I don’t remember why I put this one in my list, but was pleasantly surpised in the end. Â It’s got a cast I like a lot (Liam Neeson, Ed Harris, Joel Kinnaman) and involves hitmen and the mob. When the son of ex-hitman Jimmy Conlon and the son of mob boss Shawn Maguire cross paths on the wrong night, a brutal night of revenge based on loyalty is played out. Liam Neeson continues his roles as a bad ass dude as Jimmy and Joel Kinnaman is perfectly cast as his son, Mike. Â Not the most original of plots, but I liked it a lot. Well written and acted, I can’t remember any groan worthy lines. The movie looks and sounds great. Some eye catching directing (super clear and well thought out action, clever transitions) really got me into it. Varied and fun action scenes run the gauntlet of gun fights, car chases and close quarters fighting. A bathroom brawl and a burning apartment battle being my favorites. Jimmy chasing the cop car with Mike in the back seat through Manhattan is no slouch either. Junkie XL did the soundtrack and along with his work in Mad Max: Fury Road, I’m becoming a big fan of his cinema work. I don’t think many people saw this when it came out almost a year ago, making it a sleeper. Easily the best movie of this list, check it out for a surprise treat.
Police Story has the pedigree of insane action and stunt work that is synonymous with Jackie Chan. While Lockdown is good, it just doesn’t match up to it’s predecessors. It’s light on the action and stunts and goes for a more complex story (with some not so right English translation). Zhong Wen is led into a club where a man takes everyone hostage and demands to see a man imprisoned for a murder years earlier. Wen swings into action, putting the pieces together and working to make sure all the hostages get out alive.  The plot does it’s best to move along, reveal itself one piece at a time while sprinkling in action pieces here and there (some in flashbacks). The movie takes place in mostly just the club which limits the scope. Action scenes felt restrained and too short most of the time, with the exception of one good “JC gauntlet chase scene” and mano-a-mano fight for good measure. I think I would have liked this more had it not been called a Police Story movie.
The latest Wachowski sci-fi movie to get pooped on by most. After watching it, I came away feeling apathetic more than anything. Not much to enjoy really. An alright story with visual effects that range from very good (neat fighter ships based on birds) to not so hot (fake backgrounds looking fake). Mila Kunis as Jupiter is boring and uninteresting and Channing Tatum as her Vanilla Ice hero from another planet doesn’t fair much better. While his anti-gravity boots may sound cool on paper, they look rather silly on screen. And then there is the villain Balem, who either whispers like a shy teen or screams his dialog like an angry toddler. He comes off as eye-rolling goofy and that’s not a good thing for an antagonist. Skip this and check out The Expanse on SyFy.
It’s been some time since I’ve seen Milla Jovovich in a movie outside of the Resident Evil franchise. She plays Kate Abbott, a hotshot State Department agent relocated from DC to the American Embassy in London. She takes up the gig of issuing traveling visas right as a nefarious terrorist plan for New York City is in its final stages. Some suspicious activity that is dismissed by her new boss makes her start to investigate further which puts her on the hit list of “The Watchmaker” (Pierce Brosnan). Survivor is a middle of the road movie. It does nothing new or that great, but doesn’t do anything I’d call offensively bad. The word mundane comes to mind. It’s a predictable script held together by good acting and adequate action scenes (there are a lot of chase scenes). There are some suspect moments about the technology in use that take off points for believability. Remember the movie The Net? It’s a lot like that. Can’t say I recommend Survivor (not the best title either), but it could serve you well when sifting through the Netflix catalog on a rainy (or snowed in) day off.