This movie starts out slow and boring, but not impossible to watch since it’s clearly just warming up to something via a tedious, inefficient backstory. 10 minutes in, things clearly indeed appear to be warming up, as Liam Neeson‘s character Tom rings the police to confess to being a famous uncaught bank robber.
Half an hour in is when the action really kicks in though, as the FBI agents sent to investigate his confession find the money, then attempt to kill Neeson, then get surprised by their own boss and kill him while Neeson gets away in a bullet-showered car chase.
By 45 minutes in, Tom decides to attempt to clear his name before handing himself in, and by 60 minutes in, his girlfriend Annie (played by Kate Walsh) has been almost killed, and he goes on the attack against the two rogue agents.
The rogue agents themselves are played by Jai Courtney (from Divergent) and Anthony Ramos (from Transformers: Rise of the Beasts). Ramos’s character here has a conscience but is constantly led astray but his more psychopathic friend played Courtney, who by 70 minutes in (with 30 minutes to go) is pretty much a lone ranger, having alienated his partner in crime, his new boss, and of course Tom & Annie.
The old boss of the two rogue agents, who they soon killed, was played by Robert Patrick (the liquid metal antagonist called T-1000, from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 1991). The new boss of these two agents, who gets tipped off by Tom, is played by Jeffrey Donovan with vibes like a cross between Clint Eastward, Jesse Enkamp and Magnus Carlsen.
A slightly clever ending somewhat saves this movie, solidifying its rating as better than merely Watchable. Indeed, I rate it So-So.
This movie begins with the lead character wearing a white wig, not dissimilar to Atomic Blonde. She then goes on a bit of a killing spree, to obtain something from someone’s safe. There’s a lot of John Wick style shooting, stabbing and general hand-to-hand combat. But it’s lacking personality – all that grunting doesn’t make it any more charismatic – it’s really quite shallow in the opening scenes. The monotonous yet fast paced opening ends just about soon enough before I feet the need to fast forward, which makes for a respectable start.
After the opening action scene, we get a bit of domestic drama & romance which really shows the lead character Avery Graves (played by Kate Beckinsale) and her boyfriend David Brooks (played by Rupert Friend, from the Agent 47 sequel) as both having a serious lack of credible acting ability and a serious lack of action hero quality on top of that. Their acting is really emotionless, not even skin-deep, but in an irritable way, not in an ice-cold slick action movie star way. It’s like they’re both sleep deprived, numb zombies concentrating on something else and going through the motions while half asleep. The acting could hardly be any worse even from an indie B-movie, and come to think of it, the cinematography is pretty weak too, but it took a bit longer for me to clock on to this. Kate and Rupert both seem better suited to some kind of argumentative soap opera drama series. They’re both droning out their lines with terrible timing and zero sentiment early on – it’s really quite strange how random it is. Maybe AI made it up? It’s got a similar level of lifelessness as AI generated pictures. Maybe the audio is poorly synchronised with the lip sinking. Maybe the accents are a terrible choice. The outfits too. But the facial expressions and body language are that of sleepy grumpy teenagers while pretending to be hotshot secret agents having interesting and romantic chats. I blame the casting first & foremost, and by 10 minutes in I’m confident this movie is going to be rated Below Average at best. Aside from their individual flaws, the chemistry between the two of them couldn’t be any weaker if it tried.
The backing sound of this movie early on is a lot of white noise and screeching – it really makes me want to turn it off by the 13 minute mark. There’s very little going for this movie at all, in the beginning, and it’s really quite irritating, but it lasts over 100 minutes (including time for rolling credits). So far it’s on course for a rating even weaker than Below Average, but if the plot and action pick up in a good way, and the terrible background sound sorts itself out, then Below Average could surprisingly still be on the cards.
Fortunately, the movie does get a lot more real & interesting when the lead character’s boyfriend gets kidnapped and the kidnapper calls with his ransom demand in the 15th minute. Impressively, this energy is sustained for most of the movie, making it deserve of respectable rating of just Below Average. If it had a more advanced plot, and better actors, and more dynamic action, and higher budget cinematography, it would be easier to rewatch, but as it stands, it’s not so rewatchable until you’ve totally forgotten how it goes, and this is a big factor in why its rating remains Below Average as opposed to Bang Average – a score it only just falls short of.
