightly better mood setting especially around Van Damme’s home, but it was a similar genre and had a similar level of action, entertainment value and plot busyness.
Don’t miss the stronger sequel
If you enjoyed The Mechanic (2011) don’t forget to watch the sequel, Mechanic Resurrection (2016) where Jason Statham returns in a similar role but with a more interesting plot, and is joined by Jessica Alba and Tommy Lee Jones. I’d say the sequel comfortably better than the original.
In the first ten minutes we get some good action with cars, plus a terribly made fight scene where the visibility is poor (half dark half light) and there’s constant flashing lights, camera angle switching and white noise music – enough to give a normal person heightened levels of stress – stay clear of this movie if you’re epileptic.
After 10 minutes, the camera work continues to be poor, zooming in constantly on normal conversations, to the point we can’t get an objective feel of the interaction. This is very restrictive mood setting and it’s in conflict with the kind of comfortable vibe that a good action hero movie should seek to create.
Add to this, Rupert Friend having less character than Timothy Olyphant, this movie is significantly poorer than the original Hitman movie of 2007. Still, it’s got a decent amount of action, a fair cast and a fair budget – it’s clearly better than a B movie, and it’s kind of hitting the right genre, so I think we can rate this movie as just OK. Better than barely watchable, so not the lowest rating out of all the movies we’ve featured on this site – just one level better.
While in the original movie, Timothy Olyphant played a cool calm killer whose cheeky charisma started shining through, making it an interesting recipe. In this movie now, Rupert Friend has a totally flat personality – there’s nothing shining through except a weird mix of anxiety and meek personality. No wonder his fight scenes are all over the place with switching camera angles – he probably can’t throw a decent punch or kick to save his life.
The lead female is played by Hannah Ware – her character has extra-sensory perceptions, and is the estranged daughter of the original chief scientist behind this cult of assassins. Unfortunately, her acting isn’t much better than Rupert Friend’s – they’re both made for drama, not action hero movies, and most definitely not lead roles in action hero movies. She has the constant demeanour of an abuse victim, and she lacks the ability to adjust her mood according to the requirements of the scene. She clearly only got this role because of who her parents are and what cult she’s been raised in, in real life.
Zachary Quinto plays the chief antagonist in this movie, and unfortunately, he is also kind of made for drama. He has the constant demeanour of a kid in a candy shop. Being skinny isn’t enough to be a good action movie star, you really need good physical coordination and a collected look in your eyes too.
The director, or whichever producer was really calling the shots, should have probably been sacked along with pretty much all the cast members, then we could have probably picked a load of random guys from the stunt team to replace them all and made an equal or better movie with the same script & budget. It seems like, the actors here are all behind-the-scenes crew members who decided to have a party and pretend to be action heroes themselves. While this probably isn’t true, it’s not a million miles off, since Quinto is also producer, while Friend & Ware are best known for their parts in political dramas, and the other roles are all played by people with similar producer & dramatist vibes.
On the plus side, the plot gets a lot more interesting as it nears the half hour mark, and we get some interesting scenes, before more boring drama. This movie pretty much alternates between decent and mediocre scenes throughout.
This is an assassin movie with a twist. Starring Jean Reno as the master assassin, and a young Natalie Portman as his unexpected sidekick.
If you can forgive its inappropriate undertones, this is otherwise a pretty good assassin-themed action movie. Reno and Portman both act very well, and Gary Oldman does a decent job as the main antagonist and a senior DEA agent.
It’s a simple plot, zeroed in on certain things, and generally made to high standards with strong performances by lead cast members – kind of like The Transporter in this way. However, Léon director Luc Besson was widely accused of inappropriate innuendos, and Natalie Portman retrospectively has mixed feelings about it, summing it up as ‘complicated’. Some people consider it a cult classic to this day. Feel free to make up your own mind about it. All in all, I give it a decent 7.5/10 rating but must advise it is liable to offend some people due to indecent innuendos.
Classic moody old Van Damme and classic moody prime Scott Adkins join forces in a beautiful depiction of two expert assassins colliding on a job then joining forces to finish personal vendettas against the odds. The only reason I don’t rate Assassination Games higher is because it has a fairly simplistic script and probably a lower budget than it deserves. The basic concepts in the plot are good, but they fail to flesh out into a more comprehensive plot to entertain us on another level which we should be considering the stars involved. The script is thin but the two action hero superstars carry this movie into a moderate success. The opening scene seems almost B Movie quality, but it quickly improves. Granted, there are some cool sets, like Van Damme’s apartment with secret rooms, and his agent’s lair was convincing too. All in all, it’s makes for decent viewing when you haven’t seen it in a while.
