Let’s be real: you can dislike Matthew Vaughn’s work, but you can’t deny that when it comes to making action films, the director has a unique style and his own mark. In fact, Vaughn’s movies often look like comic books brought to screen and include the garish colours and crude humour we love in so many of them. The result is sometimes very successful, like the first Kingsman (2015), and sometimes much less so – my review of Argylle (2024) is coming. Regardless, it only made sense for Vaughn to direct the on-screen adaptation of twisted comic book Kick-Ass, which (smartly) deconstructs the genre.
Created by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. in 2008, Kick-Ass focuses on the story of Dave Lizewski, a teenager and hardcore comic books fan from NYC, who decides to put on a costume and emulate his favourite superheroes. It doesn’t matter that Dave has no powers or training, he’s determined to make a difference and fight some proper crime. He quickly becomes popular and influential as the masked vigilante Kick-Ass, but also encounters real-life bad guys who don’t really appreciate his presence on the streets! While the original comic book is bloodier and much more violent than most (sometimes close to The Boys), Vaughn’s 2010 adaptation is on the lighter side – but remains worth a watch.
Over-the-top action at its finest
The 2010 movie stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson (future 007?) as the main protagonist, and also features a (very) young Chloë Grace Moretz as child vigilante Hit Girl, the daughter of a crazed Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage, hamming it up in every scene). Oh, and the main bad guy, a bald and ruthless mafia boss, is none other than Mark Strong! This ridiculously fun casting alone should make you want to check the movie out, but in case that’s not enough, Kick-Ass has some gleefully brutal action scenes.
Bullets, flames, blades, or tasers: nothing is off-limits when it comes to fighting bad guys, and Hit-Girl and Big Daddy know how to use their surroundings to their advantage – and to gruesome results. One particularly brutal brawl inside of a dealer’s flat involving Moretz will stick with you, and overall, the film is full of cool stylised fight scenes which will please action lovers.
Some of them are also surprisingly realistic, especially at the beginning of Dave’s training: he is not magically good at fighting and gets beaten up a lot once he hits the streets. In Kick-Ass, Matthew Vaughn finds the right balance between dumb humour and actual stakes (a balance he would later lose in Kingsman 2 (2017), but that’s another story!). Yes, there are jetpacks and more below-the-belt jokes than your teenage brain could ever come up with, but when death happens, it is for real, and we see it impacting the protagonists. Hit Girl’s stolen youth is also discussed briefly but in a quite subtle way, as are the consequences of Dave’s naivete – a fairly stereotypical teenager, he believes that he can win against the “bad guys” and leave unscathed… until reality catches up with him. These stakes help to make the movie more than brainless fun, and they also add to its rewatch value.
Genre-savviness and the nostalgia factor
Kick-Ass knows it is a superhero movie. Matthew Vaughn knows he is making a superhero movie. Even the characters are very aware that they are in a superhero movie. And Dave knows everything about them! This savviness allows Vaughn to play with the genre’s tropes and to offer countless fun situations, giving us a “behind-the-scenes” look on the world of real-life vigilantes. Here, we have an ultra-violent little girl who takes down men twice her size, an aspiring superhero who is slowly learning to jump from one building to another, and even some villainous mafiosi living in a giant NYC penthouse. But don’t ask Hit Girl what kind of signal in the sky the mayor shines to call her!
The movie is a comic book brought into our world, and also gains some points because of its typical 2010s look. Okay, this one might be a little unfair, since it is just a byproduct of the time period, but Kick-Ass has aged like fine wine. It has a typically retro aesthetic and some nice vibrant colours, which pay homage to the source material. This nostalgia shot also brings us back to a time where social media was just starting to become a global phenomenon, and videos of random masked dudes on YouTube really could go viral overnight! Even Kick-Ass’ substance is nostalgic: it captures adolescence, and features both its grossest aspects and its touching idealism.
The movie’s tone blends the garish and upbeat universe of the first superhero films that arrived on our screens in the late 2000s with some darker elements that became popular in post-2005 action (just think Mission: Impossible III (2006), or Die Hard 4 (2007)). The result is a fun and brutal ride with an impeccable original score: it will make you want to don a cape and a mask, no questions asked. Of course, Kick-Ass isn’t perfect: Vaughn haters will find it hollow, gratuitously violent and crude (and they might not be completely wrong!), and no, not all of the film’s jokes land. But Kick-Ass is an ultimate ode to teenage fantasies of sucker punching bad guys, and that makes it the perfect superhero flick for action fans.
Betrayal is a recurring subject throughout the James Bond films of the Pierce Brosnan era. In the 1995 blockbuster GoldenEye, Bond suffers the treason of his friend agent 006, who fakes his death and resurfaces as an arms dealer in Russia to plot a macabre revenge against Britain. Tomorrow Never Dies, from 1997, is a major exception as all the character’s intentions are pretty much dealt from the early minutes of the film; but 1999’s The World Is Not Enough has 007 almost falling in love for a pretty oil heiress and former kidnap victim ignoring that the man who is supposedly after her is a mere accomplice in a plot that involves a massive revenge against Bond, MI6 and her leader M. Enter the 21st century in 2002 and Miranda Frost’s betrayal costs Britain’s ace of spies an uncomfortable stay in a North Korean military prison and posterior banishment from the British Intelligence in Die Another Day.
The betrayals to Brosnan’s Bond, unfortunately, would continue after the cameras stopped rolling.
Receiving the “Billion Dollar Bond” moniker in 2000 after MGM announced that the worldwide box office takings of GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough totaled $1,046,000,007 plus the $431 million gross of Die Another Day, there was no doubt about the commercial success of the fifth Bond actor. Many felt that Brosnan deserved another Bond adventure and the Irish star has several times his desire to return for a fifth film. Regrettably, this didn’t happen as a change of plans led to the reboot of the saga with Casino Royale in 2006. Learning that he was axed from the role was painful both for the actor as for his fans. But the fact that his exit was so indecorous –and disrespectful– makes the whole affair feel like an undeserved injustice. The man who resurfaced the character in a time where he was considered a relic of the Cold War deserved a better farewell.
When looking at his final film Die Another Day, much of the blame is projected on the excessive profusion of special effects. This is often made a synecdoche of the whole film in revisionist reviews that ignore the context of the times: the early 2000s, where exaggerated stunts and situations convened with strong violence in a world shocked by terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which had a major influence in the entertainment industry. But while outlets have taken into account the excess of CGI and not-so realistic situations in the 2002 movie, the Lee Tamahori film also had a fair share of appraisal: chief among them was Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman, who had been very critical of Pierce Brosnan’s debut in GoldenEye yet ended up celebrating the way Die Another Day put the fate of the character at stake with Bond’s torture, imprisonment and dismissal from MI6 before he cleans his name. Alexander Walker, from the Evening Standard, also gave the film an interestingly positive review for a man who rarely regarded commercial features so highly.
