Tag: assassin

Sniper Goddess

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★★★★
“Spot on target.”

The Chinese title is 狙击之王：暗杀, which Google Translate informs me translates as “Sniper King: Assassination”. I don’t want to assume anyone’s gender, but I think I’m going to go with the alternate title above, as more appropriate, over the one on the poster. Because there’s no doubt about the amazing talents possessed by Anna (Yang), for whom a shot at three kilometers range is barely an inconvenience. We get right into the action with her being committed as a psychopath after begin captured, following her assassination of a drug lord. Yet another drug lord, actually – she has a deep hatred of them, for reasons we eventually discover, and has been taking them out with regularity.

It’s not long before someone tries to kill her in the psychiatric facility, but she’s able to escape (somewhat), with the help of struck-off former doctor, Nasipan (Tao). However, she is forced, with the aid of a nano-bomb injected into her bloodstream, to take a mission for Artest (Mak). There’s a war of succession going on in the country of “Libiwala”, with the prospect of drug production becoming legal in the country – to the joy of crime boss Roger (Lee). Artest requires Anna to liquidate all those in line for the leadership to prevent this. Or maybe encourage this. It’s all a bit murky, and the plot twists and turns until the very last scene, though never gets incoherent.

This one captivated me inside five minutes, with the hellacious firefight in the asylum, culminating in Anna sniping a sniper right through their scope. The action doesn’t let up for long thereafter, with some excellent set pieces involving both weapons and hand-to-hand combat. For the latter, Artest probably gets the bulk of it. But on the opposing side is a henchwoman who makes Gogo Yubari look like the picture of mental balance (I think she may be played by Guo Muhan, but I don’t recall hearing her name), and cuts a striking figure in her long blond hair and sword. It’s just one of the numerous things this film gets right, including occasional moments of comedy that genuinely made me laugh out loud, the movie winking at its own excesses. 

It’s simply a fun experience, with characters you can get behind, and an impressively strong anti-drug message. All the players are given depth to their roles, and the chance to develop them. Even the little kid, playing the third in line to the Libiwalian throne, is not irritating – and that’s high praise coming from me, as far as child actors go. All told, this is one of the most purely enjoyable ninety minutes I’ve spent of late, easily surpassing bigger budget films like Cleaner or The Gorge, and given my expectations, is likely going to be the most pleasant surprise of the year. The whole movie is embedded below. Take five minutes to check out the opening sequence, and see if it hooks you as well as it hooked me!

Dir: Huo Sui-qiang
Star: Yang Xing, Henry Prince Mak, Tao Tao, Lee Dong Hyuk
a.k.a. Sniper King: Assassination

Kill Craft

  By

★★
“More kill than craft.”

There is potential in the idea here. It’s a shame it ends up feeling like two separate movies, both of which come out feeling under-cooked. The main focus is on Marina Delon (Loutsis), a teenage girl with the typical teenage girl problems, e.g. bickering parents, generally sullen demeanour, etc. Except, her dad Thomas (Paré) is actually an assassin, working for the very strange Poe (Oberst). This has contributed to the marital strife, because his work is why mom is in a wheel-chair – and is not happy about it, to put it mildly. However, things are up-ended after Thomas is killed on a job, and Marina decides to take over the family business.

Thee are a few interesting directions this could perhaps have gone. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take any of them. Instead, things rumble vaguely on, with Marina doing not very exciting murders for hire, sometimes with the help of her Gother than thou BFF Freya (Eggleston), and to varying success. Such as trying to kill the estranged wife of a gangster, which only results in a bit of flirty chit-chat with the target’s son. Communication with Poe is entirely through dead-drops, so he has no idea his assassin is now a teen girl, until his boss informs him descriptions of the killer no longer resemble Michael Paré. Poe decides to tidy up the loose ends, by terminating what remains of the family.

Why it feels like two films, is mostly because the director can’t seem to commit to whether it should be Marina’s story or Poe’s. It could have been both, adopting a Leon-esque approach of Poe taking her under his wing. However, the two barely share a few seconds of screen-time before the final shootout. Instead, we get unconvincing family drama, e.g. Marina being upset her father isn’t attending the recital at which she is unconvincingly playing the violin, or even weirder stuff such as Poe digging up the grave of his dead mother. I’d actually have been fine with more of the latter – few do unrepentantly weird better than Oberst [he has done a one-man stage show adapting Edgar Allen Poe stories, incidentally, giving resonance to his character name here], and he’s much better an actor than Loutsis.

