Actioner

via Screen Media Films Rotten Tomatoes isn’t the be-all and end-all when it comes to weighing up the pros and cons of a movie, but it’s never a good look for any title to gain the unwanted distinction of a zero percent score. Unfortunately, that’s the fate that befell this year’s actioner 9 Bullets, which admittedly hasn’t dented its prospects on streaming. As per FlixPatrol, the tale of Lena Headey tooling up and going on the run after rescuing her young neighbor from the clutches of the criminal underworld…

via Open Road Films It wasn’t all that long ago that Liam Neeson was regarded as one of the most reliable box office draws in Hollywood, a trend that continued through the early stages of the pandemic after Honest Thief and The Marksman saw him become the first star to headline two number one hits in the age of COVID. However, things have taken a turn for the worse since then, with Blacklight and Memory both flopping. The latter really should have been a much better film than it turned out to be, given the…

via Netflix Original action movies that offer undemanding B-tier thrills are like catnip for Netflix subscribers, as proven by the recent success of Interceptor, which became the number one most-watched film on the platform’s global charts, despite being roasted to a crisp online by fans pointing out how terrible it was on almost every level. Critics may have deemed it worthy of a middling 43 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, but the fact hundreds upon hundreds of user ratings sank Interceptor to a meager 19…

via EuropaCorp Following the unexpected success of Taken, Luc Besson’s EuropCorp instantly dived headfirst into churning out as many mid-budget action movies with middle-aged stars as possible, with Kevin Costner getting in on the act when 3 Days to Kill came to theaters in February 2014. Almost the very definition of workmanlike, any potential in the premise was squandered through a terrible script and typically uninspiring direction from McG, with everyone involved opting to go through the motions. Costner’s…

Idris Elba’s upcoming survival thriller Beast has been generating plenty of reactions online, because fans know the movie looks terrible, but they also kind of want to see the actor punch a lion in the face. In an amazing stroke of coincidence, another safari-set actioner has been trekking across the great plains of the Netflix charts, with Endangered Species positively thriving. As per FlixPatrol, the thoroughly terrible Kenyan adventure has managed to secure a spot on the platform’s global rankings, and can…

via Open Road Films Liam Neeson may have reigned as cinema’s elder statesman of throat-punching for close to 15 years, but the pandemic era has seen the veteran ass-kicker experience the highest of highs, and lowest of lows, with The Marksman ending up somewhere in the middle. Co-writer and director Robert Lorenz’s painfully uninspired action thriller managed to debut at the top of a ravaged box office in January of last year, where it set several impressive benchmarks. Not only was it the highest-grossing…

Based on the early reviews, it looks as though Top Gun: Maverick is destined to go down as not just one of the year’s best blockbusters, but one of Tom Cruise’s best-ever movies. That’s no mean feat based on his stellar career, never mind a sequel that arrives 36 years after the original. You could argue that the actor already made a spiritual successor of sorts, though, with 1990’s Days of Thunder dismissed at the time as “Top Gun with racing cars”. While that may have been viewed as dismissive at the time, it wasn’t…