Furthermore, MGM had been very pleased with the numbers of the film: at $160 million, it represented the 42% of their income in the domestic market. Inflation-adjusted ($298 m), it had a better performance than every following EON film bar Skyfall in the United States and Canada. For MGM’s Vice-president Chris McGurk, Die Another Day had “the winning formula” and that formula would play a part in the film that would eventually be Casino Royale. This way, 2003 was riddled with rumors of an (eventually cancelled) spin-off starring Halle Berry as Die Another Day’s NSA agent Jinx, the announcement of Electronic Arts’ video game Everything or Nothing counting with Pierce Brosnan’s voice and appearance, and the names like Clive Owen and Jude Law popping up as possible next James Bond. Needless to say, few fans considered the idea of Brosnan’s exit seriously back then. And those who had been very critical of the style of his fourth film even hoped that he would have the chance to do a less spectacular adventure as it had happened to Roger Moore with For Your Eyes Only after Moonraker.
In March 2004, rumors of Brosnan’s departure of the role increased when he gave ambiguous words concerning his return as 007: “I don’t know. We’re in a very opaque land at the moment. I’m certainly willing to come back for a fifth and final one. But I think with the producers a certain kind of paralysis has set in. And they don’t know where to go, how to go with this film. So if it happens, great. If it doesn’t, I’ve done my four.” During this period, there were reports of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade having completing the script for the 21st Bond film, but tailored for a “generic Bond actor”, although more pessimistic insiders would say the project was “in development hell”.
During press junkets for The Laws of Attraction, where he co-starred opposite Julianne Moore, Brosnan kept saying that he didn’t have a concrete answer regarding his return as 007 and showed his discontent towards the producers: “They said they wanted to do a fifth, and we started negotiations, and those negotiations have now ceased. Where does that leave me? How do I answer this question? It would be nice to have it on level ground. But nobody knows. I wish I could be more specific and say, ‘No, they’re going to look for somebody else. My time is up; they’ve found somebody else.’ I can’t say that, and at the same time I can’t say, ‘Well, we’re going ahead,’ because they said, ‘We don’t have the script. We don’t know what to do.’”
On October 14, 2004, as he shot After The Sunset in the Bahamas, the Irish actor said his time as James Bond was “absolutely over”. According to his version, he was phoned by the producers and was told they were looking for someone else: “They invited me back right before I went to present that film (Die Another Day). They said: ‘We’re so happy with the success, we want you to come back!’ And then one day the phone rang. I was here and my agents told me that the goalposts had moved and that they had changed their minds.”
But what happened on the other side, before Brosnan got his burn notice? Much of the debate to whether to renew the actor’s contract or not were related to his age, as he had turned 50 six months after the release of Die Another Day. Michael Nathanson, former president of MGM Pictures, told The San Francisco Experience podcast that he and his partners at MGM felt they could get at least one more movie from Brosnan and so did producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. One morning, Nathanson got a call from Broccoli and said she was going to have breakfast with Brosnan in Los Angeles to tell him he was out of the picture. She didn’t have another candidate in mind to replace him and even though the MGM executive told her that the actor was expecting something different, she seemed to have made up her mind. Hours later, Nathanson’s phone was inundated with calls from Brosnan’s agent, Fred Spector, who was trying to reach him and his partners Alex Yemenidjian and Chris McGurk. “Pierce was shattered. He had absolutely no expectation about it, and he felt somewhat betrayed by them based on what they had said before this,” he explained.
To put these feelings into context, we shouldn’t forget that Pierce Brosnan’s connections to James Bond go beyond just playing the character: his late wife, Cassandra Harris, had a small role in For Your Eyes Only and she herself hoped to see her husband playing 007. Unfortunately, she had died of ovarian cancer in December 1991, slightly less than four years before GoldenEye premiered. In his early childhood and just arrived to London from Ireland, Brosnan’s first Technicolor experience on the big screen was Goldfinger, the third film in the EON series. Precisely, the day the 11-year-old Pierce was on the plane heading for London was August 12, 1964, when a heart attack ended the short but fascinating life of Ian Fleming. On top of this, as is well-known by now, Brosnan was first cast as 007 in 1986 as Remington Steele was facing cancellation. This opportunity was frustrated by the NBC when they decided to renew the series co-starring Stephanie Zimbalist and used a clause in the actor’s contract to hold him in the role of the anonymous thief-turned-detective.
For Chris McGurk, Brosnan’s axing was centered on a discussion about money. It appears Wilson and Broccoli had rejected his salary demands, which according to some outlets were exorbitant. This rumour was denied by the fifth Bond in October 2005 claiming that it was more or less the same amount men and women have received for starring in similar blockbusters. The former MGM Vice-president places the meeting between Brosnan and the producers at lunchtime in a restaurant in Santa Monica and claimed that the actor wanted a satisfactory explanation on why they weren’t renewing his contract and the subject of his fee was brought up. It is understood that the producers said “No”, there were no appeals and Brosnan simply got up and walked away of the restaurant.
Unlike the two MGM executives, the actor didn’t mention a meal with the producers, only a phone call.
That’s show business for you, as that episode from The Simpsons titled “Bart Gets Famous” reminds us. But beyond the speculation of businessmen (or women) handling intellectual properties and taking difficult decisions in the world of entertainment, perhaps the biggest betrayal Pierce Brosnan has suffered in the past decades –and only barely mended recently– comes from moviegoers complying with revisionist ideas concerning the James Bond saga, whose starting point was entered the reboot cycle in 2006.
Contradicting Ian Fleming’s statement that his Bond novels were not written for “a suffering humanity”, the Daniel Craig era exacerbated the character’s weaknesses and questioned the character’s antics film after film, leaving our hero in a position where he was equaled to the villain and repeatedly described as an “assassin” by people who –unlike Bond– would have no remorse in hurting innocents or destroying nations with a nuclear strike. The character himself describes his duty as “killing people” and Spectre’s leading lady (played by Léa Seydoux) wonders why “did he choose the life of a paid assassin”. It’s not just that the villains are saying it, the hero describes himself that way.
This revisionist take on James Bond made the original era the target of different complains, from signaling Sean Connery’s machismo to the excess of comic gags in the days of Roger Moore. In the case of Pierce Brosnan, the disapproval is directed to the perception that he wasn’t physically strong, that the scripts of his films were bland and with uninteresting villains, or that his women were mere decorative elements.