Supporting cast includes Kristopher Van Varenberg, also known as Kris Van Damme, and Bianca Van Varenberg, also known as Bianca Bree and Bianca Van Damme – these are Jean-Claude Van Damme’s two children from his current wife who he divorced then re-married (Jean-Claude has a son to ex-wife Darcy LaPier also – that one being called Nicholas Van Varenberg). Indeed, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s name is actually Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg. In this movie, his daughter Bree plays the comatose wife of Scott Adkins’ character, and Van Damme’s son Kris plays one of the enemies of Adkins’ character.
This movie is a little bit more interesting than the original, with a better plot and a better supporting cast.
Jason Statham is in his element here, as an assassin tasked with overcoming more adversity this time round than before. He’s given a series of difficult assassination missions to complete in order to save his girlfriend who is being held hostage.
Jessica Alba plays his girlfriend – she does a solid job in this lead female role.
Tommy Lee Jones also does very well in his supporting role that has only a small amount of screen time towards the end of the movie.
Sam Hazeldine does a decent job as the chief baddie in this movie.
Michelle Yeoh performs adequately, albeit with a snotty nose, as a friend of Statham’s character who looks after a resort where he keeps a safe house – she gets a good amount of screen time.
All in all, I rate Mechanic Resurrection (2016) one or two levels higher than the original Mechanic (2011) due to the improved plot and the improved supporting cast. It’s always nice to see a sequel outperform the original, considering it’s usually the other way round.
Hotel Artemis is a novel concept that works quite well with the help of stars like Jodie Foster who plays the friendly but strict old lady who runs the hotel; Jeff Goldblum who plays the feared hotel owner and local mafia boss; Sterling K Brown who plays a lead role as a criminal taking refuge in this secure hotel for member criminals; Sofia Boutella who plays a deadly assassin; and of course Dave Bautista who plays the hotel’s one-man security force.
The action scenes are plenty, although there are some slow drama scenes between, which make this movie a bit less entertaining for action junkies, especially when it comes to rewatching it before having very well forgotten it.
Although the basic concept is an interesting one, that seems quite creative and exciting, the plot is otherwise barely existent, so this movie is barely a fraction of what it could be with the current cast and a much more substantial script.
Overall, I rate it pretty good for first time viewing, and decent enough for rewatching every few years.
The new plot features in this sequel almost makes up for the lack of awe like we had in the first movie. It’s very similar in style & genre but the stage is already set so we get straight back into the story with The Equalizer 2. It’s a solid follow up movie but slightly inferior to the first in the series since there’s less of a big reveal factor here, and this one gets a bit more into gritty drama vibes, although the new interesting plot features almost make up for this. There’s also no antagonist or even any supporting actor this time round on the level of Marton Csokas from the previous movie, but Pedro Pascal does a fair job as Denzel’s shifty frenemy. Denzel himself is just a few years older here, and seems a bit more relaxed in the role now, which isn’t such a good or bad thing, it just blunts the edge a bit.
Perhaps the sound or lighting or camerawork is also responsible for less of a crisp vibe this time – maybe budget was a factor, although the budget was pretty much the same as last time – it was estimated between $55m to $73m last time and was around $62m this time round. Or maybe the crew were busy tripping on substances, since the catering staff for the next sequel (Equalizer 3) were busted in possession of cocaine just a few weeks after they started filming in Italy.
Like last time, the ending is overly drawn out – this time even worse so, which makes for a poor rewatching experience towards the back end of the movie. And there’s no cool scenes at the very end this time either – instead it practically turns into a messy soap opera drama.
Overall though, it’s still a decent sequel, especially in the first half of the movie. It’s well worth watching the whole trilogy sequentially – the third movie in the Equalizer series came out in 2023.
Bloodshot is a novel concept – creative and action packed – great for anyone who’s never seen it before. It is a bit one dimensional still though. The introduction of the hacker is a nice plot development but aside from that it’s all very simple.