For whatever reason, I kept expecting some dramatic twist, such as Freya being a figment of Marina’s imagination. I mean, we first meet the pair digging animal graves behind her house, which sets an odd tone for the film from the beginning. The fact Marina and Poe both… have issues, is another way this could have developed. But once we’ve established Marina is taking over – and with remarkable vagueness on the details there – the film more or less grinds to a halt, dramatically and thematically. With action sequences which are no more than competent, despite some gore which is occasionally amusingly excessive, this is one you can afford to miss, despite Oberst’s best efforts.

Dir: Mark Savage
Star: Sanae Loutsis, Isis Eggleston, Michael Paré, Bill Oberst Jr.

The Undeserving

  By

★★★
“Save a horse, ride a cowgirl.”

I’m slightly grading this on a curve, because this is likely the best of the low-budget modern blaxploitation movies I’ve seen, by some margin. By “normal” standards, that still falls some way short of Oscar-winning, with the limited resources still being obvious at some point. But compared to some of the other entries I’ve sat through, this is a palpable improvement, avoiding many of the worst cliches of the genre, in favor of a story which has had some attention given to it. It’s not an African-American knockoff of Scarface, like so many others, and does not entirely rely on a soundtrack of bad rap songs by the director’s pals. That alone puts it ahead of the pack.

It begins with an assassination carried out by arms dealer Lion Caldwell (Russell). He’s wants to kill the person who’s blackmailing him, and make it look like he’s the target. But to ensure there are no loose ends, he will also kill the hitwoman, Harper (Lavan). However, the intended target gets wind of the plan, and switches wigs with an innocent bystander, causing Harper to shoot the wrong target: Lion’s ex-wife, and the mother of his daughter. The whole mess ends up with Harper dumped in a lake, shot multiple times, and stabbed for good measure. Of course, she’s not dead. She is able to make her way to shore, where’s she’s rescued by a couple. The husband is a surgeon, and able to patch her up in-house, rather than notify the authorities. Yeah, I rolled my eyes a bit at that.

Thereafter, Harper makes her way back to her family, from whom she has been estranged, following a gun accident. Her sister, Fire (Curstin), is less than impressed to see her sibling back. Word reaches Lion that his tidying up hasn’t been successful, so he sends his top man, First (Peri), to take care of Harper once and for all. Should her family get in the way, who cares? If you’re thinking this could end up blowing back on Lion… yeah. There’s more thought into this than I expected, though the plot remains imperfect. There’s a second woman left for dead in the lake, but that doesn’t appear to go anywhere much.

I did like a lot the setting for this being “black country”, for want of a better phrase. Not seen a film with that background before; this genre is typically light on horse-riding: Beyonce has a lot to answer for, I suspect! The action is a bit of a mixed bag – some moments work considerably better than others – and there’s some very bad CGI for a gas-pump explosion. But the characters are as well-written as the script, with some unexpected elements. For example, Lion is trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter, in a similar way to Harper and her family. Based on this, I’d not be averse to looking at more of Elmore’s work.

Dir: Joseph A. Elmore Jr.
Star: Nyra Lavan, Oshea Russell, King Curstin, Joshua Peri

Impulse

  By

★★½
“Two’s company…”

This is one of the more successful efforts to spin a conspiratorial narrative – at least until the final act, where it topples over into implausibility. It’s a bit like how QAnon were not wrong about the rich and powerful being involved in sex trafficking… it just wasn’t out of the basement of a pizza restaurant. The heroine here is Sofia (Gudic), a journalist who is investigating a series of odd murders, in which powerful men are killed in highly compromising positions. These are assassinations carried out by an escort-assassin, Theda – yeah, one of the less subtle anagrammatic names I’ve seen – on behalf of a shadowy, super-powerful group of the wealthy and famous, under the oversight of Zane (Cassavetes).

Complicating matters is that Theda (also Gudic) is the spitting image of Sofia, just with dark hair, so when a fellow journalist, David (Ferrigno), see the hitwoman leaving the scene of a killing, he becomes convinced Sofia is moonlighting. Of course, there are only a few possible ways this can be resolved, such as a coincidental doppelganger, long-lost twin sister, or severely split personalities. I won’t reveal which way the film goes. But there is a sharp ring of plausibility to the way the cabal obtain blackmail material in order to get a politician, Governor Hughes (Kirkland) on their side, then manipulate him to do their political bidding. Though perhaps most chilling is the way the group quickly moves on when Hughes is no longer of use.