These accusations are not fair. While Brosnan didn’t have the body of a bodybuilder, he knew how to kill or incapacitate an enemy with his bare hands. There is plenty of physicality in his confrontation with Alec Trevelyan at the end of GoldenEye and he can subdue with a few quick moves three armed bodyguards at a banker’s office in The World Is Not Enough, too. Another good example of his dark side takes place in Die Another Day, where he grabs the drips feeding into Zao as he lays unconscious in a Cuban clinic and forces him to give away the identity of a traitor inside MI6: “Got you attention!” he sardonically says as the terrorist is in deep pain. As charming as his Bond was, he could also be though when he wanted to and cold-hearted enough to shoot a woman he loved when she turned on him, showing that for him his loyalty to Queen and Country always comes first.
These films offered interesting challenges for Ian Fleming’s secret agent to face during the transition of two centuries: GoldenEye faced Bond off against another 00 agent, which underlined how dangerous these men could be when switching sides and how much a solitary man like Bond trusted in him – he even knew how his parents died (a fact taken from Ian Fleming’s You Only Live Twice and first acknowledged by EON on that film) and how he suffered “for those women he failed to protect”, a notable reference to his wife Tracy killed at the end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. More importantly, the script constantly places Bond in a world that rejects him only to have him prove with actions, not words, that he is the only man we can depend on. Like Austin Powers, he isn’t fully adapted to the 1990s, but unlike Powers he is skilled and competent enough to handle modern technologies like an IMB laptop and is up to date with information regarding the Russian fail-safe systems or the dangers of an electro-magnetic pulse.
The most by-the-book chapter of this cycle is Tomorrow Never Dies, based on the typical “world domination through World War III” seen in You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me. All the cards are dealt at the beginning and there are no surprises regarding who are the heroes and the villains in the story. But while it didn’t present major changes in terms of narrative structures, the film made a case for the dangers of telecommunications in a hyper-globalized society. Some six years after of CNN’s bombastic 24-hour coverage of Gulf War, the second Pierce Brosnan 007 adventure presents us with a media mogul who compares his media empire to Caesar’s legions and Napoleon’s armies and pits the United Kingdom and China against each other by tampering their navigation devices. When we see how world leaders and ministers often fight media outlets on social media and even users dedicate to uncover apparent interests in these corporations than go beyond reporting the news as objectively and faithfully as possible in the past years, we can confirm that the Roger Spottiswoode film was definitely ahead of its time.
The World Is Not Enough marked the tone for the Bond films to follow: character-driven stories and enemies from the past making a comeback to spoil the party. M, who did little more than sitting behind the chair and giving orders, would be directly linked to the leading lady of the film, the daughter of an oil tycoon killed in an explosion inside MI6 who was a close friend of her. Far from her tough as nails attitude in GoldenEye, we see how her maternal instinct makes her put herself in danger and take Bond’s intervention one step further when his own investigations conclude it was her who plotted the death of her father with the terrorist who kidnapped years ago. Played by Sophie Marceau, Elektra King wasn’t another femme fatale type of villain, but someone who believed in her own cause and who was trying to vindicate the image of her Muslim mother, whom she considered the true owner of her father’s fortune. The film ponders an interesting view on the murky areas on entrepreneurship as Bond himself questions the “integrity” of M’s friend when he learns he spent millions buying classified reports on the black market. Brosnan’s relationship with this lady is intense and he attaches himself emotionally when he knows she is in danger, in a way that comes as a surprise to himself and the audience when we learn she is a cold, calculating and manipulative woman who used both 007 and the apparent main villain for her own ends.
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 provoked fear not only across the United States but in the rest of America and primarily the West. Places that were perceived as “safe” weren’t safe anymore. This feeling is echoed in Die Another Day right from the pre-credit sequence, where an MI6 traitor tips the North Korean villain off of Bond’s cover and the secret agent is, unexpectedly, captured and tortured in a military prison. Bond is eventually exchanged and freed, but abandoned by his own people. The Americans, taking the lead on the War on Terror, determine 007 might have hemorrhaged information during the scorpion-based torture and M is forced to suspend him from the Double-0 section. Ian Fleming’s theory that espionage is a dirty trade often romanticized by the people is perfectly exemplified in the 2002 film, where spies –unlike soldiers– are treated as replaceable government assets than heroes whose lives have a weight in the public opinion. There is much debate about the proliferations of gadgets in the film, but people forget that Bond spends over 20 minutes of the film without government support and with nothing more than a heavy Smith & Wesson revolver and a 1957 Ford Fairlane car. Later in the film, where people argue that the special effects and unrealistic situations take control of the story, the secret agent drives a brand new Aston Martin V12 Vanquish loaded with gadgets. However, this special equipment hardly makes a difference when he has to confront the villain’s sidekick Zao, owner of an equally-deadly car. In the end, and by specifications given by director Lee Tamahori, it is not the car which grants Bond’s victory (as it had happened many times in the past) but his driving skills over his enemy’s.
Perhaps the major proof of how relevant the scripts for these films were is that key elements were reworked into the reboot era: Skyfall takes major elements from The World Is Not Enough (M threatened by someone from her past and the MI6 Headquarters attacked, to name a few) just like difficult relationship between Bond and M in Die Another Day sets a precedent for a similar dynamic of the two in Quantum of Solace. The destruction of Britannia statues and iconography of classic Bond elements during the main title sequence of No Time To Die seems to emulate the way Soviet statues were torn down in the GoldenEye main titles, the same idea to reflect two completely opposite worldviews.
Brosnan’s female companions provided the perfect combination of beauty and brains. In GoldenEye, Famke Janssen gave the series the first actual sex scene and provided the first sexually arousing moments after the lack of eroticism in the short Timothy Dalton era, but Izabella Scorupco broke new ground by actually questioning Bond about his life and how he felt about the coldness of his profession (another characteristic beaten down like a dead horse during the reboot era); Michelle Yeoh, now an Oscar winner thanks to Everything, Everywhere All At Once, proved to be capable Chinese agent who resisted Bond’s charms until the very end and even pushed for a change in the name of her character. This character was originally named Lin Pao, and since “Pao” means bun in Chinese she suggested the name Wai Lin, as “Wai” means “Patriotic for the Country”. Denise Richards’ character Dr Christmas Jones in The World Is Not Enough often gets overshadowed by the weight Sophie Marceau’s Elektra King carries in the story and even director Michael Apted admitted that the character was there to ensure a happy ending for Bond. However, Dr Jones is far from useless and saves the life of our hero many times, not to mention she was the only one who suspected something was off when he infiltrated a nuclear plant in Kazakhstan posing as one Dr Arkov, something none of the security men in charge of the compound did. Halle Berry, who had won an Oscar as she shot Die Another Day for her work in Monster’s Ball, may have been too streetwise to be that “female Bond” the PR campaigns wanted to sell, but in any case she could defeat an Olympic fencer like Miranda Frost in her own game. The case of Rosamund Pike’s character is also interesting to analyze given her triple loyalties: an MI6 agent infiltrated at the organization of the villain Graves only to have been working all along with him, reflecting much of the spirit of Sydney Bristow, Jennifer Gardner’s character in Alias but squarely on the bad side. If GoldenEye’s Alec Trevelyan staged his death to resurface nine years later, Miranda Frost was alive and well misdirecting MI6 to clear Graves of guilt undermine Bond’s performance.
