John Woo got the band back together for A Better Tomorrow II. Ho (Lung Ti) is offered an early parole if he helps investigate his former mentor, Lung Si (Dean Shek). He turns it down, until he learns his brother, Kit (Leslie Cheung), a police officer is involved in the investigation. Ho doesn’t believe Si…
Tag: violent
A Better Tomorrow (1986) – John Woo
A Better Tomorrow was a hole in my John Woo and Hong Kong cinema that I wanted to fill, People have raved about it for years, that it helped define a generation of HKers and became a cult classic among North American film lovers. It features melodrama and lots of gunplay. It also has a…
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) – Chad Stahelski
I have served. I will be of service. I love these films so much. Each one has taken what we have learned in the previous film and builds on it. And John Wick (Keanu Reeves) gets pulled back, completely into the underworld of assassination that he left for five years. When the film opens, he…
John Wick (2014) – Chad Stahelski
I was shocked (and delighted because it meant I could watch them all again) that I hadn’t written about John Wick before. I had written up the second film but for some reason hadn’t done the other three. So that means I could buckle up and dive into this amazing world where assassins thrive, have…
TIFF 25: Bad Apples dir. Jonatan Etzler
Saoirse Ronan shines as Maria, an elementary school teacher pushed too far in Jonatan Etzler’s darkly funny thriller, Bad Apples. If you’ve read the tagline for the film, do yourself a favour and don’t read anything else about it. Go in with the knowledge that Maria is working to keep her class engaged. She has…
Deep Cover (1992) – Bill Duke
Bill Duke directs a gritty, rough and tumble cop film, and does it incredibly well. It’s an entertaining and brutal ride, and lets Laurence Fishburne shine. Fishburne plays Russell Stevens, a cop recruited by Carver (Charles Martin Smith) to go undercover as a drug dealer in order to get close to Barbosa (Gregory Sierra) and…
Pirate Latitudes (2009) – Micheal Crichton
By the time this post appears on the blog I will have read this book about a month and a half ago while I was on a vacation in the Caribbean. Consequently, surrounded by an environment Crichton’s characters inhabit, the ride was an adventuresome delight. In the year 1665, Captain Charles Hunter is in Port…
Red Heat (1988) – Walter Hill
Red Heat has quite the pedigree. It has Walter Hill directing. It has a score by James Horner. And look at this cast, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Belushi, Peter Boyle, Gina Gershon, Laurence (as Larry) Fishburne, Brion James, Ed O’Ross, Pruitt Taylor Vince, and Mike Hagerty. That’s insane. Red Heat keeps Hill solidly in violent, and…
The Accountant (2016) – Gavin O’Connor
Ben Affleck headlines in this solid actioner that co-stars Anna Kendrick, Jon Bernthal, J.K. Simmons, John Lithgow, Jean Smart and Cynthia Addai-Robinson. Intercutting with flashbacks to his childhood, we are introduced to Christian Wolff (Affleck) a forensic accountant who has no problem working for the underworld, and occasionally clashing violently with them as well. Wolff…
Land of Bad (2024) – William Eubank
Land of Bad is a crisp military actioner. With a solid cast that includes two Hemsworth brothers, Liam and Luke, Russell Crowe and Milo Ventimiglia, the film takes us on a high-tension, tightly-crafted mission that sees a Delta Force team, and it’s accompanying drone (and operator) on the run after things go pear-shaped. The Delta…
The Mind Reels 