Vin Diesel is his usual self – a fairly entertaining action hero, but a bit dryer and slower than my favourite action movie stars, although he oozes energy from underneath the surface. This role doesn’t perfectly suit him, but he does pretty well in it nevertheless.
Supporting cast includes Eiza González, the lead female – she does quite well in her role as an attractive assassin being controlled by Guy Pearce’s character. Lamorne Morris does quite well as the coding whiz who hacks the controlling technology to set Vin’s and Eiza’s characters free.
Guy Pearce does alright as the main nemesis on the brains side – the guy who controls Vin Diesel’s character until he breaks free – but he is a bit too meek in demeanour for such a power hungry role – a naturally stronger character here could have made this is more convincing movie.
Sam Heughan does a good job as the main nemesis on the (tech assisted) muscles side – he has a very convincing attitude for the role.
Alex Hernandez also does alright as one of the main team members. Good attitude for the requirement of the role.
Toby Kebbell also does quite well, as the first victim of the mind-controlled main character played by Vin Diesel. He displays an impressive contrast of acting styles here, from a savage psycho killer with a screw-loose wacky side, to an innocent and vulnerable victim with strong understanding and quick reactions.
Talulah Riley plays Vin Diesel’s wife – her performance was fair enough, although it was a bit washed & wafery – a more attractive & powerful woman like Eiza González could have done a better job in this role and helped make the movie more convincing since the plot is so heavily based on Vin Diesel’s character being so attached to his wife and so moved and vengeance-seeking when she’s killed.
Overall it’s a busy action packed movie and quite creative in its core concept, but is a bit one dimensional in terms of extended plot detail. It’s especially interesting for those who haven’t seen it before or in many years. Due to the strong special effects, fairly rich action, generally decent cast, and quirky concept, but with a dodgy nanite theme in-keeping with so many movies released around 2020; I rate Bloodshot about equal to its rival Hobbs & Shaw, or Black Panther 1 and 2. Indeed it’s disappointing to see so much pushing of the idea that technology in our body is a beneficial and even cool thing, especially when it comes to nanobots messing around in our blood according to their own discretion or an outside controller. Bloodshot is an awesome movie the first time you see it, if you can forgive its dodgy theme features, but significant tedium sets in and significant flaws become much more apparent if you rewatch it too often.
In stark contrast to the first movie in the series, which set the mood beautifully from the outset with the help of expert sound effects, this movie if far too trigger happy on the sound effects at the beginning, to the point it’s just a lot of noise. But the noise effects mostly sort themselves out once the movie settles down beyond the opening scenes – although they do occasionally come back and make you think “what’s all this noise for?” since it’s twice the volume of the actors’ voices and a bit chaotic in places.
Equalizer 3 also has a bit more nastiness than those before it – more explicit blood & guys, and more nefarious methods of wounding – there’s multiple scenes guilty of this stuff even within the first 15 minutes – this stuff is better suited to a Horror Genre movie, it doesn’t belong in the movie of a smooth action hero. Whatever happened to the Denzel that apologised for having to kill someone even when they totally deserved it? This series has clearly gone down hill both morally and artistically. But most movie sequels are worse than those before them, and when you factor this in, it’s not a bad trilogy to enjoy. As with the previous movie, this one has a nice injection of extra creativity in the form of novel new plot features that make it a generally enjoyable experience for fans of the original. All three movies in the Equalizer saga exhibit a similar style of action albeit done to declining levels of quality, and have their own plot angles which makes them individually respectable for the most part.
An extra inconvenience with Equalizer 3 compared to those before it, is the amount of foreign language dialect – this movie is set in Italy and there’s a fair amount of Italian without built-in subtitles, and many subtitle systems fail to translate the Italian parts, but good subtitles can be found on some websites, and it’s mostly an English based movie still.
Denzel is also getting on a bit in this movie, which is 9 years on from the original. He was never particularly well built for an action hero role. His shape is average – a bit of a dad bod – and his posture is quite hunched and involuntarily bouncy like someone unathletic who can’t fight at all. This has been an issue in all three movies, but now he’s an older man too. Denzel is always a strong actor, and this role kind of suits his calm & calculative, serious demeanour, although it was a better fit in the original when everything worked better. But on the plus side, the debilitating injury in the plot of this movie suits his old age and hobbling way of walking in a way that we didn’t have in previous movies – it kind of clicks together in new ways now.