Opinions aside, the disdain for Pierce Brosnan’s portrayal of James Bond or his films back in the day was scarcely seen. Those who had studied Ian Fleming’s character for a lifetime and had bylines in important publications in the Bond subculture have even named Brosnan as the best Bond since Sean Connery and others were more positive towards The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day than what they are today. Shortly after Brosnan was cast aside from the franchise in 2005, Christopher Lee claimed that he was the closest to Ian Fleming’s Bond. Lee not only played the title villain in 1974’s The Man With The Golden Gun, but was also a cousin of the 007 creator.
Moments like GoldenEye’s tank chase or the dogfight near the Russian border in Tomorrow Never Dies with the MiG jets are still brought up by non-Bond fans in occasional conversations. Even the three most recent entries in the Mission: Impossible saga, starring Tom Cruise and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, reference films more than anyone involved there would like to admit – although McQ himself has shown his appreciation for this era in a 2018 interview. Even Alec Baldwin’s character Alan Hunley wears one of the ties Bond has worn in Tomorrow Never Dies in a scene of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, from 2015.
The finger pointing at the lack of realism in several set pieces from GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and particularly Die Another Day frequently appears on retrospective analysis. No movie is without sin and other Bond films have received this critique as pretty much every blockbuster outside Bond. However, a special malice is detected when the subject of unrealistic action is brought up towards this era, mainly from those considering his successor –who could unexplainably survive a sniper shot, a fall and getting drowned while being unconscious– the embodiment of realism in the whole Bond universe. Not to mention the excessive punishment towards the invisible Aston Martin Vanquish, a functionality based on something the army was working on at the time and several scientists could give the illusion of invisibility to different objects in the same way Q explains in the movie (tiny cameras projecting what is reflected on the exact opposite side of the car). And we have yet to see a fully functional submarine car as the Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me, which was even more far-fetched in 1977 than the Vanquish in 2002.
Thirty years after he was first announced to the world press as James Bond –a date even the official 007 social media accounts got wrong in numerous opportunities (it was June 8, 1994, and not June 7) – Pierce Brosnan has reconciled himself with his time as Ian Fleming’s secret agent. Despite he has at times neglected his era and complained of his famous one-liners, it only takes to see his recent film Fast Charlie to see how several of his Bond day’s antics have made into the Charlie Swift persona, one-liners included. Far from Connery’s rejection of the character after the Bondmania of the late 1960s followed him to the restroom (literally), the Irish star even took some of his time to join a GoldenEye watchalong hosted by Esquire in 2020 and even agreed to play the N64 video game of the same name with Jimmy Fallon as he promoted his 2014 film The November Man.
For a reason, however, he didn’t seem to be very much pleased with No Time To Die and, when asked about Daniel Craig’s replacement in the role, he simply stated “I don’t care”.
For those who know how that film ended, it’s not difficult to understand why.
Nicolás Suszczyk
Read more about Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond era, his departure from the role of 007 and the connections between Bond and Ethan Hunt in the Updated Edition of The Bond of The Millennium.
A look back at Stuart Gordon’s ultraviolet and ultimate Fortress!
Horror director Stuart Gordon was a master of combining cheap thrills with deeply immersive settings. He rarely ventured into action territory, but in 1992 he did, and made Fortress. Gordon teamed up with Christopher Lambert, and let his practical effects crew work some serious overtime, so let’s have a look at how it all played out!
In the near future, the US violently enforces a one-child policy. John Brennick (Lambert) and his wife Karen, who is pregnant with their second child, want to flee the country, but are captured at the border. Both are sent to an underground prison complex that is run by prison director Poe (Kurtwood Smith) with surveillance and sadism. Brennick devises a plan to break out and save his wife and unborn child.
Intestination will commence in five seconds
Life is always better in Canada, but just out of reach for Brennick, and so begins the Sci-Fi version of Escape from Alcatraz. The basic elements are familiar with the film being roughly split into three segments: a glimpse into harsh prison life, the planning of the escape, and execution of the plan. Even though it paints its story on a grim dystopian canvas, Fortress is not as depressing as its peer Alien 3 from the same year that was also set in a prison, but an action-packed Sci-Fi thriller.
The film assembles its setting from the large repository of Sci-Fi and dystopian tropes. Gordon effectively combines all the pieces into an intense experience, however. The dread of total surveillance permeates almost every scene, like the terrifying thought of having a bomb put inside your guts, and computers that record your most intimate dreams and force nightmares upon you.
This is an unauthorized thought process
For many people it was a mystery how Christopher Lambert could achieve such fame in the 80s and 90s with his subdued mode of acting. But it usually works when, just as in this film, he portrays a calm character with lots of resolve, and occasional outbursts of rage. When things hit the fan in Fortress, Lambert becomes a furious screamer.
Kurtwoord Smith is intense as prison director Poe, an ambiguous villain with a twist. Longing for true love, he jealously watches other people’s erotic dreams, and punishes them afterwards. The other characters are one-dimensional archetypes: the neurotic, the wise elder, the brute and so on. They are all played with lots of energy by their respective actors, though. The great Jeffrey Combs is one of them, and he goes all in as neurotic tech genius with weird grimacing and a hysterical voice.
A Splattertastic Genre Classic
Fortress has its share of thrills in the first 60 minutes with an inevitable, but incredibly brutal prison mass fight. The action really kicks off only in the last 25 minutes, but then some! Execution of the escape plan becomes a frantic race with a considerable bodycount, as our escapees are targeted by machine gun turrets and squads of killer cyborgs. Blood and guts are flying around, and there even is some flamethrower action, which is always appreciated. Gordon was a master of practical effects and the many gory deaths give the film an edge you won’t find in any other Sci-Fi actioner of the 90s.
Fortress impresses with straightforward storytelling, ultraviolent action sequences and a healthy dose of weirdness. It became Stuart Gordon’s ultimate venture into action territory!
Jeff Wincott delighted action fans in the 1990s with a string of DTV classics. Both a trained actor and martial artist, he was a complete action hero. In this ranking, we’ll present you the films where he took center stage in and outside the action sequences!
7 – Deadly Bet (1992)
The early entries from the grand masters of low-budget action PM Entertainment were not as wild as their mid-90s output, but Deadly Bet still manages to entertain. Angelo (Wincott) gambles his money and girlfriend away in Las Vegas. A few more lost bets later, he is forced to take out the trash for the local mafia. Will Angelo get himself together to fight back and win back his lost love?
