Reviews about Action / Adventure

JimG944 says "Commando Blu-Ray: And the Body Count Grows!" about Commando

JimG944 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:23:34 GMT

4 of 5 stars for the Arnold action movie Commando. This movie is firmly set in the mid-1980's. Arnold is young and Alyssa Milano is a child. The story is simple and the action great. Ex-military Arnold learns that the members of his old troop are being killed. Eventually, they kidnap his daughter (Milano) trying to force Arnold into doing a task. Well, Arnold goes Commando to hunt down where they are holding her and to get her back. Armed with knives, guns, granades and a rocket launcher, he goes into their lair. An easy/basic plot, not much acting/characters to get in the way of the action. Just good old hand-to-hand Arnold. Oh, forgot, he had a few claymores along for the ride. A fun action movie.

...

JimG944 says "Exit Wounds: A typical Steven Seagal action movie" about Exit Wounds

JimG944 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:06:55 GMT

3 of 5 stars for the action movie Exit Wounds. This is a typical Steven Seagal movie with plenty of martial arts fights, car chases, gun fire and stunts. In this movie, Seagal plays a cop who gets assigned to a difficult inner-city precinct. This precinct has plenty of corrupt cops. Eventually Seagal discovers the "bad guys" are trying to document police corruption.

As I said, a pretty typical Seagal movie with direct fights where the bad guys get hurt badly. It is a good action movie and fun to watch. Perhaps not Seagal's best movie though.

...

JimG944 says "Rules of Engagement DVD: an interesting military drama" about Rules of Engagement - DVD Widescreen

JimG944 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:01:33 GMT

4 of 5 stars for the military drama movie Rules of Engagement. Let's start by saying any movie with Tommy Lee Jones ad Samuel L Jackson is one that I will like, both are among my favorite actors. Our two lead characters fought together during Viet Nam and experienced extreme action. Moving forward in time Jackson's character is still active in the Marines and is picked to do an embassy extraction in the middle east. His mission encounters heavy automatic weapon fire as they touch-down in the embassy compound. Extracting the Ambassador and his family, fire become heavier killing and wounding several Marines. Jackson eventually orders his troops to return fire killing over 80 people outside of the embassy. The key question was, were these people armed and firing upon the embassy? If so, they were combatants; if not they were civilians. The movie shifts to a legal and courtmarshall drama. Jackson asks his old friend Jones to be his attorney.

A very well made movie. Great action intensely photographed....

...

JimG944 says "Sharpshooter: Good Plot, Dull characters, no DVD extras" about Sharpshooter

JimG944 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:20:05 GMT

2 of 5 stars for the action-adventure movie Sharpshooter. Sigh, I had high expectations for this movie based on the trailer and the opening scenes. In the opening, a former CIA hitman is doing a hostage rescue from two high speed cars rolling thru a desert somewhere in the middle-east. Starting with only a high-power rifle, he starts the ambush. A very impressive setup and execution. From there it all went wrong. The hitman character is toally flat and 2-dimensional. Trying to achieve a rigid army-like character, the actor achieves a total boring, don't care, uninteresting character. Our hitman is talked into taking one more job before he retires. As he starts to plan the hit we get the feeling all is not right. Yep, after he hits the target, "they" will hit him. Frankly, the action ain't so good; the characters are bland and don't care. For a movie with potential, this turned out badly. Don't waste your time.

...

JimG944 says "Death Race: Extreme Road-Rage" about Death Race

JimG944 — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:45:23 GMT

4 of 5 stars for the extreme road-rage movie: Death Race (Blu-Ray edition). Set in the future where prisons are run by corporations "for profit" they stream on internet a new sport called The Death Race. Prisoners are forced to drive race cars complete with armor and weapons where the goal is to not just win, but, be the only survivor of the race. Our hero (played by Jason Statham, one of my favorites) gets rail-roaded into prison and forced into driving.

This is a sci-fi movie which is richly and expansively photographed. Yeah, special effects, but, mostly great sets and live action. Really a nice blend of reality and effects. Great action, lots of bullets, lots of smash-ups. This is a recommended movie.

...

