JCVD (2008)

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JCVD (2008)

Jean-Claude Van Damme as you’ve never seen him before. This is a painfully honest and at times downright bizarre look into the psyche of the B movie action star as he plays an emotionally ravaged and downtrodden version of himself. The film flitters from French to English as the actor’s career takes a desperate nosedive in the States (he loses a film role to his action movie rival Steven Seagal because he promises to cut off his trademark ponytail), he’s broke and desperately trying to fund a child custody battle over an astranged daughter.

On a return trip to his birth town of …

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Universal Soldier (1992)

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Universal Soldier (1992)

In a desperate attempt to counter terrorism, a top secret wing of the US army have created the Unisol – a team of hi-tech command-driven killing machines made from resurrected bodies of ex-military men. With their strength enhanced and their memories wiped, carnage ensues when Vietnam vets Luc (Van Damme) and Andrew (Lundgren) piece together the fragments of their past. Andrew’s a psychopathic, ear-collecting trigger happy Sergeant determined to wipe out the traitors of war, while Luc’s the sensitive type, fleeing his regeneration compound in a quest to relocate his home. Accompanied by disillusioned journalist Veronica (Walker), the two escape across …

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The Bourne Legacy (2012)

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The Bourne Legacy (2012)

A reboot of the Bourne franchise despite the telltale absence of the previous film’s main drivers, namely star Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass, whose gritty, documentary-style worked as a game changer in terms of modern action movies, forcing even the Bond films to step up a gear.

Tony Gilroy – script writer on the previous three films – helms this scattergun effort with occasional aplomb, particularly during two masterfully tense shootout sequences, but the crow-barring of extraneous references to The Bourne Ultimatum is confusing and pointless, before resorting to a rather perfunctory cat and mouse thriller.

In fairness to Gilroy, this …

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The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

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The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

Quickly following on from where Supremacy left off, Bourne escapes the hoards of police in a Moscow subway and winds up in London following a Guardian journalist who is investigating the Jason Bourne files.

Bourne continues to battle with his confused, amnesiac mind as he tries to piece together memories of his training; corrupted by governmental spooks and utilised as a brainwashed assassin.

As the bullets fly in an attempt to silence their rogue agent, Bourne is tracked from an intelligence unit in New York across continents in record breaking time. He avoids assassination attempts in Waterloo station (the Guardian journalist isn’t quite so lucky), a …

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The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

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The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

Jason Bourne’s quiet life with girlfriend Marie in India is rudely interrupted when a Russian assassin chases the couple through the busy streets of Delhi and shoots Marie dead with his sniper rifle. Bourne’s quest for revenge takes him to Berlin where he discovers that he has been framed for the death of two CIA agents and pinned as the culprit behind $3m of stolen money. In reality, the cash has been embezzled through the grubby hands of an unscrupulous Russian oil tycoon and some corrupt US officials. As Bourne struggles with his destructive amnesia, he begins to question his own innocence …

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The Bourne Identity (2002)

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The Bourne Identity (2002)

A fantastically tense, taut spy thriller based on a novel by Robert Ludlum. A fisherman trawling the Mediterranean resuscitates a man found floating in the water; his body strewn with bullet holes and a transmitter embedded in his back. Once he is rested, he struggles to recall any of the events leading up to his rescue, why he was left for dead, or even his own name. The contents of a safe in Switzerland reveals him to be Jason Bourne (Damon), a highly trained and dangerous assassin. Bourne is the product of a covert US governmental assassination squad – only he doesn’t quite know this …

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Safe (2012)

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Safe (2012)

Mei is an 11 year old maths prodigy stolen from her Beijing school and held under duress to play financial adviser to Chinese triads in New York’s Chinatown. She is the sole occupant of a crucial code to a safety deposit box – the number is stored in the young girl’s photographic memory – and everyone from the Russian mafia, corrupt cops at the NYPD and even the Mayor’s office is in on the deal. Running parallel to this is the story of vaguely American cage fighter and ex-Special Ops tough guy Luke Wright (The Stath) who wrongs the Russians by failing …

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Mutant Girls Squad (2010)

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Mutant Girls Squad (2010)

Barmy, perverse and demented Japanese retch fest which carries it’s beating heart in the bloodied grip of a schoolgirl’s mutant claws.

Brimming with gooey, grisly imagination and a macabre sense of humour, there is something to be said for the film’s complete lack of restraint. No idea is wasted or deemed too ridiculous. In fact, there are very few films which outwardly revel in so much sublime ridiculousness. Couple this with fantastical prosthetic alien effects and the whole thing starts to resemble a John Carpenter movie being put through a blender.

Told in three chapters – with each third made by a …

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Merantau (2009)

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Merantau (2009)

Uneven action movie from Indonesia which wrestles an Ong-Bak-lite storyline with swathes of lingering, detached close-ups. Despite its pacing issues, Welsh director Gareth Evans can clearly film a decent fight scene, using his Indonesian cast to promote the traditional style of pencak silat – or, more specifically, the tiger form style of silat harimau – attempting to do for the art what Tony Jaa did for Muay Thai. Debuting star Iko Uwais plays Yuda, who leaves his farming family and simple village life in West Sumarta for the bright lights of Jakarta on a traditional coming-of-age journey, referred to as …

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Shaolin (2011)

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Shaolin (2011)

Although considered a remake of The Shaolin Temple – Jet Li’s highly successful 1982 film debut – the connection is more aesthetic than literal. Both films deal with the temple’s ransacking by violent overlords albeit a few hundred years apart. The original film’s Tang Dynasty setting is substituted here for the opportunistic, tumultuous years of China’s burgeoning republic, where power-hungry warlords battle for governmental influence at the cruel expense of the people. Like the 1982 film, this is also state-funded and with the full backing and consent of the existing Shaolin Temple, which in recent years has become a crucial …

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