There’s macho men galore, including Wincott’s Angelo, who undergoes an almost divine transformation from unsympathetic fool to re-energized force of good. The film has plenty of fights, most of them are only mildly exciting, however. Wincott gets to join in on the action, but is not given a very demanding choreography. At least we get to admire rising star Gary Daniels doing splits and roundhouse kicks. Deadly Bet is a fun action romp on a budget.
6 – No Exit (1995)
This Running Man rip-off carries that vibe of ultra-cheap DTV movies that I always appreciated. College professor Jon (Wincott) for Ethics & Physical Application gets abducted and is forced to fight in a tournament to the death in an arctic wasteland, with the threat that his wife will be killed if he refuses. The film has many priceless moments such as Wincott beating up two street punks, and remarking afterwards that “violence is not the answer”.
The film’s cheap look often resembles the set of a home shopping television show, and all money went to the action unit as it should be. We want to see Wincott deliver roundhouse kicks, and he does not disappoint! In fact, he’s the only one with martial arts competence in the whole film. Its unapologetic seriousness combined with clumsy production values and pushes No Exit film firmly into trash territory. I had lots of fun with it.
5 – Open Fire (1994)
The last part of Wincott’s and director Kurt Anderson’s informal trilogy turned the quality down a small notch, but is still a highly entertaining DTV flick. Former FBI agent Alec is called to action when a group of terrorists takes over a chemical plant and threatens to release toxic compounds to the environment unless their leader is freed from prison.
In this Die Hard clone Wincott is set up with some great fights, and he did some serious overtime delivering punches and kicks like a boss. His trademark stick fight is a highlight of the film, and the showdown with Robert Kilpatrick – who is great as a choleric psychopath – is a five-minute long display of uninhibited brutality. Open Fire is a delightful cascade of cheap thrills!
4 – Last Man Standing (1995)
Wincott reunited with PM another time after their first collaboration Deadly Bet, and this time they really painted the town red. A gang of bank robbers keeps the city on tenterhooks, not least thanks to a corrupt police department. Only detective Kurt Bellmore (Wincott) can bring them to justice, but not without a leaving trail of gutted cars and demolished buildings.
It’s the classic PM recipe: breakneck stunts on a budget that are executed flawlessly. Wincott, besides being a formidable action hero, impresses with a blindness-inducing color combinations of his suit pieces. The only criticism is that the pyrotechnics and car crash inferno gives no room for him to show his fighting skills. Last Man Standing delivers non-stop mayhem, and that’s all what is needed to provide deep satisfaction.
3 – Martial Outlaw (1993)
In an endless ocean of low-budget martial arts movies, Martial Outlaw become an island of badassery. DEA operative Kevin (Wincott) tracks a Russian drug ring to Los Angeles. He reunites with his estranged brother Jack, a police detective who is in the pockets of the Russian mob. When Jack volunteers to participate in Kevin’s investigation things go from bad to worse. The plot involves some tedious drama and there’s some sketchy acting from the supporting cast.
But i promise you’ll forget about all of this, as Martial Outlaw delivers the action goods almost non-stop! Jeff Pruitt created the action choreography for all films in our top three, and his involvement was a big contribution to the fantastic action set pieces in this film and the others. The fights are full of excitement with lots of broken furniture and bones. Wincott hits all body parts hard and fast, with special attention given to the balls. Martial Outlaw is exquisite 90s video store material.
2 – Martial Law 2 – Undercover (1991)
Two legends of DTV martial arts action, Cynthia Rothrock and Jeff Wincott, teamed up to thrash and endless stream of goons. Police detective Sean (Wincott) joins a new unit, and shortly after an old friend and colleague is found dead. Sean asks his former partner Billie (Rothrock) to help with the investigation, and soon enough the two are fighting an entire crime syndicate. The plot is mundane, but keeps us invested thanks to quirky characters, an atmospheric cinematography, and a swinging synth score.
Rothrock is charming and a bad-ass when needed, while Wincott embodies the rare combination of being a good actor and a good martial artist. The two make a good team, and when it hits the fan police protocol requires them to deliver a kick to the face first and ask questions later. It’s beatdown after beatdown, and it’s all filmed beautifully. Martial Law II: Undercover hits all the right buttons and delivers clean, simple fun.
1 – Mission of Justice (1992)
With Mission of Justice, Wincott showed that he can easily carry a movie on his own, and it became one of the best low-budget actioners ever made. Suspended cop Kurt (Wincott) investigates the death of a close friend, which leads him to the vigilante squad the Peacemakers. He joins them undercover, discovers a malicious plot, and his quest for justice yields many shattered bones and smashed windows.
Director Kurt Anderson, fight choreographer Jeff Pruitt and Wincott created a bunch of A-tier fights thanks to a choreography that is fantastic for a US actioner of its time. The beatdowns are brutal, with breakneck performances by the stunt crew. People are getting thrown and kicked around mercilessly, we can almost feel the pain when someone is smacked through a door. Wincott is totally juiced and his delivery of an intense character portrayal and relentless fights makes Mission of Justice his ultimate masterpiece.
A review of how Peter Thorwarth’s ‘Blood & Gold’ (2023) helps to put German ultimate action on the map.
German films about the darkest part of the country’s history typically broach the subject with the appropriate seriousness. But it seems the time had come in 2023 for a film like Blood & Gold with its slightly more lighthearted take on the Third Reich.
A film that wants to entertain primarily against this particular historical backdrop is a risky business in Germany, but Peter Thorwarth, who established himself as an expert for quirky and genre-bending films, took on the challenge. On top that, German action fans who want to enjoy a film made in their home country are not blessed with large selection, so let’s check out if Blood & Gold can be added to the list!
During the last months of World War 2, Wehrmacht soldier Heinrich (Robert Maaser) escapes from execution by an SS squad. He is rescued by Elsa (Maria Hacke), who hides him in her barn. His tormentors turn up in the nearby village to search for a rumored gold treasure in the abandoned house of a Jewish family. Heinrich and Elsa become a two-person death squad, and descend upon the village for revenge and justice.
Thorwarth stages his film like a Western. A remote village is terrorized by outlaws on a treasure hunt. A brave woman defends her farmstead, and main street is where the action happens. There’s no subtlety in the soundtrack either that is heavily inspired by classic Spaghetti Western tunes. And it all works perfectly! The story is simple, but well written, and has a few surprises here and there. The mood is often gritty, but there are plenty of funny moments to lighten things up.
The characters are one-dimensional, and most of them are just there to move the plot forward. That’s not a problem, though, this film is not a character study, but a high-octane war adventure. Maaser and Hacke are a great in their roles as vengeful soldier and tough farmer, and radiate lots of energy. Their performance is perfectly complemented by Alexander Scheer as delightfully deranged SS officer, who is also good for a few grotesque moments.
Some attention is given to the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime, and the senselessness of continuing to fight a war that is lost. Because of this, a few scenes may appear a bit uneven tonally, but I think it’s appropriate to get a reminder how dark these times were, and it makes us all the more invested in the fate of the characters.
