Category Archives: Action

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant                         4 stars

If you have seen any of Guy Ritchie’s earlier films you know that they are action packed and have a style all his own. His movie The Covenant that includes his name in the title certainly lives up to his standards. This time we follow the exploits of an army sergeant, John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) and an Afghan interpreter, Ahmed (Dar Salim) as Kinley and his squad are tasked with hunting down IED factories somewhere in the wilderness of Afghanistan. It is 2018 so it is near the end of the war and Kinley is dedicated to this near impossible task with the threat of a Taliban attack at every turn. Ahmed is there because he is drawn to the job for the money and the promise of a visa to the US for him and his family. He also hates the Taliban for killing his son. As the pair face this challenge they learn to rely on one another despite the great cultural differences especially when they are being hunted by every available Taliban fighter in the area. The characters are not based on any particular men, but their story is symbolic of how the American military came to rely on the Afghan interpreters who were promised relocation to America and safety from the Taliban. The real meaning of the film’s title comes later when Kinley is sent back to the US with his family after being severely wounded, but feels the responsibility to get Ahmed and his family out of Afghanistan. He personally endures the frustration of dealing with government red tape and finally hires high priced mercenaries to help find Ahmed who has gone into hiding and get him to safety. The movie is thrilling as a war movie should be and full of harrowing scenes, and also shows the dedication of an American soldier and the loyalty to his fellow man. This is one that comes highly recommended.

No Time to Die

No Time to Die                  4 stars

I finally took in the most recent James Bond film, No Time to Die from 2021 and was not disappointed. It’s hard to believe that it has been 15 years and five films since Daniel Craig took on the role of MI6’s most daring and successful secret agent, 007. This is Craig’s last outing as Bond and it is very emotional as well. There are all the usual attributes of a James Bond film, the international locations, the over the top action scenes, the villains scheming to dominate the world, Bond’s high tech gadgets and of course the fem fatales. This time around Bond has officially retired from service to MI6 and is living in Jamaica with Dr. Madeline Swann (a returning and stunning Lea Seydoux), but his friend Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright also returning) of the CIA shows up telling Bond there is a new threat endangering the world and his help is sorely needed. It seems a Russian scientist (David Dencik) has access to a technology of a tiny nanobot virus capable of killing people based on their DNA structure and that can spread throughout the world. Somehow MI6’s M (Ralph Fiennes) plays a role in this, but the plan has gone wrong with the weapon of choice falling into some very dangerous hands. Also returning are Q (Ben Wishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris). There are other notable characters played by actors bringing the franchise into the 2020’s: new MI6 agent Nomi (Lashana Lynch) who is very resourceful and a scrappy fighter, a suspicious CIA agent (Billy Magnussen of Bridge of Spies and Velvet Buzzsaw) and a newcomer agent, Paloma (a very sexy Ana de Armas of Knives Out and Blonde) who puts up a good fight when needed. For the bad guys there is the captured head of Spectre, Ernt Stavro Blofeld, a name that goes back to the Bond movies of the seventies. This time he is played by Christoph Waltz (of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained fame) to great dramatic effect. But the real villain this time is a man named Lyutsifer Safin (a very menacing Rami Malek), who plays a notorious role in Dr. Swann’s past. The director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, new to Bond films has put this all together, but it is Craig who makes it more than just another action movie and brings some emotional depth to a character who has plenty to lose but must carry on to save the world one more time. Even though this is Daniel Craig’s last time out as 007, we are assured that James Bond will return.

Raya and the Last Dragon

Raya and the Last Dragon             3 ½ stars

In 2021 the popular animated Walt Disney release was Encanto, the story of a magical family in Columbia. That same year Disney released the animated movie Raya and the Last Dragon which didn’t quite get the same attention in the era of Covid. This fairly typical Disney story concerns a fictional land called Kumandra, where 500 years ago a plague of sinister monsters that could turn people into stone was stopped by a race of dragons who lived peacefully with humans. But over time the humans broke up into factions leaving only one village to keep the dragon gem safe that continues to protect the people. That village is led by Benja, who has a daughter, Raya, a sort of young ninja in training. The peace is broken when another village breaks the gem, stealing pieces of it which releases the curse of the monsters again, spreading havoc across the land. The only hope is for Raya, accompanied by her pill bug friend, Tuk tuk to find the last remaining dragon who can defeat the monsters. She finds the dragon, a comical, energetic creature named Sisu who is powerful, but somewhat immature and needing guidance. Somehow, Sisu was chosen to be the last dragon after all the others were sacrificed to the magic, stone creating monsters. In classic Disney fashion, the pair and their friends must deal with many action filled dangers along the way to saving their people. The movie is rich in action and color, but was written by a team of writers so it is quite an amalgam of characters and references to Southeast Asia. It is not really a Disney princess movie but contains elements from a variety of Disney movies that we have seen before. The movie is very suitable for young audiences even including the monsters.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One  4 ½ stars

