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Now streaming–Luc Besson ups the spy agent genre with his latest badass assassin thriller, Anna

July 21, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

Luc Besson, master of the spy movie and the female assassin, created perhaps his best work in the genre with his 2019 action thriller Anna. Poor distribution and studio problems caused the film to get only a minor theatrical release, but it’s at last widely available, streaming to anyone free on iMDB TV. If you’re like most movie fans and missed it, you’re in for a surprise that rivals many similar action thrillers by one of the greatest writer-directors of our time, including his 1990 film Le Femme Nikita with Anne Parillaud (and its English remake, Point of No Return with Bridget Fonda), and the 1994 movie The Professional (Natalie Portman, Jean Reno). Besson also wrote the screenplays for The Transporter starring Jason Statham (2002), Taken starring Liam Neeson (2008), and Colombiana starring Zoe Saldana (2011). So he knows action, and that’s several assassins, spies, and action sequences in Besson’s personal dossier in additional to his greatest feats, the epic science fiction films The Fifth Element and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. It’s that last film he tapped for the star of Anna, a spy movie that’s not a retread on the director’s past work but a superb achievement, with a badass lead and story even better than another spy favorite, Atomic Blonde.

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Extraction–Hemsworth goes Atomic Blonde in next Netflix action drama

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April 26, 2020

Review by C.J. Bunce

Thor’s gotta Thor. In the first scene of the new Netflix action drama Extraction, we catch up with Chris Hemsworth in Australia jumping off a Brazil-esque cliff with the same nonchalance he applied to cut the head off of Thanos. Here Hemsworth plays Tyler Rake, an ex-soldier turned mercenary with nothing left to live for, taking on his next assignment–a suicide mission for anybody else that he accepts with that bravado the actor regularly taps into whether he’s saving a Starfleet ship in Star Trek (2009) or the Earth from aliens in Men in Black International. This is another role perfectly suited to Hemsworth’s charm and humor, although the humor part is dialed back this round.

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First look–Luc Besson writes and directs his next action flick, Anna

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April 12, 2019

The master of the assassin sub-genre is back again. You may know him for writing and directing The Fifth Element (starring Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich), and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (starring Cara Delevingne and Dane DeHaan), but you may also know Luc Besson as the writer and director of the 1990 film Le Femme Nikita with Anne Parillaud (and its English remake, Point of No Return with Bridget Fonda), and the 1994 movie The Professional (Natalie Portman, Jean Reno). He’s also written the screenplays for The Transporter starring Jason Statham (2002), Taken starring Liam Neeson (2008), and Colombiana starring Zoe Saldana (2011). Then he tied together his science fiction sense with his trademark badass woman leading role in 2014 with Lucy, starring Scarlet Johansson. That’s several assassins, spies, and action sequences in Luc Besson’s personal dossier.

Besson is writing and directing his next film, too. It’s called Anna, and he’s tapped the actress behind the unforgettable alien woman from Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Sasha Luss (who played the ill-fated Princess Lïhio-Minaa) as the title character. From its first trailer (check it out below), Anna seems to be part Red Sparrow and part Atomic Blonde. Or another La Femme Nikita. But it’s going to be very difficult for fans of spy movies to differentiate this latest entry from Atomic Blonde, especially if the film is really structured as revealed in the trailer. It looks like it could be a remake, but it isn’t.

Some credibility and gravitas come from the presence of Academy Award-winning actress Helen Mirren, whose own badass spy and assassin role in RED and RED 2 should come to mind. Other actors in the film include Luke Evans (The Fast & Furious series, The Hobbit series) and Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Tron: Legacy, The Dark Knight Rises).

Here’s the first trailer for Luc Besson’s Anna:

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First look–James Bond director pits Jackie Chan against Pierce Brosnan in The Foreigner

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June 27, 2017

James Bond fans loved when they could choose between two Bonds. It only happened once, back in 1983 you had your choice of then-current Bond Roger Moore starring in Octopussy, or the back-from-retirement Bond Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again–the outside of canon Bond film created during a contract dispute. But as much as we think the current Bond, Daniel Craig, is perfect as Bond, who wouldn’t want to see Pierce Brosnan return one more time?

We’ve no hope to see Brosnan return again as Bond, but we may be getting a taste of just that later this year when Martin Campbell, director of Brosnan in GoldenEye and Craig in Casino Royale, returns to direct Brosnan–this time as antagonist–in the action film/drama The Foreigner. The Foreigner is even bigger news for Jackie Chan fans, as Chan will star as the film’s hero. American audiences have been begging for his return for years. They really haven’t seen Chan since 2010’s remake of The Karate Kid, and in full martial arts mode it’s been ten years–back in 2007’s Rush Hour 3.

Veering away from Chan’s normal, light-hearted summer popcorn movie use of his incredible martial arts skill (along with his notable team of stuntmen) The Foreigner is a serious drama, delving into modern-day terrorism as Chan’s character seeks revenge for his daughter’s death. Like the similar vibe seen in the Transporter and Taken series, the first trailer for The Foreigner reveals some fine wall-to-wall action. But a sense of Chan’s clever use of his high octane martial arts style in troubling situations is also obviously peppered into the film.