In-keeping with the trend set by the last two Equalizers, this one also has an overly drawn out action scene near the end followed by a positive short scene at the very end. And in-keeping with the trend of going down hill with each sequel, this one’s ending is even worse than the last one. A shame because it goes a long way towards ruining the overall quality of the movie, when the long ending is weaker than the standard set by the bulk of the movie.
The American (2010) is the epitome of a slow movie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a slower assassin themed movie – not even close.
When you think of all the silent bits of standing around, walking, driving, and basically doing nothing that a really good movie condenses out… If you stuck all that junk filler content together to create its own movie (adding just a few minutes of mildly good stuff) then you would end up with The American!
I skipped forward through about half of this movie. It’s seriously boring. But there are some mildly interesting scenes. There’s a serious lack of script, and a serious lack of words. Around 40 minutes in, I very nearly gave up on it entirely. I dare say this is an Unwatchable movie, but I did watch most of it, skipping past the worst of it from the middle onwards.
What more is there to say? George Clooney is getting old – he’s nearly 50 here. He poses a lot, without saying much. His performance isn’t bad, but the script is practically non existent. Why would he waste his time with garbage like this? Maybe there’s an audience for this kind of slow & near-silent movie, but it’s not for me. I think I may have tried to watch it once or twice before, but gave up after just a few minutes.
It takes me back to the days of having only 5 options on TV, when we regularly watched the ‘least worst’ option and may have been passingly amused for a few moments here & there but was generally bored stiff and would never willingly tune in to that kind of tripe in the days of abundant choice online.
Admittedly it does warm up a bit, in the back end of the movie, as it becomes clear there are people tracking him down, and he gets very close to a woman who he doesn’t trust after finding a gun in her handbag. The last half hour is kind of respectable, with several mildly entertaining scenes not terribly far apart – it’s still rather slow but not nearly so torturesome as the first hour was. It’s like a snailpace old James Bond movie with budget slashed and a depressing final moment. I feel like a mug for even watching it. Never again! The things I do, so you don’t have to…
The One is a pretty cool Jet Li classic. It’s a simple but pleasant sci-fi packed with kung fu by Jet Li. There’s some energetic solo demonstrations of Xing Yi and Ba Gua to enjoy, plus the usual fast-paced choreography.
The main hero and the main villain are both played by Jet Li (they came from different universes). The villain is trying to kill the good guy in order to gain his power. He’s already killed 123 other versions, making the remaining 2 versions of Jet Li very powerful as they’ve automatically absorbed the speed & strength of those who died (power is split between survivors). The bad guy is trying to kill the good guy now, to become the last remaining one, at which point the universe could explode or the remaining one could “become a god” they say.
Jason Statham has a significant supporting role, as does Delroy Lindo (who was also in Jet Li’s movie from the previous year – Romeo Must Die). They play a pair of inter-universal cops here, tasked with keep both versions of Jet Li alive, to prevent The One from being, at all costs.
As the plot goes, there are certain nerdy people born with extra sensitivity, who think they’re prone to panic attacks. But if they recognise, appreciate and tap into this hyper-sensitivity, they can become abnormally skilled movers with supernatural reflexes and calculation capabilities. Kind of like Rain Man (with Autism) meets Limitness (on NZT).
I’m not a fan of the mentality pushed early on in this movie, that it’s somehow a good thing, and a superior thing, to be a killer. But to its credit, this mentality kind of gets dispelled later on.
Action wise, it’s pretty strong from the outset. There’s Matrix-style diving through windows in bullet time, and there’s spinning bullets round corners like Beckham bends footballs. Plus there’s a few high-budget high-speed car chases. This is a fast action movie, intermittently. It has many story-setting slow drama scenes too, but fortunately they usually don’t drag on too long.
James McAvoy takes the lead role in this movie. He does a fair enough job. Not the typical macho action hero, but that’s not the vibe this movie was going for. Not to everyone’s taste, but it kind of works OK.
Angelina Jolie (in her early 30s) plays the lead female in this movie. She’s the main selling point of this movie, considering her fame since Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) where she became a household name and soon went on to hook up with Brad Pitt on the set of Mr & Mrs Smith (2005), although she was also in some strong movies in the 90s such as Hackers (1995) where she played the lead female, although she looked a bit different there.