Other key cast members, who are also slightly familiar faces from other movies, include Ray Stevenson who does a decent job as Avery’s boss Jarvis Hedlund (Ray passed away in May 2023 due to heart problems); Ben Miles as Nathan Evans who has a superior position to Jarvis, and Jaz Hutchins as Agent Maxfield who works directly for Nathan and has no problem outcasting & interrogating Avery and even her boss Jarvis as if he holds a more senior role or is at least on the same level. Apparently they’re all meant to be CIA agents, and I think Nathan is meant to be the director of the CIA, but it seems like Nathan & Maxfield are working for a superior agency to Jarvis & Avery, and at one point Nathan answers the phone seemingly calling someone else ‘Director’ so who knows. Their exact roles and agencies are not clearly defined in this movie, but their roles in relation to each other are clear enough.
This is a bit of a fun action movie, starring a 70-year-old John Travolta, with slight vibes of Mission Impossible. Although it gets off to a slow start, and gets a bit nasty in places, and is generally quite a simple movie, and has a long monotonous action scene towards the end; once it gets going it sustains an upbeat vibe and remains mildly captivating pretty much until the end scenes, which is rare for a movie so plain & simple as this one – especially one with a bit of a B-movie vibe about it. It’s actually quite an achievement and earns this movie a rating of slightly Below Average which makes it not much weaker than a lot of classics, which is quite an achievement considering some parts have a slight whiff of B-movie acting & cinematography, which is especially obvious towards the end, but does not make the movie a complete write-off – even the ending is slightly captivating, and the very ending is alright. It’s even tempting to rank this movie Bang Average on a par with many classics, but we have to consider its rewatchability which considering the minimal plot, simple script and intermittently weak acting & cinematography would make it quite hard to rewatch until it’s been pretty much totally forgotten again.
Travolta’s age is telling here – not so much in his face, but in the way he moves like a stiff & fragile stumbling old man.
Purely based on appearance, one of the supporting cast members called Caras, played by a guy who calls himself Swen Temmel, is almost certainly a real life son of John Travolta. Add to this how he looks nothing like his official father, but looks so much like Travolta he’s even been pictured doing impressions of him and the resemblance is striking.
The main woman on the protagonists’ team is a hacker called Link, played by Natali Yura, who is like a pound shop (or dollar store) Scarlett Johannson. Not as smart, classy or attractive but a similar flavour nevertheless.
Demián Castro does a solid job in playing Zade Black – the “target” and brother of the main antagonist. And the main antagonist – a man called Salazar, who has coerced the team of protagonists into helping him – is played quite adequately by Danny Pardo, although he doesn’t make as strong an impression and doesn’t get so much screen time as Castro.
All in all, I’d say this is a Netflix-grade movie, that’s blessed with a single elderly A-List star, and seems to have heavily supplemented its team of old-school industry dogsbodies with green new blood, such that it sits somewhere between Respectably Average and Hard To Watch.
This movie gets off to a great start, with a fun Mission Impossible style action scene that was probably quite cutting-edge for its day. It then proceeds to be quite captivating with easy viewing for the first third of the movie, largely thanks to the overwhelming majority of screentime being occupied by interactions between the very excellent Sean Connery and the alright Catherine Zeta-Jones. This was a cutting-edge thriller in its day, with plenty of action and a bit of mystery, but you could put Sean and Catherine in a movie of any genre and they’d probably make it work remarkably well.
The action gets a bit tense yet drowsy near the middle, as they’re trying to build suspense with the help of irritating white-noise sound effects. Fortunately the script soon livens up again, and the story gets increasingly spicy. After a while though, it gets a bit slow and drama-oriented again, and this is generally the trend of the remainder of the movie – intermittently strong & weak with intermittent action & drama scenes.
The action gets quite intense towards the end, then gets clever at the very end, rounding off a movie that would have probably been Below Average with random actors but turned out to be Above Average thanks to Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Ving Rhames (the black hacker from Mission Impossible) also adds a lot of value to this movie, especially near the end. He initially plays Sean Connery’s supplier of gadgets, but eventually turns out to be an FBI agent.
Will Patton also does alright, as the boss of Catherine’s character early on in the movie, and one of the guys trying to catch her in the end.