As someone who used to be into conspiratorial stuff (back when it was still fun, which slowly ceased to be true after 9/11), I enjoyed these elements, and nods to things like mind-controlled assassins. But at the end, it shifts into some kind of occult ritual scenario involving baby sacrifice, which makes the whole thing smell weirdly like misinformation. The powerful will act to retain  or increase their power: there’s no need for any motivation beyond that, including spooky cosplay. Naturally, Sofia – or is it Theda? – is on hand to witness these rituals, and face off against the cabal members in their lair, including both Zane and the person responsible for her situation. Credit the makers for delivering a surprisingly downbeat ending.

Gudic seems to be having adequate fun in her dual roles, though I’d certainly like to have seen more of Theda in action. It feels like her murderous talents are wasted here, even if making someone choke to death on a large, realistic-looking dildo does demonstrate impressive imagination. The ease with which she apparently shrugs off her programming is a bit troubling: if I was an evil overlord, I’d be having words with my abuse-induced control department minions. More action, and to be frank, more gratuitous nudity, would have been welcome. What’s the point of having an escort-assassin who never undresses? [Though there is a scene involving two girls, a bath and a lot of red wine] Overall, I was adequately amused, albeit not much more.

Dir: Patrick Flaherty
Star: Dajana Gudic, Lou Ferrigno Jr., Nick Cassavetes, Rob Kirkland

First Target

  By

★★★
“Mostly hit, and several misses.”

Well, after taking ten years to get from the third film to the first, the gap between first and second is considerably shorter. I think this probably works the best of the trilogy, not least because there are a few good GWG to be found here, not just Secret Service Agent Alex McGregor. This time, she’s played by Hannah – allegedly, seeing her here got Tarantino to cast her in Kill Bill – rather than Hemingway. The latter supposedly declined due to a combination of scheduling conflicts and script concerns. Frankly, I think this is a bit more solid than the original film. It begins with a nice nod back to First Daughter, opening again with an attack on President Jonathan Hayes (Harrison) – except, this time it’s just a training exercise.

McGregor is now the head of the Secret Service, and is coming down hard on new agent Kelsey Innes, for much the same reason McGregor suffered the same treatment. But more pressing matters are at hand, because the Vice President has a plot to kill his boss and take over. To that end, he has hired international assassin Nina Stahl (Grauer) and her hacker brother, who plan to assassinate Harrison during a ceremony in Seattle, with the help of a mole inside the local Secret Service office. Returning from the first picture is wilderness guide Grant Coleman (Savant), whose attempts to propose to Alex keep getting interrupted, and who is impressively unfazed by the fact his girlfriend now looks radically different from last movie.

The concept here is still a little silly, but at least the threat here is genuine, with Stahl a decent adversary who poses a real threat to McGregor, Innes, etc. She additionally brings a nice line in femme fatale to her line of work, and I was surprised to see a not-exactly subtly incestuous vibe with her brother. It feels like Stahl has wandered in from a different franchise entirely. Again, it is a little disappointing that Grant ends up doing so much, in this case going toe-to-toe with Nina, while Alex is making her way up the mountain towards the assassin. However, the heroine still gets her licks in, and puts the pieces of the puzzle together before anyone else.

Unlike First Daughter, there’s a sense that most of the people involved here are relatively smart; or, at least, behave as if they are. The absence of the annoying teenage Presidential daughter – never seen or heard, but apparently now getting tattoos – feels like a positive development too. It still remains limited by being a TV movie, and the pauses for advert breaks are often painfully obvious (not helped by them not lining up with the Tubi advert breaks). However, I was definitely entertained, and if I had seen this when it came out in TBS at the turn of the millennium, I would likely not have changed the channel. It almost makes me want to re-review First Shot, and see if I was unnecessarily harsh to it. Almost…

Dir: Armand Mastroianni
Star: Daryl Hannah, Doug Savant, Gregory Harrison, Ona Grauer 

Ninja: Prophecy of Death

  By

½
“I know ninjas are supposed to be silent, but…”

To a certain degree, this should be graded as “incomplete”. Easiest to quote the IMDb on the reason why. “This film was to be shelved by director Kabasinski, when post-production had a lengthy delay and he went on to produce the film Skull Forest. Very happy with the improvements in overall production value of Skull Forest, Kabasinski was going to just take this film as a ‘loss’ having already moved forward. It was not until an editor from Buffalo, NY stepped in and expressed desire in taking on the project. Feeling indebted to the cast and crew for the film and post-production going better then expected, Kabasinski decided on releasing the film.”