Morgan Freeman plays a major supporting role, in a Morpheus-like position, as the head of the cult of assassins.
Chris Pratt plays a minor supporting role early on in this movie, as a colleague of the lead character. He’s best known to action hero movie fans as the star of the Guardians Of The Galaxy movies. He looks a bit different in Wanted though. Fun fact: he’s been married to Arnie’s daughter, Katherine Schwarzenegger, since 2019.
Overall, I rate this movie as Pretty Good, alongside the likes of Wonder Woman and Ghost In The Shell. The reason I don’t rate it even higher, on a par with movies like Hitman, The Equalizer and The Transporter, is because the lead male character isn’t totally my cup of tea. He’s a bit of a beta-male. Plus, the script has a few too many moments of intentional distastefulness for my liking. It’s a shame, because the goodness in the plot, and many exciting moments in this movie, are worthy of a higher rating; but I guess every Pretty Good movie has some relatively outstanding moments.
Great plot twist half an hour before the end, to keep things very interesting, just when it seemed like the plot was starting to run stale. Great ending too. It’s rare to see an action movie whose creativity and entertainment value doesn’t dwindle towards the end.
This movie has a bit too much explicit blood & gore squirting around – they must have spent a lot of money on red paint. It’s got a bit of a sadistic side.
The script is intermittent with interesting bits interwoven with boring bits. There’s plenty of gritty and monotonous action mixed in with the more exciting bits. There’s a lot of decent action still, and it’s a fascinating basic concept. Some of the mood setting / atmosphere building is really top level, but there’s plenty of cold, dull & dry patches too, so it’s likely to receive mixed reviews and overall I rate it as Pretty Good and on a similar level to Scott Adkins’ movie Ninja which came out in the same year (2009).
The main Ninja in this movie, Ninja Assassins, is played by Jung Ji-Hoon, a South Korean pop star also known as Rain. He plays a good guy who left a nasty clan of assassins. He befriends a detective played by Naomie Harris. They both do a decent job in this movie – not top-level acting, a bit cold & dry at times, but quite fitting at other times – far from terrible acting – they both did alright. There’s also a decent supporting performance by Ben Miles as Naomie’s colleague in the agency, and a fair performance by Sho Kosugi as the leader of the Ninja Assassin clan.
This movie was produced by the Wachowski brothers (as they were known in 2009, although they prefer to be called sisters now). This is the same duo behind The Matrix, as well as V For Vendetta and Jupiter Ascending – hence the awesome special effects in places, the respectable cast members, and the dodgy innuendos (kidnapping children and torturing them to breed heartless obedient assassins).
There’s a lot of blade fighting in this movie – from swords to throwing stars to knives attached to chains. But the combat techniques are rarely clear – there’s a lot of flashing between camera angles, and loud music, and unclear tricking in low light, probably to mask the fact the lead actor is not well trained in martial art in real life. Jung Ji-Hoon said, for this movie, he trained several hours a day for six months straight. He learnt bits of all sorts of martial arts, including generic Kickboxing, Karate, Kung Fu, Tai Chi, TKD, and specifically for this movie, a lot of Ninjutsu work, especially weapons work – especially the Shuriken (Throwing Star) and Kusarigama (Dagger Chains). But he was still a relative novice, so the stuntmen looked after him well.
The ending is decent, with special forces bursting into the ninja school before they kill the main man; then he fights his main rivals back to back – the ‘older brother’ (the fellow ninja who happily killed his girlfriend according to clan policy) followed by the teacher of the clan.
Colombiana stars Zoe Saldaña as Cataleya (after a 30 minute backstory where someone else plays her younger self).
Zoe Saldaña is perhaps best known for being the main blue chick in the Avatar movie series, as well as the main green chick in the Guardians Of The Galaxy movies. She also played Uhura in the Star Trek movies. But as strong as all her other roles were, nothing tops her performance in the lead role of Colombiana so far as action hero movie connoisseurs like myself are concerned.
From its well crafted opening with great patience, sound effects, camerawork and cast members (including Amandla Stenberg who expertly plays a young version of Cataleya, plus Cliff Curtis who quite well plays her uncle Emilio living in USA, Jordi Mollà who quite well plays the main baddie early on, and many other strong supporting cast members)… To its smooth yet committed plot development that scarcely fails to retain the viewer’s fixated attention (especially for first time viewers but quite effectively for occasional rewatchers also)… Colombiana is an understated memorable near-masterpiece as far as female assassin movies go.
