This Disney movie is like a more mature and slightly better made version of Journey 2 The Mysterious Island (2012) which also starred Dwayne Johnson.
The Jungle Cruise (2021) stars Dwayne Johnson as a ship captain for hire, and Emily Blunt as a woman seeking a legendary miracle cure from a plant hidden deep in the Amazon jungle. The chemistry between Dwayne and Emily is pretty good here. Her tag-along ‘brother’ played by Jack Whitehall is less entertaining but plays his role adequately. Jesse Plemons does a decent job as the main baddie.
By near the half way mark, this movie looks set for a Bang Average rating, which is markedly better than Journey 2, mainly because it’s more mature (while still a bit childish) but also because it’s generally a better production, with better humour. Having said that, it goes sharply downhill around the middle, as there’s a mix of extended boring patches and disgusting patches. It eventually gets a bit better again, but never really re-attains the levels of fun and enthusiasm as it had earlier on. For this reason, plus the fact it’s a bit off-genre, I’m going to rate it just So-So for the action hero movie fan, which is just one level above Journey 2 in the end.
From the outset, this movie is clearly pushing the usual pop trash on our youth, with mindless aggressive Eminem rapping throughout the opening scene.
By half an hour in, Jet Li makes a good partnership with DMX as they combat Chinese gangsters together, even though they started out fighting each other (since the enemy of my enemy is my friend).
Mark Dacascos stars as the main baddie in this movie, opposite Jet Li, and does a great job of it.
We also have at least one funny guy in Anthony Anderson, the fat black man, although there’s also a fat white guy called Tom Arnold who tries to be funny but isn’t.
The rest of the supporting cast members here are pretty strong too — from the lead female Gabrielle Union to the assistant goons. There’s also several decent action scenes here, and some element of interesting plot, as well as some decent banter from time to time; but the script is lacking and and the humour is frequently immature, so all in all, it’s a bit of a wasted operation and I’m going to rate it Bang Average.
This movie is also blessed with nice little cameo roles for UFC champs Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz and Randy Couture as they fight each other in a cage before teaming up against Jet Li.
Also called The Code in some regions, this movie gets off to a simple TV action-drama style beginning. Not unpleasant, and not boring, but not wowing either. Just a bit average. If it continues at the pace it got going with, it’s set for a Bang Average rating.
By an hour in, this movie has become decent action with a simple but engaging story for a first time viewer. Add to this decent actors, and in a sense it’s a pretty good movie, but the plot is still very thin, the whole movie is very one dimensional and the action is very simplistic — not bad just simplistic — so it looks fixed for a Bang Average rating still, but that’s not a bad score — it puts it level with many semi-dated classics.
The bundle of plot twists at the end made a nice way to round off the movie — just when you thought the story was clear, there were more twists still unfolding, making it eventually quite original in this 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 movie gets off to a decent start, with Jason Statham in his element, dressed as a priest, pulling off a heist, surviving a near-death experience then picking himself back up and getting the ball rolling again — now he’s a man on a mission, to take the big score from those who betrayed him and get revenge for them attempting to kill him.
36 mins in, just as Statham’s character is creating a new identity and a new life for himself, to escape troubles and prep for his new project, we meet the woman who will became the lead female in this movie — Jennifer Lopez, playing the role of an estate agent who Statham’s character meets and becomes close to.
While the ‘cool’ factor and glamour-action vibe are pretty strong in this movie, and the chemistry between Statham & Lopez is strong, the thinness of plot and over-run of gritty gory scenes and distressing drama result in a dampening of the overall rating, ending in a score of just Above Average, although the back end is a bit smoother than the front (not dissimilar to J-Lo in that regard, who’s still looking well in her early 40s here).
Strange thing is how Statham stays loyal to an average woman and rejects his opportunity with Lopez’s character — quite unrealistic I think, although stranger things have happened.
This is a story of one trauma to another, interwoven with action, half of which is pretty good. Overall I’m going to rate this movie So So (a couple of levels below Average) due to lack of plot and lack of cast, even though the two core cast members are pretty good, they’re still a bit lonely here with no plot to focus on and no peers to bounce off.
Olga Kurylenko stars as the leader of a crew of bank robbers, and when a job turns sour she finds herself fighting with former partners for her life, her friends’ lives, and the diamonds she claimed. She does alright here, but just has too little a movie to work with. It’s all a bit hollow and traumatising — the cool action is here and there but not enough to make it a strong movie.
James Purefoy plays the leader of the baddies’ clean-up squad, and he’s pretty good at it.
This movie is also graces with a few short appearances from Morgan Freeman as the crooked senator who the clean-up squad report to.
This is a fairly entertaining light-hearted action adventure movie, that’s almost a comedy but doesn’t intentionally crack many jokes. It’s not got enough meat on the bones to warrant a high rating — I rate it Below Average — but it does well in holding attention and being consistently mildly entertaining for those who haven’t seen it before. All three of the lead cast members were pretty good in their roles here.