If you don’t fell well, I can tell you a Hitler joke
Thorwarth and his crew show much respect for old-school action in their approach to staging the action sequences. The execution was put into the capable hands of Vi-Dan Tran who was a member of Jackie Chan’s stunt team and worked as action choreographer for the TV action masterpiece Into the Badlands. He delivers A-Tier fight scenes that are visceral and rely almost exclusively on practical effects.
There’s plenty of well-choreographed fistfights and shootouts that hit hard and are garnished with over-the-top violence. The creative and brutal kills are a fun throwback to the European Nazi exploitation classics of the 1970s. Lead actor Robert Maasen, who is also a trained stuntman, does all his fights without a double, which makes those scenes incredibly immersive. I really hope to see him more often in action flicks in the future.
Blood & Gold is a highly entertaining film that transitions smoothly between thrills, humor and action. Director Thorwarth delivered an ultimate entry to the genre, and showed that action made in Germany is a thing!
A look back at the Christian Bale-led, Matrix-influenced sci-fi action classic Equilibrium (2002).
The Matrix updated the dystopian movie genre for the 21st century. 2002’s Equilibrium may seem like another copycat at fist glance, but director/writer Kurt Wimmer together with rising star Christian Bale delivered a gripping Sci-Fi actioner, so let’s have another look!
After world war 3, a totalitarian society emerges where human emotions are blamed as the prime cause for devastating earth, and rendered illegal. Everyone takes the drug Prozium that suppresses feelings. Not everyone complies, and a government elite unit, the Clerics, are tasked with finding and eliminating all sense offenders. Cleric Preston (Christian Bale) is the best of them, but when he misses a Prozium dose, he begins to feel again, and his loyalty to the regime is put to the test.
It is not the message that is important, it is our obedience to it
Forced suppression of emotions is an unusual premise for a dystopian story, fascist regimes often use them to their advantage or, as in Brave New World, lul the people with pleasures. It’s an interesting thought experiment nevertheless. The drug Prozium also works as a reminder of the alleged moderation of unwanted emotions through medication in our world, and the ever-increasing usage of antidepressants and stimulants gives some credence to this claim.
Equilibrium borrows heavily from Fahrenheit 451 with its mandated burning of paintings and poetry books. The film as a whole is derivative in premise and style, and throws together many classic Dystopian tropes. The plot does not have many surprises in stock, and yet Wimmer assembles the well-known pieces into an interesting mosaic that is strong on atmosphere, has plenty food for thought, and is full of kick-ass action.
Without love, anger, and sorrow, breath is just a clock ticking
The monumental buildings of the fascist era in Berlin and Rome were used as sets, and evoke a constant aura of awe and dread. And the ruined city blocks of post-communist Eastern Germany provide an effective stage for the post-war wasteland shown in the film. The smart choice of shooting locations gives the film a unique visual style, and a pervasively bleak atmosphere.
Every member of the cast is doing a fine job but this film is Christian Bale’s show. Bale is one of the great actors of our times and his performance elevates the quality of the movie significantly. He displays a stunning range of emotions with some truly heartbreaking moments. His Preston starts out as a stone cold lethal enforcer with a piercing stare, who shows first cracks with brief emotional outbursts, and ends up in a full breakdown that transforms him into a remorseless avenger.
The geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically predictable element
Preston’s awakening is accompanied by a pile of battered and perforated bodies. Director Wimmer takes combat to the extreme with the Gun Kata style, which can only be described as an ultra-high-speed close-range Gun Fu. Split second movements and kills every 100 milliseconds make for some incredibly intense and brutal action sequences.
The film’s minimalist and monochromatic visuals are effective to draw our full attention to the action. The extravagant and impossible fight choreography is captured flawlessly by a kinetic cinematography that does not rely on hectic editing. And it all just looks so badass with the Clerics in their slick coats going guns akimbo while flanked by riot police squads in a post-war wasteland.
Equilibrium owes its existence to The Matrix, and just like its muse, it delivers a fine (if less refined) blend of action and mental nourishment. Thanks to a stellar performance by Bale and absurdly intense action sequences, it became an ultimate early 2000s action classic!
The mullet has a timeless elegance, and was an indispensable accessory to make an 80s action hero complete. The haircut has seen a resurgence in the last years, so it was time we admire the originals, and present you the top 15 actors and their mullets in action movies!
15 – Will Forte (MacGruber)
Based one of SNL’s most awesome skit series, MacGruber is a great parody of MacGyver and old-school action films. Sporting a classic mullet, MacGruber’s overconfidence and total cluelessness are a constant catalyst for mayhem and low-brow jokes.
14 – Marc Singer (The Beastmaster)
Of the many mullet-wearing, swashbuckling heroes in Sword & Sorcery films, Marc Singer’s version turned out to be the most refined and always well-maintained, despite frequent exposure to dust, blood and sweat. His mane is even more impressive than that of his tiger companion and an important asset to this classic fantasy action-adventure!
The Principal (1987) Directed by Christopher Cain Shown: James Belushi
Jim Belushi is as bad-ass as they come in one of the best entries to the teachers-straightening-out-school-kids-by-using excessive-violence subgenre of action films. This rowdy teacher is punished for insubordination and promoted to principal of the worst school in the country. His curly mullet version with the onset of a receding hairline means serious business.
The most famous Dutchman since Vincent can Gogh takes center stage as vengeful bounty hunter in this archetypal 80s action thriller. Gene Simmons as a muslim terrorist (with one of the great demises in movie history) is no match for Hauer and his blonde manifestation of manliness.
The live-action version of the kids TV series was a fun mess, and in his second feature film Dolph Lundgren took on the honorable task of boosting action figure sales. He is the perfect look-a-like of He-Man with his absence of facial expressions just like his plastic counterpart, and a peroxide mullet of the highest chemical grade.
For Stone Cold, former NFL star Brian Bosworth took it down a notch mullet-wise compared to his real-life hair style. His character Joe presents to us a more refined version of his glorious hair, an important element for going convincingly undercover to infiltrate a criminal biker gang, and to indulge in high-octane action!
In this fantastic mix of zombie horror and action comedy, detectives Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) and Doug Bigelow (Joe Piscopo) are your typical antipodal cop duo. Mortis is sophisticated and undead, Bigalow has an attitude and is alive. The latter sports an impressive cement mullet, with his hair standing perfectly still even in the most perilous situations.
They Live is a cult Sci-Fi satire and another ultimate classic by John Carpenter. For a world full of hidden messages and illusions it only made sense to cast Roddy Piper as the main star, one of the great representatives of another realm of illusions, the world of wrestling. And just like every self-respecting wrestler of his time, he sports a well-maintained haircut and a no-nonsense attitude.