He shouldn’t have bothered. Because it does the Kabasinski brand-name irreparable damage, due to its terrible quality, in one aspect especially. If this had been fixed, it still wouldn’t have been great – it would remain cheap and amateur. But it would not be in the conversation for worst action heroine movie of all-time, as is the case based on what was eventually released. The story is about an assassin, known only as “The Lost One” (Porada), who is part of a sect of ninjas. On a mission, she balks when she is ordered to kidnap a child. This mutiny is not taken well, and she is left for dead by her colleagues. Naturally, she isn’t, and teams up with some Mafia hitmen (Anthony and Poffo) to get her revenge. 

It’s a basic plot, yet not unworkable, especially when delivered with the director’s enthusiastic fondness for gratuitous nudity and gloopy violence. The low budget doesn’t really matter when you are talking nekkid ninja training. But what irredeemably sinks the movie, and why it should have remained lost (or, at best, a bonus feature on another movie) is the audio. Regular readers will know this is a common complaint I have with smaller productions,  and it’s a personal peeve. I don’t use words like “worst ever” lightly either. So you will understand how much of an issue it is that – bold font, please – this is the worst ever audio I have heard on a released film, bar none.

Seriously, the audio is entirely missing for about half the scenes. No music, no background sounds, nothing. This includes the entire opening credits, which feature Mrs. Kabasinski doing more nude sword work. It almost becomes some bizarre form of art statement, like a throwback to the silent era. Even when it’s present, it is poorly mixed and the dialogue sometimes inaudible. It would probably have worked significantly better had Kabasinski nuked all the audio, turned it b&w, added some intertitles to tell us the plot, and thrown ninety minutes of public domain orchestral music onto it. Instead, what you have is a feature-length demonstration about the importance of the auditory portion to cinema. As well as how worthless a movie can be, when the makers simply cannot be bothered to deliver the materials. 

Dir: Len Kabasinski
Star: Renee Porada, Brian Anthony, Lanny Poffo, Darian Caine

The Shadow Strays

  By

★★★★½
“Dog eat dog”

Director Tjahjanto gave us one of the best action films of the last decade in The Night Comes For Us, a gory and relentless assault of jaw-dropping hand-to-hand mayhem. Follow-up, The Big 4, was a little underwhelming, but I was still stoked to hear about this, in which he puts a heroine front and centre. This is perhaps a step or two short of Night – it’s clear the lead here is not a lifelong practitioner of martial arts like Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais. However, it’s the best film I’ve reviewed on this site in 2024, likely edging out Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, through a combination of sheer force of will and arterial spray.

The Shadows are a sect of assassins, who are basically unstoppable. 13 (Ribero) is a teenage trainee, who screws up a mission in Japan alongside her instructor, Umbra (Malasan), and barely survives. 13 gets put on administrative leave, and her enforced idleness is where the problems start. In a thread strongly reminiscent of Leon, she watches a neighbour get killed by a gang, and takes care of the son, Monji. However, he vanishes, apparently abducted by the gang, and 13 isn’t standing for that. Beginning by turning low-level enforcer, Jeki (Emmanuel), she works her way up the power structure, which goes right to the top of Indonesian political society. The resulting chaos threatens to expose the Shadows, so Umbra is then dispatched to terminate their rogue agent.

This runs a chunky 144 minutes – just a handful shorter than Furiosa – which seems a fair while for a martial-arts film. The Raid 2 and John Wick 4 are the only ones which come to mind as longer. But I can’t say this particularly felt like it; there’s not much slack. We open with the absolutely blood-drenched Japanese operation, which sets the tone early. To be honest, it does such a good job, most of what follows falls slightly short. Ribero is a model and singer, and it feels like Tjahjanto underlights a lot of scenes to help paper over this. But then there’s the final battle, between 13 and Umbra. It’s likely behind only Crouching Tiger as my favorite female vs. female fight ever: utterly relentless, and brutal as hell.