Returning to the screen in true summer blockbuster form is the seventh Mission Impossible installment in Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One. The awkward sounding name teams up Tom Cruise in his iconic role of Ethan Hunt, leader of the IMF team with director Christopher McQuarrie, who directed earlier MI films and last year’s big hit Top Gun: Maverick. The action thriller features no less than a car chase through a European city (featuring a miniature Fiat), a desert gun battle, a thrilling cat and mouse hunt through an airport with a possible explosive, daring hand to hand combat amid the canals of Venice, all capped off with a thrilling confrontation on the orient Express through the Austrian Alps. As usual, these action scenes feature Cruise doing most of his own stunts which includes jumping off a mountain peak on a motorcycle with a parachute. This time around Hunt has accepted a mission with his IMF team to stop The Entity, a digital sentient AI being that threatens to control the world. I hope this is very far-fetched. The key to stopping it is a literal key, the possessor of which could control the entity if they can get the key to the right place. This is all that is needed to set up the usual action sequences vital to a successful Mission Impossible film. Despite the name of the film, it really does stand on its own as a complete film. We are promised a Part Two coming next year which is rumored to be Cruise’s final entry of the franchise. Returning as part of Hunt’s IMF team are Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg) and Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) who Hunt considers as family and perhaps his weakness. Villainous figures from the past appear including Gabriel (Esai Morales) and the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) who vie for control of the Entity. One new character deserving attention is a pickpocket appearing at a very inopportune time in the form of Grace (Hayley Atwell) who is “persuaded” to join the IMF team when there is no other choice. The CIA suits who would like to control Hunt are portrayed by Henry Czerny as Kittridge, head of the CIA and Shea Whigham as Briggs, a government agent who seems to follow Hunt’s every movie. Rounding out the villains is Paris (Pom Klementieff) who is mostly silent but very well versed in car chases and hand to hand combat. (You may have seen her as Mantis in the Marvel movies.) The movie strikes the right balance between action sequences and cooled down scenes allowing the audience to catch its breath so that you don’t notice the two-and-three-quarter hour running time of the film. The AI themed plot of the movie is appropriate to our current times and one hopes it isn’t predictive of what is to become. Now I will be looking with anticipation to 2024’s release of Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part Two!

Shotgun Wedding

Shotgun Wedding            1 ½ stars

I didn’t so much as watch Shotgun Wedding as endure it. Jennifer Lopez as Darcy does her latest performance in a wedding dress in this campy action comedy as a bride going to her wedding at a DIY destination event in the Philippines. Her fiancé, Tom (Josh Duhamel) has booked the location for its cost savings. Nevermind the fact that the location has a reputation for pirate attacks. When the pirates arrive, taking hostages and demanding ransom from Darcy’s father (Cheech Marin), Darcy and Tom somehow were missed and now must devise a plan to thwart the pirates and rescue their families and guests. Obviously zaniness ensues and all sorts of unlikely events happen highlighting the ineptitude of the pirates. It does turn out there is more to the crimes than what first appears and Tom is quick to see through the charade. One person who contributes well to the comedy is Jennifer Coolidge who always delivers with classy deadpan coolness. While watching this one I couldn’t help but feel this was another version of The Lost City (which also featured a dress but on Sandra Bullock), but a much less funny one. I usually see anything that features Ms. Lopez. This one was a lot more miss than hit.

Free Guy

Free Guy              4 stars

In the 2021 action comedy Free Guy, directed by Shawn Levy (the Night at the Museum movies) we first meet Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a very chipper guy who greets his goldfish, puts on his blue dress shirt and goes to his job at a bank where he cheerfully greets everyone. He and his best friend, Buddy the security guard (Lil Rel Howery of Get Out) seem unsurprised when the bank is robbed by masked villains with very large guns and calmly drop to the floor and have a casual conversation. As he walks through the streets of Free City he is surrounded by the mayhem of crashing cars, people shooting at one another, and falling debris from damaged skyscrapers. Yet none of this disturbs him, not even when he wakes up again in his room and repeats the day, just like the previous one. We soon see that all of the characters in Free City are part of a video game played around the world and Guy is simply a NPC (non-player character) in this game where the players operate their characters from home. Then one day he spots an attractive woman on the street that he thinks must be the girl of his dreams. She is known only as Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer of Killing Eve) in Guy’s world, but is also named Millie as the woman who is operating the avatar from her computer. In the real world Millie and her friend Keys (Joe Keery) are the coders who created the popular game that is owned by a giant corporation run by an authoritative tech lord called Antwan (Taika Waititi). When Guy follows Molotov Girl he discovers the truth about his existence in the game. Millie puts a pair of sunglasses on Guy that shows him the mayhem that the players of the online game see. This leads him to the decision to play his own game gaining experience and fame, making him a celebrity among the players in the real world. The movie combines elements from The Truman Show, Wreck It Ralph and Groundhog Day but with a great deal of comic action and impressive special effects aided by some amusing cameos from action movie-stars (such as Channing Tatum, Hugh Jackman and Dwayne Johnson). As the action progressed the idea came to me that this was like a type of West World where nobody gets hurt and with music that lightens the mood. (There is a great use of the theme song from The Greatest American Hero.) This is a fun movie that is silly and sweet and quite a departure for Ryan Reynolds who is best known for his superhero roles in action movies.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings           4 stars

