Actioner

via Orion Pictures Looking at how the sequels racked up a body count that literally ran into the hundreds, it’s incredibly easy to forget that the Rambo franchise initially launched with a fairly low-key thriller that was almost nothing like its successors at all. Sylvester Stallone’s traumatized Vietnam veteran is only responsible for the death of one character in the entire 93-minute running time of First Blood, and that’s the unlucky dude that falls out of a helicopter and plunges to his peril after trying…

via Golden Princess Film Production What happens when you take one of action cinema’s best directors and most badass leading men, and pair them together for a third time in a genre where they’d already delivered a pair of stone-cold classics? Well, proving that cliches are cliches for a reason, John Woo and Chow Yun-fat conspired to prove that third time was indeed the charm by delivering another knockout with Hard Boiled. Widely regarded and almost universally lauded as one of the greatest actioners ever made,…

via Universal Tom Cruise has been at the center of countless blockbusters over the years, with many of his movies remaining at the forefront of pop culture. The Mission: Impossible flicks, Top Gun… even The Mummy remake is iconic, although not for the right reasons. But they can’t all be classics, even those that are actually well-received upon their release. Case in point, 2017’s American Made, which no one has really thought about in five years, despite the fact it’s a totally solid film. Director Doug…

via Distribution Workshop A critically and commercially successful action blockbuster that stars an icon of the genre in the lead role and went on to find plenty of awards season glory sounds like appointment viewing, but Project Gutenberg (released in certain international markets as The Counterfeiter) strangely failed to make much of a splash outside of native shores. Writer and director Felix Chong’s acclaimed thriller holds respective critic and users scores of 83 and 76 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, brought…

Last August, Jamie Foxx headlined Netflix blockbuster Project Power, which took the standard trappings of the superhero genre and attempted to spin them into something new, with the end result becoming one of the platform’s most-watched original movies ever. Almost exactly one year to the day later, the Academy Award winner is back to take center stage in Day Shift, which attempts to do pretty much the exact same thing with the vampire flick, but your mileage may vary on how successful he’s been second time around.…

via 20th Century Studios You’d have been laughed out of the building a couple of years ago had you told someone that the most acclaimed entry in the long-running Predator franchise would be made by Disney, but that’s exactly where we find ourselves with Prey. 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg’s period-set hybrid of sci-fi thriller, old school actioner, and gory horror is currently Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an impressive 91 percent score, well ahead of the 80 percent held by John…

via Paramount Netflix viewers have proven themselves highly susceptible to the unique charms of the B-tier action movie, with the back catalogues of Denzel Washington, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, and Gerard Butler always tending to perform well on the platform. The latest hit drops down a rung or two, though, with Steven Seagal’s Born to Raise Hell having been smuggled onto the charts. As per FlixPatrol, the instantly forgettable shoot ’em up hasn’t just landed a spot on the global rankings, it’s even become…

via 20th Century Fox Everyone has to start somewhere to break into the acting business, and for John Cena, his road to Hollywood stardom began with a pair of banal WWE-backed action movies. Three years after making his screen debut in The Marine, the full-time professional wrestler got bitten by the bug again when 12 Rounds came to theaters in March 2009. Directed by Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, and The Long Kiss Goodnight‘s Renny Harlin, the low budget genre flick somewhat ironically drew most of its cues from Die…

It’s either admirable or ill-advised for Jackie Chan to still be doing what he’s doing at the age of 68, even if the legendary action star has embraced the assistance of CGI, which is fair enough when you consider the sheer volume of injuries he’s sustained throughout his career. The elder statesman of death-defying daredevil antics is starting to slow down his output, having played a major role in one live-action movie in the last three years. The project was Vanguard, and after being delayed for…

via Redbox Entertainment The single-location action movie has always proven to be popular with genre fans, not to mention a cost-effective way of cramming as many set pieces as possible into a single film without breaking the budgetary bank. One downside is that plenty of them are utterly forgettable, with this year’s Black Site slipping almost completely under the radar. Think of it as something of an inadvertent companion piece to Netflix’s recent hit Interceptor, and not just because they each received…