It is a little less impressive in between the fights: originality is, as noted previously, not necessarily the film’s strongest suit. Other threads are set up and them ignored, such as the Shadows’ miraculous serum, which is used by Umbra to resuscitate 13 in Japan, and never mentioned again. Maybe it’ll play more of a part in the sequel, to which the ending strongly hints, bringing in a face familiar to fans of Indonesian action. I’d love to see it, since this is definitely pushing the boundaries of action heroine cinema, in all the right ways. While imperfect, at its best this is enough to make me consider introducing a six-star rating, because it goes places I’ve never seen. When it does, the results are glorious.

Dir: Timo Tjahjanto
Star: Aurora Ribero, Kristo Immanuel, Hana Malasan, Taskya Namya

Echo 8

  By

★★½
“Easier to forget.”

This bills itself as “Australia’s first female-led independent action movie”. Seems a bit of a stretch, considering how many films we’ve reviewed from Down Under previously, such as Avarice. Heck, Agent Provocateur had a similar plot in 2012. However, this has had a lengthy trip to the screen, shooting having started prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Four years later, it’s finally available, and is clearly a labour of love for those involved, not least Tran who wore multiple heads on the production. Between that and the limited resources, I’m reluctant to pan it savagely, but the truth is, even with a rating which is cutting it slack for these reasons, the end product is still not very good. It’s more “shows some potential” than “would recommend.”

The main problem is a script, which is basically a mix of movie cliches #27, the assassin who defies orders, and #32, cinematic amnesia, which naturally releases information at the exact pace needed by the plot. Echo 8 (Tran) has been brought up since she was a young child to be a trained killer, and now works alongside her partner, Delta 1 (Vuong), under the oversight of boss Agent 5 (Hara). But she’s also experiencing flashbacks of her early life, which are causing her to question what she’s doing. When Echo 8 is ordered to kill local activist Hanh (Chan), who is digging into areas potentially troublesome for the organization, the assassin decides not to carry out her task.

Needless to say, Agent 5 is less than happy at the situation, and Echo 8 finds herself going from the hunter to the hunted. If this sounds familiar, it’s all very much what we’ve seen before: Naked Weapon uses basically the same story, or more recently, so does Thailand’s The Kill List. A well-worn plot isn’t necessarily a problem, if you do well in other areas, be it performances or action. Its something the films mentioned manage, to considerably greater success than Echo 8, which succeeds only intermittently. You have also to get past the idea of killers who walk around dressed like ninjas on Halloween night – hardly inconspicuous – and get into random fights in night-clubs, because that won’t draw attention to themselves either.

The viewer must then deal with a slew of supporting actors who don’t need to give up their day jobs. Tran is okay, and Vuong actually good, with a dry sense of humour that’s welcome. Some others, though, may be delivering their lines phonetically, and the action is similarly mixed. The small scale of the production sometimes comes through, and even within the same fight, you’ll get one punch that seems to have impact, followed by two that clearly miss the mark. There are odd distractions, like the fight where someone is wielding a child’s plastic chair: what is that doing in an underground car-park? The ending is left open and a trilogy is planned. While I’m not averse to giving it a look, I hope those involved learn from this experience and do better next time.

Dir: Maria Tran, Takashi Hara
Star: Maria Tran, David Vuong, Takeshi Hara, Gabrielle Chan

Role Play

  By

★★★
“Until death do us part.”

If a little light on the action front, this probably makes up for it in heart. On surface, the Brackett family are largely like any other. Sure, mom Emma (Cuoco) spends a lot of time out of town on business. But she loves husband Dave (Oyelowo)  and her two kids, even if she’s a little unfocused, forgetting their anniversary. The problem is, as we know from the start, that Emma is a hitwoman, who used to work for an organization called Sovereign, before turning freelance. They’re still after her. And that’s where the problems start, as on a make-up anniversary date at a hotel, she’s spotted by Bob Kellerman (Nighy), another freelancer, interested in collecting the reward on Emma’s head.