Lennie James also puts in a strong performance as the FBI agent in charge of identifying, tracking down and capturing Cataleya.
Colombiana has a simplistic plot, but it’s generally well executed with great tempo, acting and effects all round. When a less captivating scene starts to drag on too long, it tends to change pretty quickly soon after, in order to relieve the frustration, so boring bits are scarce and short at the worst of times – credit to the directors for that.
Having said that, the chunky middle of the movie is by far the best of it; stylistically reminiscent of Jessica Alba in the Dark Angel sci-fi series. The start, and even more so the long action scene near the end, are a bit gritty and one-dimensional, which can get tedious for frequent rewatchers of this movie. So while I would rate the majority of this movie ‘very good’ alongside the best male-led assassin movies like The Equalizer, Hitman, and The Transporter; due to its weaker ending (sure, it’s got a long & loud action scene, but that’s not everything) I have to shave the edge off it and rate this movie overall as merely ‘pretty good’ alongside the best female-led action hero movies like Wonder Woman and Ghost In The Shell, which is no poor achievement by any means – they’re still fairly strong movies, quite well made.
The Accountant is a cool movie to watch for the first time, especially for anyone interested in how Asperger Syndrome (and Savant Syndrome) can affect the performance of a martial artist. Many movies have portrayed a slick, meticulously accurate assassin but few go so far as to portray such a well rounded account of autism by the lead character – this movie is like a cross between Hitman and Rain Man.
In terms of martial arts moves, there’s nothing flashy here. There’s a lot of quick-kill gun shooting and a bit of empty-handed combat of a similar nature. There’s no classical exotic moves but there is a good representation of the spirit of a ninja, you could say.
Casting wasn’t bad – there are multiple strong performances in this movie, including by Jon Bernthal (Marvel’s ‘The Punisher’) and above all the lead role by Ben Affleck.
There are times where production has shined by taking well-researched notions and strong creative ideas then doing them justice on screen, especially where traits of Higher Functioning Autism could manifest themselves in the life of a careful assassin.
The genre is a bit James Bond without the humour – it’s callous from start to finish but only faintly gritty and containing enough James Bond style features to make the movie very watchable by fans of that genre. It has a bit of a simplistic drawn-out ending which makes rewatching it less fun than it otherwise would be – perhaps the writers became complacent after a decent beginning and middle, or the producers ran out of budget to wrap things up in style, or they preferred to linger in the grittier drama genre that the movie exposed us to throughout, even though the bulk of the movie appeals to the opposite audience. There are probably certain people who love both genres, but for a fan of high budget action who steers clear of gritty drama, I would rate this movie an 8 for first-time viewing and slightly lower for rewatchings. Still, it had so much potential and such great good parts (demonstrated perfectly by the trailer) that it could have easily been rated higher with a bit more work, although that would probably have been to the dissatisfaction of gritty drama lovers – perhaps you can’t please everyone and trying to do so may have been the reason why this movie never achieved the heights it was knocking on the door for. Still, a good watch.
This movie was made shortly after The Matrix came out breaking all kinds of records, and seemed to try to copy its style, with slickly-dressed plain-faced agents dropping guns from their sleeves and shooting guns from exotic martial arts stances as if performing a wushu demo. But it’s not just a corny ripoff; this movie has a quality of its own. Particularly appealing to people with an interest in the plight of a freedom-fighter movement against a hi-tech draconian police state. Like The Matrix, this movie is more of a sci-fi than a martial arts flick, but still contains plenty of fast-paced skilled combative action including empty-handed fighting, samurai swordsmanship and guns ablazing in ‘bullet time’.
Plotwise, Equilibrium basically follows the plight of the highest-ranked, most-skilled assassin from the government’s elite hit squad, from initially callously killing anyone he’s ordered to kill, to eventually becoming leader of the rebellion and overthrowing the evil dictator. It’s not too heavy on the plot so not a movie for drama lovers but has the balance just right for those who prefer adrenaline-rich action and steer clear of gritty drama. With a likeable lead character, entertaining techniques, strong scenery and a simple but powerful story, this movie makes an impact, scoring 8.5/10 for my taste.
