Action thriller

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT

Cert 12A 147mins Stars 5

Tom Cruise crashes back into cinemas with the sixth outrageous, death defying and exhilarating episode of his all-action espionage franchise.

IMF agent Ethan Hunt is the US answer to James bond, and Cruise chose to accept his first mission in the role back in 1996, and this is by a running jump the best one yet.

The preposterous plotting involves some missing plutonium and a terror organisation trying to establish a new world order. Plus of course the familiar latex masks, a series of betrayals and the famous signature tune.

Humour lands with the almost same impact as the punches as we’re whisked from Paris to London and Kashmir in bikes, boats, cars and helicopters, through a series of wildly improbable stunts. 

It begins in a surprisingly low key fashion with Hunt having doubts over his chosen career, but he’s soon accepting a new mission, aided by trusted colleagues Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg.

Joining them is former Superman, Henry Cavill, who’s on career best form as a CIA agent tasked to shadow Hunt and help complete his task.

And a cocktail lounge punch-up involving Rebecca Ferguson and The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby, suggests the possibility of an all female spin-off mission should Cruise ever decide he’s too old for all this.

He was famously injured during filming and his willingness to put his body on the line for our entertainment is what makes this franchise so compelling, 

Plus each dazzling display of virtuoso stunt work exceeds the previous one in ambition and scope and is conceived and executed with clockwork ingenuity. And they’re performed on location with a minimum of CGI assistance, adding to our gobsmacked disbelief. This is best watched on an IMAX screen for maximum effect.

Fallout establishes a new high bar in slick, glossy stunt-driven action adventure, and next year’s 007 film will have to keep it in its sights if Bond wants to remain top gun.

SKYSCRAPER

Cert 12A 102mins Stars 4

Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson cements his place at the pinnacle  of the Hollywood pile with another hugely entertaining action adventure to follow this year’s Rampage, and the Jumanji sequel.

He plays a former marine injured in a hostage rescue and now wears a prosthetic leg, working as a safety assessor in Hong Kong on the world’s tallest and most hi-tec building.

When a criminal gang set the building on fire, he must swing in to action to save his wife and kids.

The international cast and setting brings maximum appeal to the Chinese cinematic market, now the globes biggest.

There’s no escaping Skyscraper is built on the foundations of 1974 disaster classic The Towering Inferno, and 1988 terrorist thriller, Die Hard, while the tone is peak Arnold Schwarzenegger at his cheesey action best.

It’s an express elevator ride of slick stunts and knowingly preposterous plotting, and as the cast kept commendably straight faces I grinned my way through 220 floors of pure popcorn fun. 

 

 

THE FIRST PURGE

Cert 15 97mins Stars 3

This brisk and effective prequel to the hugely successful horror action trilogy is a typically blood splatting mix of carnage and satire.

It shows how a far right government uses a mass psychological experiment named the ‘purge’, to exploit the anger of social deprivation to cull the poor and so consolidate political power.

When New York’s Staten Island is quarantined and for twelve hours all crime, including murder, is legal, some turn to prayer and others to party.

However it soon becomes a warzone, with violence inflamed by social media, and a drug dealer must run the gauntlet of violence to rescue his former lover. Y’Lan Noel has a muscular charisma as Dmitri, and Lex Scott Davis is dainty but deadly as Nya.

The costume department has great fun creating nightmarish masks and outfits as booby trapped teddy bears and needle gloves are macabre additions to machine pistols and drone warfare.

I doubt this first Purge is the last one.

SICARIO 2

Cert 15 122mins Stars 4

There’s a grim foreboding looming over this bone dry sequel to 2015’s scorching crime action thriller.

Once again we’re in thrown in to the vicious warfare on the US Mexican border, contested by Federal agents, police and gangsters, with civilians caught in the crossfire.

Sadly Emily Blunt doesn’t return as she’s too busy making the Mary Poppins sequel which is due at Christmas, and there’s no denying she’s a big miss.

However this allows the brooding charisma of Benicia Del Toro to take centre stage, reprising his role as Alejandro.

The attorney turned assassin is so world weary he no longer celebrates Christmas, but is lured from his hideout in Colombia by the promise of revenge on the cartel boss who murdered his family.

He’s recruited  by a beefy Josh Brolin, who again plays a dark ops CIA agent, now tasked with starting a war between the Mexican cartels in order to shore up the US southern border.