I’m not a great fan of the Marvel movies but I took in the acclaimed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings from 2021 to see what it was about. This is certainly an action filled story with plenty of martial arts fighting and CGI effects combined with an intergenerational origin story about characters trying to find their place in the world while dealing with family expectations. There is a lot of back story involved despite most of the time seemingly devoted to one extended fight scene after another. I can’t go into great detail, but the two main heroes are Shang-Chi (Simu Lui) and Xialing (Meng’er Zhang), brother and sister who are each on their own having left their father’s world who is a legendary warlord (Tony Leung as Wenwu) who has great power due to the ten rings he wears on his arms when engaged in battle. The pair are drawn back to their father when he reaches out to them to confront a great wrong done to their family many years before. The past events took place in a magical place called Ta Lo, hidden in a deep forest where many strange creatures live with the humans. The village is protecting the world from a great evil force that would like to take the souls of all the creatures it can, as happens in a superhero movie. Shang-Chi and Xialing find themselves on the opposite side from their father, thus we have the setting for the many fights that take place. The story is interposed with the action scenes along the way allowing the characters to show off their martial arts skills and their powers over the forces of nature. Special mention must go to Michelle Yeoh as Jiang Nan who shows off her fighting skills before she was in Everything, Everywhere All at Once. As well as Awkwafina as Shang-Chi’s girlfriend from San Francisco, a civilian who gets caught up in the action. There is a lot more to the story than I have described, and a lot of action packed into the two and a quarter time of the movie. As with any superhero movie you must suspend your disbelief when characters take all sorts of punishment from super destructive forces without sustaining injuries (something that tends to bore me). As Marvel movies go, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is better than most and I understand that there should be more expected from this lesser known hero of the MCU.

Napoleon

Napoleon            1 ½ stars

The long-anticipated Ridley Scott epic Napoleon about the man who sought to conquer all of Europe appeared in theaters on November 22 and I was there for the first day. It combines my interest in movies and military history so it was a must see. Joaquin Phoenix (of Walk the Line and Gladiator) portrays the emperor from his rise to power from an artillery officer to claim the throne through a coup, to his ultimate demise and exile from France. We also get a big dose of his love life with his wife, Josephine, taking up way too much of the film. The movie can be described as a spectacle of grand scale battle scenes, grandiose balls with aristocrats decked out in their finest and comical love scenes between the horny Napoleon and the standoffish Josephine. One would expect it to be a difficult task to cover such an expanse of history in a two and a half-hour film, but Scott’s version of it is especially hard to follow to the point of being laughable. There is little to connect the scenes as we pass through the events of history. During the revolution there is a representation of Robespierre, but we don’t really see what he is about or why he was so powerful. A few Marshals of the French army are there, such as Junot, Ney and Berthier, but they are just characters in the background with Napoleon barely interacting with them. During the movie there are scenes depicting the battles of Toulon, Austerlitz, Borodino and Waterloo with great looking clashes of soldiers and cavalry charges, but we never get much explanation of why they are being fought. There is no mention of the peninsula war, very little about the Prussians, a major participant in the wars, or of any naval actions. After the burning of Moscow in 1812, we immediately go to Napoleon’s ouster from being emperor ignoring the two years of the war in Prussia. In much of the movie we see a very petulant Napoleon who is all about settling scores with other heads of state, but none of his genius in his vision of a united Europe. In the battle scenes themselves there is nothing to show the tactics of warfare of the time, not to mention all the historical inaccuracies. The British were not entrenched at Waterloo like the movie shows us and there is nothing to show how the British defended farm buildings or used slopes of hills to their advantage. In one scene, Napoleon points to Waterloo on a map saying that is where he will defeat the enemy. (Nevermind that it is the defender that chooses the site of battle, not the attacker.) The funniest line is when Napoleon rages against the British saying “You think you’re so great just because you have boats!”. I had to laugh. Also ridiculous were the sex scenes between the emperor and Josephine making them appear like animals in the act. I would have to say that they did a good job with the uniforms of the soldiers and the weapons of the time. The firing of the artillery and the effects on people and horses did look realistic. But the movie was not worth two and a half hours of my time and I am sure there are much better dramatic works available about Napoleon and the wars in Europe of this period. I don’t know what came over Ridley Scott to create this mess.