While she is able to fend him off, the fracas blows her cover and she has to hightail it to Berlin. Given she told her husband she was going to Idaho, this understandably leaves a very confused Dave in her wake, trying to come to terms with the woman he loved, not being the woman he loved. The cops believe he was involved in the hotel incident, with special agent Gwen Carver (Nielsen) intent on using him to get to Emma. He heads off to Berlin in his spouse’s wake, only for them both to get captured by Sovereign, who make Emma an offer she can’t refuse. To save her kids, and come back into the company fold, she has to kill Dave herself. 

In general, this appears to be more interested in the dramatic than the explosive. I’m fine with that though, since the performances are all up to the mark. We knew Oyelowo mostly from his time playing a spy on MI:5 (a.k.a. Spooks), so it was somewhat ironic to see him as a naive but doting husband, unwittingly married to an assassin. Cuoco is best known for her time on sit-com The Big Bang Theory, and I was a little concerned about her ability to play a professional killer. However, she’s fine, and Nielsen makes a good antagonist for her. But it’s probably Nighy who delivers the best performance, in a small role that’s just off-kilter enough to be memorable, while always seeming one step ahead.

The fight scenes here are typically brief: do not expect any Atomic Blonde style brawls. It feels they’re trying to depict Emma as a tersely efficient executioner, and given the actress’s lack of combat experience, this approach is probably for the best. This seems slightly like a low-key version of The Long Kiss Goodnight, though the family life here is deliberate, rather than the product of amnesia. It relies a lot on the relationship between Dave and Emma, and that’s good enough to counter the limited quantity of action. This was especially true at the end, where I expected a better battle between Emma and Gwen. Truth be told though, I didn’t mind too much, even if this is perhaps mostly role-playing as an action film.

Dir: Thomas Vincent
Star: Kaley Cuoco, David Oyelowo, Connie Nielsen, Bill Nighy

The Killer

  By

★★★
“All killer, some filler.”

Back in 1990, I saw the original version of The Killer at the ICA in London. I’d never seen anything like it, and didn’t quite know what to think. But it kindled a deep fondness for Hong Kong cinema, and it’s also likely one of the most influential action films of the decade, whose impact is still being felt today. I wasn’t sure what to think about a remake, especially a gender-swapped one. These rarely work – hello, Ghostbusters. But at least this one was going to be done by the original director. Especially after having enjoyed his Violent Night, if there was anyone whom I’d trust not to screw up a John Woo film, it’s probably going to be John Woo.

He doesn’t. Oh, it’s not as good as the original, or even Violent Night. However, it’s perfectly serviceable, especially if you haven’t seen the original. Woo treats his own material with respect. While there are differences, none feel forced for the sake of it. I was quite surprised to see Woo go with a female lead, because his films tend to be pure, undiluted masculinity. I’m hard-pushed to think of a decent, well-written female character in any of them. To be honest, I still am. For Zee (Emmanuel) is just your typical assassin with a conscience, who refuses to kill innocent civilian Jenn (Silvers), after accidentally blinding her during a mission. This brings her the enmity of her handler, Finn (Worthington), but eventually, the support of dogged cop Sey (Sy).

The biggest issue here is simple: Emmanuel isn’t Chow Yun-Fat. Not even close, in terms of charisma, and that renders this a disposable trifle. The rest of the cast fares better, including former football player Eric Cantona as an irascible gangster (he was irascible on the football field too). Quite why Worthington sports an Oirish accent and spouts Oirish phrases escapes me. But I’ll forgive it, given his two-pack of sidekicks. The pick of whom is played by Aurélia Agel, who was Karen Gillan’s stunt double in Gunpowder Milkshake. She gets an impressive fight against the heroine at the end. In a church, naturally. A good drinking game there: take a swig for each Woo cliché: birds, slow-mo diving, guns in each hand, etc.

It runs a good twenty minutes longer than the original and, while it doesn’t often drag, I’d be hard-pushed to say this extra length adds much extra value. Probably best not to think about any of this too much, such as how Zee’s decision to protect Jenn, without knowing the facts, actually leads to far more deaths, of far more innocent victims. Or the dubious, Looney Tunes-like medicine, where a whack on the head can only be remedied by another whack on the head. Mind you, it’s not as if the original stands up to close scrutiny either. Where Woo led thirty-five years ago, many have since followed – and some, gone further. Yet I’d still rather see him at play, than a lot of his successors.

Dir: John Woo
Star: Nathalie Emmanuel, Omar Sy, Sam Worthington, Diana Silvers