But among the shifting sands of foreign policy, corrupt police elements and rival cartels, Alejandro finds himself protecting the teenage daughter of the man he’s sworn to kill.

Young Isabela Moner is very strong in her role of few words, conveying an inner conflict as she begins to experience the violence through which her fathers wealth is generated.

Scriptwriter Taylor Sheridan is responsible for some of the best thrillers in recent years, such as Wind River, and throws in contemporary concerns into the complex mix of allegiances and motives.

So we see people smuggling, domestic terrorism, drone warfare, African piracy and a great deal of military hardware.

Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski achieves brilliance in his helicopter arial work, and by shovelling dust and dirt over the moral murk, he brings a parched intensity to the intense and bloody action sequences.

And I wouldn’t rule out a return for Blunt to conclude a third chapter.

JURASSIC WORLD: THE FALLEN KINGDOM

Cert 12A 128mins Stars 4

Mammoth mayhem stampedes across the big screen in this meaty sequel to 2015’s monster smash.

This fifth dino-epic is set three years after the ending of the previous billion pound box office super-heavy weight, and the dinosaurs existence on the island home of the defunct Jurassic Park resort is threatened by a volcano.

So stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard helicopter in alongside a bunch of military mercenaries to ferry 11 species of dinosaurs to safety as the mountain erupts.

It’s a brilliant, breathless action sequence packed with dinosaurs, takes place on an enormous scale, and is exciting, scary and fun.

Once the creatures are saved, the second part of the film is framed as a haunted house horror and takes place in a huge gothic US mansion, where there is a nefarious plan to auction off the beasts to international arms dealers.

Though each half of the film is excellent in their own way, they’re very different and not entirely successfully spliced together, much like the new killer hybrid dinosaur on the loose, the Indoraptor.

Despite having more than enough of talent and empathy to anchor the series, Howard is sadly too often allowed to be elbowed out of the way so co-star Pratt demonstrate his smug wisecracking action-man prowess.

Veteran James Cromwell brings gravitas as Sir Benjamin Lockwood, and young Isabella Sermon as his vulnerable and brave granddaughter makes a strong debut. Rafe Spall plays his trusted right hand and is becoming one of my favourite actors.

Spanish director J. A. Bayona previously made tsunami drama, The Impossible and the teenage fable, A Monster Calls, and all his work is concerned importance of mothers.

Here he brings in elements of fable from his spooky horror, The Orphanage, which I suspect are closer to his heart than all his impressively staged blockbuster action.

Though at times too full on and grisly for the very little ones, the dinosaurs are back and they are roarsome!

 

ENTEBBE

Cert 12A 107mins Stars 3

There’s a bumpy experience awaiting you on board this down-beat real life airline hostage drama.

It’s a serious-minded look at Operation Thunderbolt, a 1976 Israeli armed forces attempt to the rescue of a plane-load of civilians.

Four terrorists diverted a Paris-bound plane to Uganda’s Entebbe airport, where they demanded the release of Israeli-held prisoners in return for the safe return of the passengers.

The country is ruled by the dictator Idi Amin, who even the terrorists consider a lunatic.

This set-up is so cinematic it has been filmed three times previously, and inspired the 1986 Chuck Norris adventure, The Delta Force.

Throw in some great performances and this should be terrific entertainment.

But the producers are best known for romcoms such as Four Weddings, and the Brazilian director Jose Padilha is best known for his woeful 2014 remake of sci-fi classic, RoboCop.

He is indulged in his almost experimental approach to the material, which means the daring military attack arrives almost an afterthought. Plus amid some decent character work, he brings in moments of contemporary dance to examine the relationship between art and war.

However the film is given an emergency airlift by stars Rosamund Pike and Daniel Bruhl, who are on strenuous form as the German members of the infamous German Baader-Meinhof terrorist group, and leaders of the hijack.

Their accomplices are a pair of thinly-sketched Palestinians whom the film has little interest in. 

However Brit actor Eddie Marsan is quietly wonderful as the poker-faced Israeli defence minister who insists there can be no negotiation.

However the passengers are anonymous pawns of politics, and the story would have been better served by a more straightforward narrative and an emphasis on action.

Steven Spielberg’s meaty 2008 thriller, Munich, and Ben Affleck’s crowd-pleasing Oscar winner, Argo, covered similar ground far more successfully.