Dune

Dune     4 stars

I finally saw 2021’s Dune by Denis Villeneuve having missed it in the theaters. It has to be one of the greatest challenges in making movies to attempt to bring Frank Herbert’s epic science fiction novel to the silver screen and Villeneuve was feeling up to it. In the story we follow young Paul Atreites who is destined to lead his house and people through a great struggle across the galactic empire. Timothée Chalamet with his ability to convey a dark sullen mood is excellently cast as Paul who is plagued with frightening visions of the future because he was bred to be the one to guide mankind through this period by the witches of the Bene Gesserit. If you are not already familiar with the book, I certainly can’t explain this complex story to you here, but I can say that the movie does capture the grand scale of Dune with the huge set pieces of the cities, the flying ships, the immense temples and of course the giant sand worms of Arrakis. The importance of Arrakis lies in its abundance of mélange, the spice that makes galactic space travel practical. There are some well staged hand-to-hand combat scenes both between armies and individuals that even show the effects of the Holtzmann shields. We get a good taste of the vastness of the Arrakis desert and the devotion of the Fremen to the land and their way of life. Many of the cast do credit to their Dune characters including Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreites, Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica, Jason Momoa as the charismatic and loyal Duncan Idaho and Stellan Skarsgárd as the obese and beyond evil Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. There are many other cast members who played their limited parts well that I can’t name here. For the most part the characters seem faithful to the book. One change was to make the Fremen scientist Liet Kynes a woman as played by Sharon Duncan-Brewster. The character was even expanded compared to the book. Two characters missing from the movie are Feyd Rautha Harkonnen and Princess Irulan. The nature of the story requires a certain quality of mysticism, especially with the scenes dealing with Paul and the Bene Gesserit, so there is not always a completely human aspect to the story. The movie is necessarily the first part of a pair of movies so while it ends on a hopeful note, it does not feel quite complete. We are still waiting for part two which is promised to show up next year. I am to understand that the job of playing Feyd Rautha will fall to Austin Butler (from Elvis). I look forward to seeing what he does with that. There have been other versions of Dune in the past and this one is likely the most faithful to the book, but we will have to see what Part 2 has to offer. Also, I have read that there is a prequel in the works that focuses on the origins of the Bene Gesserit 10,000 years in the past.

The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy       4 stars

The summer blockbuster season may have started a bit early with the release of The Fall Guy, directed by David Leitch (Bullet Train, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw). The action comedy starring Ryan Gosling as stuntman Colt Seavers and Emily Blunt as movie director Jody is designed as a tribute to the stuntmen who make action movies fun to watch. Part of the fun is watching Colt prepare for each shot and endure one take after another of getting blown up and burned. In addition, Gosling shows that he is made to be a comedic leading man whether he is crying to a Taylor Swift song or giving one liners while taking punishment from the bad guys (of which there are plenty). The pair of Gosling and Blunt work comedy gold in their scenes together with dueling dialogue especially in an early scene when Jody questions Colt about his character’s motivation in front of the entire production crew. Remember that last summer Gosling was discovering his manliness as Ken in Barbie and Blunt was enduring marriage to Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer. (It is clear that Gosling has not lost his physique since Barbie.) The premise is that Colt, the main stuntman for action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), returns from an injury to work on a movie in Australia being directed by his crush, Jody in her first directing opportunity. Her big budget movie is a sort of Mad Max action film with some fearsome looking space aliens and big explosions. During production, the movie producer (Hannah Waddingham) approaches Colt, telling him that the star, Ryder has gone missing, and Colt must track him down. And with what is an obvious MacGuffin, he must not tell Jody about the missing star. (A MacGuffin is a device that keeps the plot moving but may not make any sense.) When Colt discovers a dead body, he soon realizes that he is in over his head and he must face off against multiple villains in car chases and fight scenes, something he is surprisingly good at. After that the plot loses all credibility and little about the story makes any sense. But don’t let that stop you from enjoying it. I finally gave up on trying to make sense of it. But I did enjoy the fight scenes that included Stephanie Hsu (Everything, Everywhere, All at Once) as an assistant fighting a villain at the wheel of a large truck a la Indiana Jones. (And then there is the dog that helps Colt in fights, while only responding to commands in French.) The level of action is high like Leitch’s earlier movie, Bullet Train. It slows down a bit when Blunt shares the screen, with her contributing to the comedic nature of the movie. The score is very upbeat including a few renditions of I Was Made for Loving You Baby performed by both Yungblud and Kiss. So, turn off your brain for two hours and enjoy some real mind-blowing action.