Here is the first trailer for The Foreigner:

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Tags: Jackie Chan, James Bond, James Bond movies, Martin Campbell, Pierce Brosnan, Taken, Transporter

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Retro Review–Fletch author Gregory Mcdonald’s kidnapping thriller, Snatched

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March 18, 2017

Review by C.J. Bunce

When you think of the 1985 movie Fletch, you probably think of Chevy Chase’ s humorous, over-the-top take on undercover reporter I.M. Fletcher. But Fletch the movie was only loosely based on the award-winning mystery novels by author Gregory Mcdonald. Mcdonald wrote dozens of novels before his death in 2008. One of those is Snatched, a kidnapping story reprinted this year for the first time in 30 years by Titan Books’ Hard Case Crime imprint.

Originally published in 1978 as Who Took Toby Rinaldi? in the U.S. and Snatched in the UK, Mcdonald crafted a thriller about the botched kidnapping of the eight-year-old son of a Persian Gulf region ambassador to the United Nations as he readies a proposal with global impact before the U.N. The proposal itself is a bit of a Pelican Brief MacGuffin, but the real action follows a thug named Spike as he hides the abducted boy, Toby Rinaldi. Toby was on his way to meet his mother Christina for a visit to a Disneyland-esque theme park in California called Fantazyland. Key to the action and tension are the efforts and setbacks faced by Christina as she attempts to catch the kidnapper, despite her husband’s foreign security squad in the U.S. trying to keep the kidnapping secret.

Snatched is a great read. Its slow, simmering pace reflects nailbiters of the 1960s-1970s like The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, Charley Varrick, Magnum Force, or Bullitt. Many of the characters are intentionally frustrating. The characters are frustrated, and that is channeled to the reader page after page. Toby’s father is caught between the direct demands of his king and responsibility to family. The political factions behind the kidnapping plot–a small group of tried and tested, denizen mercenaries whose failure to communicate and coordinate because of their own personal distractions cause them to trip over each other as they attempt what might otherwise be the simplest of crimes. Despite Mcdonald’s Fletch character translated to the big screen, make no mistake: Snatched is not a comedy. It’s also low on violence, other than a little boy in jeopardy as the main plot point, which is handled deftly by Mcdonald.

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Tags: A Perfect World, amusement parks, Cellular movie, Fletch, great reads, Gregory Mcdonald, Hard Case Crime, Joyland, kidnapping stories, Patrick Faricy, Retro review, Snatch book review, Snatched book review, Taken, Titan Books, Who Took Toby Rinaldi?

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Now streaming–Aaron Eckhart, Olga Kurylenko, and Garrick Hagon in Erased

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October 1, 2015

The movie trailer. It’s the video “cover” you’re not supposed to judge a movie by. But sometimes a movie trailer gets it all exactly right–setting the correct expectation with viewers without over-hyping or over-emphasizing only the best parts of the film it is promoting. Take the trailer for Aaron Eckhart’s Erased as an example.

From the beginning, Erased (originally titled The Expatriate, but renamed for the U.S. release) appeared to be a blend of a summer action flick like The Bourne Identity (with Eckhart playing an ex-CIA agent on the run), the Robert Redford espionage thriller Three Days of the Condor (where one day all his co-workers turn up dead and his world upside down), and Liam Neeson’s Taken, since he has to protect his little girl along the way. Eckhart’s role also seemed to echo that of Ben Affleck’s role in Eckhart’s prior film Paycheck, since he appeared to create some future technology that leaves him to unravel what happened to his stolen life. Well, what you see is what you get. And it’s all very satisfying.

Aaron Eckhart is an under-rated lead. If you put aside the dud that was I, Frankenstein, Eckhart delivers an emotional performance every time. As adman Nick Naylor trying to save big tobacco in the brilliant Thank You for Smoking, as the guy that had us all wearing “I Believe in Harvey Dent” badges after his performance as Two-Face in The Dark Knight, after his almost unrecognizable performance opposite Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich. And as the vile mastermind opposite Ben Affleck in the superb Philip K. Dick adaptation Paycheck. With Erased, a flick with a botched release schedule back in 2012 and 2013, he could have had his break-out role.

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Tags: Aaron Eckhart, Erased, Erased movie review, Erased trailer, Garrick Hagon, Liana Liberato, Olga Kurylenko, Paycheck, Taken, The Expatriate, The International, The Interpreter, Three Days of the Condor

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Syfy Channel special celebrates 20 years on TV

Filed under: Con Culture, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment

December 11, 2012

Last night the Syfy Channel premiered a new show documenting its 20 years of bringing science fiction and related programming to cable TV. The Syfy Channel 20th Anniversary Special chronicles the key landmarks of the channel going back to its inception in 1992 as a network of mostly reruns of classic sci-fi series like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and the original Star Trek, as well as collecting and expanding upon series that didn’t make it on other networks, like Sliders and Andromeda. The 2-hour show is a great way to reminisce about all the good–and bad–TV that has sucked you in, featuring commentary by series creators and cast, and narrated by Lois and Clark star Dean Cain.

Actors Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge and Michael Shanks discuss the first big hit for the network originally called the Sci Fi Channel: the Stargate franchise, including Stargate SG-1, and spinoffs Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe, as well as the made-for-TV movies.

Then there were early series that didn’t last long, like USA Network series that moved to Sci Fi, like Good vs. Evil, The Invisible Man, Welcome to Paradox, and Mission Genesis.

Ben Browder and Claudia Black chat about the four seasons of the Australian production, Farscape, the next big series for the Sci Fi Channel. The renaissance of science fiction fans fighting for a series to return occurred with Farscape, resulting in Brian Henson bring a 4-hour mini-series event to round out and tie up the loose ends of the series.

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