Cast wise, there are some strong performances, and some less strong. Christian Bale is a convincing lead, albeit not a massive star, and Sean Bean adds a lot of value to this movie too, like he always does.
As the movie begins with kids being trained to be assassins from some kind of lab setting, while having barcodes tattooed into the backs of their necks, it’s clear the backstory to Hitman bears a striking resemblance to the TV series Dark Angel starring Jessica Alba.
Timothy Olyphant does a good job as the star of this simplified James Bond style movie – he has vibes of Michael Weatherly going on – they’re practically twins. Olyphant plays a highly skilled assassin called Agent 47 who has successfully evaded capture by police for a long time.
Olga Kurylenko does pretty well as the lead female in this movie. This was her breakthrough movie, before going on to take starring and supporting roles in many more exciting action movies, such as The Assassin Next Door (2009), Erased (2012), Oblivion (2013, with Tom Cruise), The November Man (2014, with Pierce Brosnan), Momentum (2015), Gun Shy (2017, with Antonio Banderas), Johnny English Strikes Again (2018, with Rowan Atkinson), The Courier (2019), High Heat (2022), Extraction 2 (2023, with Chris Hemsworth). Trying not to mention Quantum of Solace, as I can’t stand Daniel Craig trying to be James Bond – nevertheless Olga Kurylenko was in Quantum of Solace (2008) just one year after Hitman.
Timothy Olyphant, on the other hand, kind of disappeared, starring in no other major action movies after The Hitman, although he did take a minor supporting role in the Star Wars spin-off series The Mandalorian.
Robert Knepper (from Transporter 3) puts in a strong performance as the chief FSB (Russian secret police) agent in the movie. Dougray Scott also gives a strong performance as the Interpol agent who’s been tracking the assassin, Agent 47, around the world for a long time. That’s all the major cast members worth mentioning.
Overall, Hitman (2007) is a bit simplistic compared to a good James Bond movie, but it zeroes in on a certain style very similar to The Transporter or The Equalizer, and does it equally well. With a slightly stronger plot, and a slightly slicker and less suspenseful back end, it could be even better, although they all suffer from this same issue.
Continuing the vibe of The Book Of Eli (2010) where Denzel plays an expert assassin with a good heart, here we see him do much the same thing but with a more simple & standard plot.
The Equalizer (2014) masterfully sets the mood with the help of Hollywood’s best sound effects and camerawork, as well as some of its best actors in Denzel Washington and his main adversary played by Marton Csokas – they both do an outstanding job to match the unseen crew.
Marton Csokas looks like a cross between Robert Knepper (from Hitman and Transporter 3) and Tom Cavanagh (from The Flash). And what Cavanagh has that Csokas does not, is well represented by Eric Bogosian (from Under Siege 2). Anyway, back to The Equalizer…
Further supporting actors generally do a good job too, including Chloë Grace Moretz who plays the main victim Denzel’s character attempts to rescue; Melissa Leo who plays a politically connected senior member of the CIA (who Denzel’s character turns to for information on his adversary); David Harbour who plays a bent cop; and David Meunier who plays the local Russian mafia boss – these actors all do a pretty good job.
The action is mostly fluid and of a high calibre, although there are some slower drama scenes and there are some uncomfortable gritty patches. The ending is especially overly drawn out, from a frequent rewatcher’s perspective. This issue, combined with the simplistic plot, and the impression of great values being taught on the big screen when really we’re only seeing a watered down and twisted version of what they should be, mean The Equalizer is only half the masterpiece it could have been, from a smooth action hero movie junkie’s perspective. It really could have been as good as The Foreigner (starring Jackie Chan) or better, but it’s definitely not, due to these issues. Instead, I rank it on a par with The Transporter (starring Jason Statham), which has similar style, a similarly strong cast, a similar simplicity of concept, and is similarly let down by an over-extended weak ending, although in The Equalizer’s case, the fairly dull long scene near the end is followed by a few strong short scenes at the very end, to lift the mood.
The Equalizer is quite a classic, and is one of Denzel’s best performances – I rank it joint best alongside The Book Of Eli (2010). So it’s good to see a couple of strong sequels were made, just like The Transporter had. The Equalizer’s sequels aren’t on the same level as the original, but the sequels are both decent movies with slightly unique concepts nevertheless.
Action Hero Movies