Martin Riggs delighted us with a most impressive mane throughout three films of the Lethal Weapon franchise. Always on the edge and often crossing into insanity territory, his wild hair style is a fitting visualization of his explosive temperament. With Riggs, it was always business in the front and party in the back!
6 – Sylvester Stallone (First Blood: Part II, Rambo III)
Muscles and mullet make an action hero complete. They also provide John Rambo with a neck warmer for the cold Afghan nights and a sweat catcher in the tropical jungle of Vietnam. And the short hair in the front is crucial to to have free aim at his commie enemies for taking them down by the dozen.
It’s hard to believe that the mullet existed before Chuck Norris wore it in this entertaining Red Dawn rip-off. Norris’ authoritative and uncompromising aura is perfectly augmented by his finely trimmed hair and beard, making him the embodiment of an ultimate 1980s action hero.
4 – Kurt Russell (Big Trouble in Little China, Tango & Cash)
Kurt Russell was blessed with lots of hair, and in two of his great action classics he used it to create voluminous mullets for his characters Jack and Cash. In fact, secretly they are same person, with both being extrovert, trigger-happy and sporting a similar hair style.
An explosive actioner deserves a haircut of the same kind. Van Damme gives it all in one of the best iterations of the manhunt-for-fun scenario, but we’re massively distracted whenever his hair shows up on screen. It radiates total badassery, and to prevent the generously applied gel from dripping into his eyes, Van Damme combed it back all the way, and created a totally new category, the oil mullet.
The only actor on this list who embraced the mullet throughout all of the 1980s receives this entry for virtually all films he made in that time, first and foremost his actioners, of course. If you think mullet, you should think Patrick Swayze who wore it with an elegance and naturalness like no other actor on this list did.
Sho the villain even trumps the mighty hair of Patrick Swayze’s main character Nomad in this posta-pocalyptic actioner that entertains mostly because of the bonkers costumes and hairstyles of pretty much all protagonists. Neame’s pineapple mullet stands out, however, featuring a multidimensional geometry created in an infinite backcombing session!
If you’re a sucker for S&S flicks, it doesn’t get much more ultimate than ‘Red Sonja’ (1985).
The success of Conan the Barbarian triggered a wave of copycats, including its own sequel Conan the Destroyer in 1984. One year later, producer Dino de Laurentiis gave it another shot with Red Sonja, a character from the expanded Conan Universe of the Marvel comic books. Newcomer Brigitte Nielsen took center stage, with Arnold Schwarzenegger in a supporting role. Even though the film tumbled down the quality latter quite a bit compared to the Conan films, it still became a fun Sword & Sorcery flick, so let’s have a look!
The mighty warrior Sonja (Nielsen) heeds a call for aid by her sister, who is part of an order that protects a powerful and dangerous relic, The Talisman. The artifact is stolen by the evil Queen Gedren (Sandal Bergman), and Sonja’s sister mortally wounded. Sonja sets out to destroy Gedren and the Talisman, with aid from the stalwart Lord Kalidor (Schwarzenegger) and the Kung Fu prodigy prince Tarn (Ernie Reyes Jr.).
I wouldn’t insist that Red Sonja was inspired by Sword & Sorcery (& sex) jank like Hundra and The Sorceress, but these films at least pioneered the female main hero in this genre. Red Sonja is not the best example for feminism in the action genre either, as Lord Kalidor shows up every time Sonja is in turmoil and saves the day. One the other hand, the voyeuristic chain mail bikini from the comic books is gone, and Sonja’s outfit may have inspired the costume for Xena Warrior Princess.
The film shares its visual style and opulence with Conan the Destroyer, and no costs were spared to create a feast for the eyes. It was the high time of matte shots, and the magic of Academy Award winner Albert Whitlock produced epic shots of lava chasms, bridges made from huge skeletons and grim castles high up in the mountains. The indoor sets are also looking awesome, and the room with thousands of burning candles – the ultimate medieval fire hazard – oozes an incredible atmosphere, and we must respect the insane effort that must have gone into creating this scene.
No man may have me unless he has beaten me in a fair fight
The costume design is outlandish and wonderfully over the top. Helmets and armor seem to be made of living metal that has taken a life on its own, growing in all directions. Red Sonja was filmed in Italy, and if you watched some of the old Spaghetti Westerns, the locations may look familiar to you, especially the rocky plains with the Gran Sasso massif towering in the background. And in Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack the old Western vibe also shines through sometimes.
Nielsen came to the film with no acting experience, and not surprisingly it shows. Her line delivery is not very energetic or convincing, but she gives it all in the fights, and also sports a fantastic mullet flaming red hair. Schwarzenegger makes a comeback, not as Conan, but his Kalidor is just as fierce a warrior. His physical presence and charisma lift up the quality of every scene he is in.
He is reunited with Sandahl Bergman who was his co-star in the first Conan film. Bergman goes completely unhinged with a crazy outfit that features a gold mask and a black spandex suit. Her queen Gedren hugs her giant pet spider, struts through the palace yelling at her servants or sits on her throne all day between ornamented skeletons.
Red Sonja is not a non-stop action fest like Conan the Destroyer, but our band of adventurers finds itself in a good number of perilous situations, which are all resolved with maximum violence. The sword fights are pretty violent with plenty of blood squirting and heads flying.
Most of the action sequences are of the run-off-the-mill kind, but there are two truly memorable and awesome moments. Sonja’s showdown with Queen Gedren and her inane minion in the throne room is a chaotic mess, but full of crazy energy. The fight is then taken to the chamber of thousand candles where the madness continues. And there is an exciting water battle with a sea dragon that is brought to life thanks to fantastic creature special effects.
The pieces are all there, but in Red Sonja they don’t come quite together as well. But it delivers a huge dose of 1980s action silliness, and if you’re a sucker for S&S flicks, I think you will have a fun time with it.
A look at the most ultimate henchmen (and women) of the Mission Impossible universe.
Much like there are the big missions and the side quests, there are the major villains and the minor ones who assist them. These henchmen are the tiny cogs in the criminal machine, which help to make any nefarious plan… well, really nefarious.
Over the course of seven films, the Mission: Impossible franchise has featured a lot of secondary bad guys, which isn’t a surprise since the saga is renowned for having multiple villains in pretty much every movie. But who out of them is the best of the worst? Let’s look back at some of the most memorable henchmen and henchwomen of Mission: Impossible!
Alert: this article contains spoilers for most of the franchise’s films, so read at your own risk!
For a reason that I’m yet to understand, French antagonists are surprisingly over-represented among Mission: Impossible minor villains. The first film already offered us famous French actor Jean Reno as the knife-wielding Franz Krieger. The disavowed IMF agent is on the receiving end of Ethan Hunt’s magic tricks, and overall, spends most the movie being a snarky jerk. His only motivation is money, but the greedy pilot does have some pretty impressive skills. He can fly a helicopter inside of a tunnel – and would definitely fly one inside of Fort Knox if that means he can grab more cash on the way. Competent and ruthless: the perfect combination for a successful henchman. It isn’t a big surprise when Krieger is revealed to have been working for IMF traitor Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) all along, but his knife tricks remain a joy to watch!