There are some very entertaining parts to this mild slapstick style action comedy, especially early on. From the fast action rollerblading escape scene at the beginning, to the funny art heist scenes thereafter. But this movie is kind of let down by the hard-to-rewatch messy jungle scene that runs from 40 to 60 minutes in, and then the slow action-drama scenes towards the end. So, what was very promising to begin with, ends up being rated Bang Average.
This movie is a refreshing but simple concept, at least early on. And there’s some nice interactions between Jackie Chan and John Cena throughout.
What lets this movie down though, and results in a Bang Average rating, is the last half hour which has several scenes that are too longwinded and monotonous. So even though the rest of the movie is pretty well made, and John & Jackie had good banter, Bang Average seems like a fair rating in the end, especially considering the very simple storyline and minimal key cast members.
Elysium starts off with an interesting dystopian sci-fi concept but rather gritty screenplay. In the first half hour, not much happens to the least cast member except he receives a fatal dose of radiation poisoning in his workplace and is given five days left to live. This urges him to rekindle his old master criminal ways in order to reach the satellite city called Elysium – a place for the privileged to live away from the rest of humanity on Earth. He attempts to get there in order to heal himself, but it’s a dangerous mission – families have tried before and they tend to get shot down indiscriminately.
There’s a nice bit of action before the end of the first hour.
Much of the second hour constitutes a bit of an anxiety & depression fest – probably good for horror-drama junkies, but not so much for smooth action hero movie connoisseurs. Easily skippable if you’ve seen it before. Fortunately, that toxic junk at least intermittently subsides to make way for some half-decent action. This movie had a lot of potential to be a lot better than it eventually was though. Unfortunately, due to the amount of bad mixed with the good, I really struggle to rate it Above Average but I will on account of its genre & stars, and its resultant memorability.
Matt Damon manages to shave off his Jason Bourne identity (see what I did there?) by going bald in this movie – it’s not pleasing on the eye but at least it succeeds in creating a fresh new persona for this movie – this one having much more of an air of vulnerability from the start, since he gets radiation poisoning early on – quite fitting for a regularly toxic movie experience.
The fight scene at the end is dry and over dragged out – easily skippable, even though it’s kind of fast action – reminiscent of a Tony Jaa movie – no flying elbows, but just as spiritually dead.
Promoting radiation chamber type beds as cancer cures, at the end, was the icing on the cake – quite inkeeping with the Big Harma theme since the start.
On the plus side, the main baddies are played quite well by Jodie Foster (brains) and Sharlto Copley (brawn). Many of the cast members are pretty good, even if the movie is a bit thin and nasty while posing like it’s strongly representing a really cool genre.
This movie is mildly entertaining. It occasionally features some good acting, including from the lead character Percy Jackson played by Logan Lerman, and occasionally from others too, such as: Grover, Percy’s protective Satyr, played by Brandon T Jackson; and Zeus, chief diety, played by Sean Bean; and even Pierce Brosnan as Mr Brunner aka Chiron, Percy’s mentor centaur/minotaur type thing.
However, this movie is equally full of attempted sacrilege and shallow lackadaisical expressions, just as you’d expect from any bunch of spoilt & corrupted yet naive and skin-deep Hollywood teenagers trying to play dieties for kicks & giggles above all else.
So it’s got its pros & cons like most movies, and I rank it fairly average among action movies rated by this website.
Although it’s full of a mix of mild entertainment and awkward drama, there is eventually a really cool action scene, but it takes until 100 minutes to deliver it. In that moment, Percy proves he’s the real son of Poseidon by unleashing his power over water, to defeat his enemy, the actual lightning thief, Luke, son of Hermes. It only lasts a matter of seconds though – not even a minute – and for this reason, I can’t rate this movie any higher than Bang Average irrespective the potential and quality it displayed occasionally.
Sequel: Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters (2013)
This movie kicks off with a chunky dose of boredom, awkwardness and sacrilege – just as expected. It’s a bit weaker in storyline buildup than the last one, and the cyclops nymph who’s meant to be Percy’s half brother is not appealing to watch (and that’s an understatement). While there is some half decent action in this movie, and some unique plot characteristics, it’s generally a bit below the par set by the first in the series and for this reason it looks set for a decidedly Below Average rating.
This movie has an air of a kids’ TV drama series, with actors and acting standards to match. Unsurprisingly, Pierce Brosnan didn’t come back for this one – his character was a major figure again but played by someone else this time.
Although the teen drama series vibe never really lets up, the action and energy in the latter half of this movie kind of make up for its lack of substance early on, thus bringing the final rating close to average and similar to the original – probably slightly weaker, especially due to the poor start, but not by much, considering the well played back end.
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.
Action Hero Movies
