Tag Archives: Martial Arts

Bad Luck Explained

24 March 2018 By in Movies Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Accident Man  M Accident 2018

Theaters:  NA

Streaming:  February 2018

Rated:  R

Runtime:  105 minutes

Genre:  Action – Crime – Mystery – Suspense – Thriller

els:  6.0/10

IMDB:  6.1/10

Amazon:  3.8/5 stars

Rotten Tomatoes Critics:  NA/10

Rotten Tomatoes Audience:  3.6/5

Metacritic Metascore:  NA/100

Metacritic User Score:  NA/10

Awards:

Directed by:  Jesse V. Johnson

Written by:  Scott Adkins and Stu Small (screenplay), Pat Mills and Tony Skinner (comic)

Music by:  Sean Murray

Cast:  Scott Adkins, Ray Stevenson, David Paymer, Ashley Greene

Film Locations:  London, England

Budget:  $ NA Low-Budget Indie

Worldwide Box Office:  $ NA

Mike Fallon (Adkins) has a nice life concocting natural death for others.  Fallon is a successful contract killer that goes to great lengths to make sure his murders are not judged murders, just someone having a bad hair day or another wrong place, wrong time accident. Death is a good business so life is good until his ex-girlfriend is murdered. Piecing together the story of her death he begins to realize that his mates in the causality business may have had a hand in her demise. Fallon sets out to even the score with judo chops and bullets flying non-stop.

The movie is based on a series of comics by Pat Mills and Tony Skinner, published in 1991 in the magazine, Toxic!  The series was collected into a graphic novel, The Complete Accident Man in 2014 by Titan.

Jesse V. Johnson, stuntman in the 2012 The Amazing Spider-Man and director and writer of the incredibly bad The Last Sentinel, puts together a story and cast to produce a decent action film with few plot holes but at the same time producing nothing spectacular. Everything is a bit off.  Great martial arts scenes but it doesn’t flow together or congeal into an exciting whole.

In the end this movie is all Scott Adkins.  He produces, he writes, he acts, he fights.  It all works to a certain degree but fails to grab you, or emotionally tie you to the film.  I wouldn’t mind a sequel but hopefully with a larger budget to ratchet everything up a notch. An ok movie with some original scenes but nothing terribly memorable.

All Chan, All Good

3 February 2018 By in Movies Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The Foreigner (Theaters-September 2017; Streaming-January 2018) Rated: R  Runtime: M Foreigner 2017113-114 minutes

Genre: Action-Crime-Drama-Mystery-Suspense-Thriller

els – 7.0/10

IMDb – 7.1/10

Amazon – 4.6/5 stars

Rotten Tomatoes Critics – 5.9/10

Rotten Tomatoes Audience – 3.8/5

Metacritic Metascore – 55/100

Metacritic User Score – 7.1/10

Directed by: Martin Campbell

Written by: David Marconi (screenplay), Stephan Leather (novel)

Music by: Cliff Martinez

Cast: Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan

Film Locations:  London, England; Larne, Northern Ireland

Budget: $35,000,000

Worldwide Box Office: $140,793,485

Quan (Chan), a widower, lives a quiet London life, looking after his only daughter and his restaurant, his only major concerns are the boys chasing after his beloved teenaged girl.  Then a new IRA faction blows up a bank, killing his little girl, who was shopping at a dress shop adjacent to the bank, and Quan’s life and priorities change. He wants to know who killed his daughter, who was responsible.  He wants justice.  When the officials are unable to give him any names or promise any arrests, soon, he organizes his vigilante squad of one and slowly narrows down the possibilities; Jackie Chan style, but without malice for dogs or the innocent.

Jackie Chan steps past his normal fun side, giving the audience a taste of his drama and emotional acting abilities, and proves that his serious character portrayals are real, believable and effective.  Not since his role as a morose handyman in the 2010 Karate Kid have I seen him in such a convincing dramatic role, but this time the screenplay (Marconi) and supporting actors are not relegating him to a least common denominator of mediocrity and cheesiness.  The screenplay flows well, it’s coherent, and has enough twists to keep you guessing, but it does have a flaw, and unfortunately its a big one. Brosnan’s Liam Hennessy role is muddled, his level of involvement and guilt in the IRA bombing is never completely resolved. Maybe it’s intentional but it adds clutter to the plot and its conclusion. That aside, this is a typical Martin Campbell film, full of action, intrigue and entertainment, always spot on and fun; ok, maybe the Green Hornet was a dud, but usually his films are a must see, as is this one.

This was a fun action-drama to watch.  Jackie Chan displays what made him famous, his martial arts moves, but in the film he also displays his serious side and lets us know that, yes, he can play that part.

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