That nameless henchman – Mission: Impossible (1996) and Ghost Protocol (2011)
No name here, and we never even hear the sound of that guy’s voice. But come on, the man’s dedication to his job as a henchman deserves some praise. In the first movie, he is assisting sophisticated arms dealer Max (Vanessa Redgrave), and with his long hair and lighter, you might think of him as the cousin of Die Hard’s Karl (Alexander Godunov) – and you’d be right, because actor Andreas Wisniewski did play Karl’s brother Tony in the 1988 classic film. He has a little less to do here, but still takes his job very seriously: in 2011, our favourite goon is still in business, and doesn’t hesitate to recapture Ethan like in the good old days. While the entire fanbase still regrets Vanessa Redgave’s absence in Ghost Protocol, this tiny nod to the first film and Wisniewski’s menacing aura are enough to get the anonymous character a spot on this list.
Calling her a henchwoman might get me shot: after all, the French assassin is just the contact of Ghost Protocol’s crazed main villain Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist). But Léa Seydoux’ character definitely steals the show: Sabine gets paid with diamonds (clearly her best friends) and doesn’t hesitate to shoot any IMF agent – or other harmless person – standing between her and the jewels. Moreau’s introduction scene has her dispatching poor IMF agent Trevor (Josh Holloway), establishing her as a force to be reckoned with. It also gives her a bone to pick with spy Jane Carter (Paula Patton) whose lover she just killed… The eventual brawl between these two verges a little into catfight territory, but Moreau’s subsequent demise – a nice, gentle little fall to the death down the Burj Khalifa – make her the best villain of M: I Ghost Protocol.
Janik Vinter “The Bone Doctor” – Rogue Nation (2015)
With a nickname like “The Bone Doctor”, villainy is pretty much guaranteed, but rogue agent Janik Vinter (Jens Hultén) takes it to a whole new level. While Rogue Nation doesn’t let us meet many members of terrorist network the Syndicate – entirely made of agents who have chosen the dark side – Vinter is definitely a memorable henchman. Employed by sociopathic leader Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), The Bone Doctor is a specialist of torture in all of its shapes and forms, and rejoices when he gets to use his skills on the great Ethan Hunt. Of course, Vinter isn’t successful, but he keeps his spirits high and doesn’t hesitate to wink at his enemies in a slightly sarcastic way. We all love a bad guy with a good sense of humour and an inflated ego, and when he gets to face amazing MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) in a knife fight, things only get better!
Her name might pay homage to a sophisticated magician from the original series, but Paris doesn’t go in for subtleties. As the right hand woman of bad guy Gabriel (Esai Morales), who works for a mysterious AI, she steals the show whenever she appears on screen. Played by the charismatic Pom Klementieff (yet another Frenchie!) the character is a nice nod to silent but lethal henchmen of old Bond films. A perfect badass, Paris revels in a fight, and uses her small frame to her advantage, taking down goons twice her size in confined spaces. But it’s her “fun-loving” personality which really sets her apart. Paris is having the time of her life chasing Ethan and thief Grace (Hayley Atwell) throughout Rome in an armored vehicle, and when she isn’t bashing skulls with fire extinguishers, you can find her drawing hearts on glass panels. So, it might seem a little surprising that the henchwoman undergoes a redemption arc – a rarity in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Spared by Ethan and left for dead by her former boss, Paris joins the right side and saves Ethan and Grace. Seeing how this newfound moral code gets mixed with her love of destruction an unpredictable nature will be one of the most exciting features of M: I 8. Here’s to hoping we’ll see Paris become even more of a badass then!
Jake Gyllenhaal is no Swayze, but the new Road House still rocks!
I’m going to start this review by acknowledging that there is simply no universe where a Road House reboot starring Jake Gyllenhaal could even come close to living up to the awesomeness of the timeless original.
Swayze and Gyllenhaal are about as far apart as two human beings could be, and no — Gyllenhaal’s Dalton is nothing close to Swayze’s iconic performance.
That being said, if you can ignore all of the sacrilege, the new Road House isn’t a bad action movie. It’s fun, it’s dumb, and Conor McGregor nearly steals the show completely anyway. So, if you like dumb, modern, ultimate action, then Road House might still be for you.
Making its premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival, it certainly felt like the filmmakers and promoters of Road House were hoping that it would get a friendly boost before being released by Amazon MGM Studios via Prime Video on March 21, 2024.
And while the film could certainly use some favorable boosting as parts of it feel like they were barely picture-locked a few weeks ago, it’s overall a decent movie that doesn’t attempt to do much and handles its fights well enough to serve as an 80s/90s era action movie made today.
Gyllenhaal does seem to enjoy the role quite a bit. He doesn’t play Swayze per se, but he seems to feel like he’s a character from the same universe. But, you know, with a modern MMA tinge.
The few things that stood out most to me from the premiere of Road House was that it didn’t feel like it was trying to “recreate” or “reboot” the original Road House too much. It also didn’t seem to be particularly well-thought-out in terms of script and direction at times, so it kind of gives an elevated DTV quality that’s powered mostly by Gyllenhaal and McGregor.
There’s no Sam Elliot replacement either, which is nice because I can’t think of anyone who could step into those shoes for the life of me. The love story is a bit similar though, and the main bad guy arc is about the same. However, both are different enough that I don’t think anyone will care one way or the other about the decision.
The biggest issue I might personally have with the film was the copious amount of CGI used in the fight scenes. Doug Liman is a solid and accomplished action director, so there are some pretty cool shots and sequences in the fights, but the CGI elements (like head hits and glasses breaking) all seemed to be just recently rendered, and of a quality that it’s hard not to notice when they’re inserted in.
Conor McGregor was also a huge bright spot for the film. For someone who is about as non-actor as a non-actor can be, he has an energy to him both on the screen and on the stage at the premiere.
His character is an ambitious ball of energy in the film too with a very chaotic, almost Coen-y level of otherworldly-ness to him, that makes his scenes just super awesome and fun to follow just trying to guess what happens to him next.
If McGregor does want to continue acting, and his projects give him enough leeway to just be his goofy self in the films, I could see him being a rare action star who would have easily fit in with the ultimate generation of the 80s/90s.
All that being said, I think there was plenty enough to like about the film to enjoy the premiere, and would recommend checking it out on streaming. I’m not super into the world of MMA and UFC, but it seems to aim its sights at that fandom as well, which might introduce the original to a revival which could be cool.
Other than that, it’s not particularly terrible or too amazing, but certainly the ultimate action movie watch-worthy with friends over beer and pizza.