And sadly Entebbe fails to achieve their dramatic height.

REVENGE

Cert 18 108mins Stars 5

Guns, drugs and sex are a gut wrenching  mix in this visceral rape revenge thriller.

From the blistering opening to the blood drenched finale, it bakes us in the glare of its searing confidence.

Marrakesh landscape is unforgivingly harsh as the action, which is fuelled by the gutsy performance of Matilda Lutz as Jennifer.

As the mistress of a married family man, she experiences the full spectrum of toxic entitlement and misogyny when his two armed assistants unexpectedly turn up at their remote luxury hunting lodge.

Wealthy and handsome, Kevin Janssens is full of physical premier league arrogance as her prime tormentor as Jennifer faces a desperate fight for survival.

With the symbolic  bite of an apple we’re metaphorically moved into the realm of fable. This allows us to forgive the more outlandish plotting and outrageous physical punishment, to embrace its core message of female emancipation. 

This delirious experience is probably the film Quentin Tarantino dreams of making next.

BIRTH OF THE DRAGON

Cert 12 Stars 2

There’s some halfway decent Kung Fu action in this goofy knockabout action thriller which defies any effort to be taken seriously.

Very loosely inspired by true events, it puts a fictional spin a famous fight between a young Bruce Lee and a famed Chinese martial arts master, in 1960’s San Francisco.

Philip Ng swaggers his way through as Lee, in contrast to the quietly spoken Xia Yu, as his mild mannered but steel-fisted opponent.

As well as fighting each other, they must struggle against local Triad gang, a laboured romantic subplot and suspiciously made-for-TV production standards.

 

RED SPARROW

Cert 15 139mins Stars 4

Jennifer Lawrence has her wings clipped by spies, seduction and sexual slavery in this hard hitting thriller with a heavy edge of political comment.

As Dominika she’s a former prima ballerina for the Bolshoi ballet who is recruited by the Russian secret service to seduce foreign agents.

Following her role as a persecuted housewife in last years bonkers art-house fantasy, Mother!, this is another punishing role as an abused woman forLawrence.

Reunited with her Hunger Games director, Francis Lawrence, it’s another tale of a young women coerced by a dictatorial state for a nefarious purpose.

Under Charlotte Rampling’s stern tutorship, Dominika is dehumanised, re-educated and programmed to thrill the enemy.

Graduating as a professional seductress, known as Sparrows, she’s sent to Budapest to hook up with a CIA operative in order to identify an American mole in Moscow.

The earnestly dull Joel Edgerton is our man in the CIA, and the always dull Matthias Schoenaerts plays Dominika’s handler. He’s amusingly made up to resemble Vladimir Putin.

Though handsomely staged on location, this dark tale of manipulation, deception and betrayal is an unapologetically arduous experience, smuggled into cinemas disguised as a glossy blockbuster.

Telling the story is told from the Soviet spies’ point of view, this is a highly critical spin on 007’s From Russia With Love. Far from enjoying a swinging satin sheeted romp with Sean Connery, Dominika’s mission involves a more realistic experience of espionage.

She’s humiliated, abused and raped, all at the behest of powerful and much older men, who are her mentors and supposed protectors.

It’s hard not to read this as a damning critique of Hollywood and a metaphor for an actresses life in the sex scandal environment prior to the #metoo campaign.

We’re supposed to find this superbly crafted film an uneasy watch, and it will disappoint anyone looking for a conscience-free fun time.

ATTACK ON TITAN: THE ROAR OF AWAKENING

Cert 15 120mins Stars 3

There’s a nicely nightmarish and Grimm feel to this animated fantasy sequel which sees grotesque giants threaten the human race with extinction.

The Attack On Titan franchise began life as Japanese manga comic before becoming a two full length feature films, and was followed up with two TV series, and a third is promised in July.

Despite this big screen adventure being stitched together from the 12 episode second TV series, even if you’re totally unfamiliar with it, it’s surprisingly coherent and enjoyable.

In a medieval universe, young Eren Jaeger of the Scout Regiment is ordered to the front line to find a member of the Trainig Corps called Christa. She may hold the key to victory in their ongoing war against the human-eating titans.

The streamlined plot means it’s non-stop action all the way, and there’s lots of graphic bloody violence in the exciting battles as the giants don’t spare the horses in any sense.