This is the second Bond movie in the whole saga. Here we see a lot more gadgets & gizmos than in the first movie, Dr No – not just for Bond but for the enemy (Spectre) too. We’re also introduced to three women in Bond’s life within the first 25 minutes: the guy he’s busy making out with when called in to work (Sylvia Trench, played adequately by Eunice Gayson – the first girl we met in Dr No); plus Miss Moneypenny (a secretarial agent at MI6 HQ, played fine by Lois Maxwell); plus Tatiana Romanova (‘Tanya’ – the woman who Bond’s mission involves befriending – played quite well by Daniela Bianchi).
Ironically though, the most beautiful women in this movie were probably Martine Beswick (British-Jamaican actress) and Aliza Gur (Israeli actress) who played Zora & Vida respectively – a couple of gypsy girls who cat-fight for the right to marry their chief’s son. Why weren’t they promoted to primary bond girls? I can only assume it’s because they didn’t do all the necessary ‘favours’ for the relevant directors, producers & decision-makers. Either that or someone important had no taste, or wanted to make some kind of fashion statement by prioritising a certain look.
Bond’s demeanour in this movie is a little less suave, a little more rough around the edges, compared to his demeanour in Dr No, but not massively so. The vibe of the movie is a bit rougher in the middle too, but not in a terrible way. It’s probably a bit more detailed in its core script this time round, and the music is a bit more varied and suspenseful.
This particular movie is responsible for one of the most iconic & memorable scenes in all of James Bond history, where James is held at gunpoint on a train by his main adversary (Red Grant – an enemy agent from Spectre, played quite well by Robert Shaw). James gives him some gold sovereigns from one suitcase, then his next suitcase explodes tear gas in the enemy’s face.
Lotte Lenya plays Red Grant’s boss, Rosa Klebb very well.
You may notice the scenery looks vaguely familiar in the helicopter and boat scenes at the end of this movie, because they were both filmed in Scotland – the vegetation and rock formations here are typical of British mountainous terrain. These final action scenes were pretty well made too – plus of course the train scenes – they’re not extremely buzzing by modern standards but were still impressively smooth and captivating considering this movie was made in the 60s.
I rate this movie OK since some of it is pretty good but some of it is a bit boring as you would expect from any movie this old. It’s more action packed than Dr No, but is a bit messy in the first hour. The second hour is particularly strong, from when Bond steals the Russian device, right the way through the train scenes and the boat scenes to the hotel scene at the very end.
Interestingly, the closing credits of this movie are used to promote Sean Connery’s subsequent Bond movie, Goldfinger, which was released just 1 year later. The filming for Goldfinger began just 3 months after From Russia With Love was released, and they must have had high hopes for it. Goldfinger today is rated the best Bond movie of all time according to mainstream film review sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, with From Russia With Love then Dr No being second and third according to both of these metrics. But what do they know, since they both rate Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale and Skyfall as the 4th and 5th best Bond movies of all time – what a load of rubbish – Daniel Craig is not at all convincing in the role of James Bond – no way is he better than Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton – these drama freaks need to stop reviewing these action hero movies because they just don’t understand the genre. The casting of Daniel Craig absolutely ruined the last 20 years of the James Bond movie saga. Pierce Brosnan before him was cringe but tolerable; while Connery, Moore and Dalton were all excellent at being James Bond and are the real reason it became the monster brand that we know & love today.
Blue Streak is a fun old-school action comedy starring Martin Lawrence (from the Bad Boys movie series) as a jewel thief posing as a police detective in order to recover the diamond he unwittingly stashed inside a police building.
Martin is entertaining throughout and the supporting cast are not bad. It’s mostly light-hearted action comedy, with a few fast-paced scenes. The plot is quite simple but works well for the genre. There isn’t much screen combat here, but it’s tactically interesting.
This is one of Van Damme’s better movies in terms of plot. There’s a good amount of action, although it can get gritty in places. It has a surprisingly well endowed script for a Van Damme movie – quite adventurous and a bit mysterious, yet still with that cool kickass vibe you expect from all his movies. With a strong hero, helped by a small but strong supporting cast including Charlton Heston, this movie warrants a solid 8.5/10. It could easily benefit from an additional star.