JimG944 says "Quantum of Solace Blu-Ray continues the Bond tradition" about Quantum of Solace

JimG944 — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 01:28:35 GMT

5 of 5 stars for the James Bond 007 action movie: Quantum of Solace (Blu-Ray edition). As with every other James Bond movie, you can expect rich big settings with grand sweeping action, exotic international locations and insanely big action. QoS is on par with other Bond movies but is not in my top 10 list.

QoS follows the events following Casino Royale (the remake of a few years ago, not the comedy version of the 70's). Daniel Craig plays Bond in both CR and QoS. He is a good, though not great, version of Bond. I do like Judi Dench as "M". She is strong, solid and believeable in the role. The key point to this movie is a new secret organization which MI6 learns of the hard-way. The organization is named Quantum of Solace. QoS turns out to be primarily a "business" organization trying thru illegal means to extract extreme profits from a country. The story has Bond jumping around the world to chase after the bad guys. The downside to this movie is that QoS doesn't really form as a group...

...

JimG944 says "Starts slowly and matures into a great movie" about Wanted

JimG944 — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:05:41 GMT

4 of 5 stars to this crazy action movie: Wanted. Combine Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie and you have a powerful combination. When this movie first starts it starts slowly and seems like a dumb movie about a nerd kid. In fact, I almost turned it off. What's cool is that minute by minute this movie gets better and better. By the end, you have a powerful action movie with solid characters. At first it jumps around a bit with the kid having dreams and some visual experiences that you don't know if they're true or not.

The story is about the son of a secret agent who gets recruited into the agency (The Fraternity). Thru the whole movie, you have to suspend your thinking as things border on fantasy rather than reality (e.g. kid gets shot, they put him into a stone bathtub with fluid that repairs him; or you can make a bullet go around solid objects by putting "spin" into the bullet). Anyway, they train him and set him into the field as an assassin. Oh, did I mention the truck load of rat bombs?...

...

MikeyRocks says "Overrated" about Oceans Twelve - Widescreen

MikeyRocks — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:16:04 GMT

How do you manage to get some of the best actors of our decade and put them all together on one movie and still have the movie be utter garbadge.

Watch Ocean's Twelve and you'll find out.

Without giving too many spoilers this movie has a horrible plot that makes little or no sense and tries to cover it up by having twists and turns. To the untrained viewer it appears that there is merely a complicated film. But viewing it more than once it quickly becomes clear that this emperor has no clothes.

The only reason that this film warrants an average rating is because you can enjoy it if you just like seeing famous actors...but that's about it. Sure you can see it once and laugh at how utterly plotless it is and ohhh and ahh at the famous actors and actresses who are in this movie (there's plenty of them) but don't bother buying the DVD...seeing the film more than once doesn't help any.

...

MikeyRocks says "Action-Packed, Fun, but not story heavy" about x-men origins wolverine movie

MikeyRocks — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:46:37 GMT

X-men Wolverine Origins is a great movie, but only for the type of people who can enjoy this type of movie. And by this type I mean the action packed, Michael Bay type movies. Hugh Jackson is a great actor and I can't imagine anyone else playing Wolverine. However, the movie isn't for people looking for plot heavy story telling. Additionally, comic books fans and fans of the original movie might be offended at how many liberties the movie takes in regards to the canon. So to actually enjoy this movie you gotta go in with the right attitude of just watching this movie to have fun and as a standalone from any existing stories on Wolverine. If you do that you will have a fun time watching this movie though!

...

Rachel3 says "Wanted will give you the adrenaline high you've been craving" about Wanted

Rachel3 — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:49:17 GMT

I saw the trailer for "Wanted," several months ago and immediately knew I couldn't wait to see it. By the end of the 30-second teaser, my pulse was already racing. Generally, when I get really excited about a movie, I hype it up too much in my mind and am often let down when I actually see the movie. This was definitely NOT the case with "Wanted."

The cast is amazing. You know a movie is quality when Morgan Freeman decides he's going to be in it. Angelina Jolie adds the crazy sex appeal we have come to expect, and love, from her. But "Wanted" could never be "Wanted" without James McAvoy. I read somewhere that McAvoy does for "Wanted" what Dustin Hoffman did for "The Graduate." And I completely agree. McAvoy, of "Atonement" and "Becoming Jane" fame, adds a completely new dimension to the action movie. His journey from "average joe loser" to "dauntless assassin" was really great to watch because he plays both roles so well.

But let's not forget the special effects. The whole movie is visual...

...