In the mood for a good action movie? It’s rare to see so many well-made, adrenalide-fuelled romps premiering in the same month. So, without any without further ado…
Beast of War
Kiah Roache-Turner’s World War II film opens with a text insert announcing it was “inspired by actual events.” Which is kind of pushing it, given this is also a SHARK MOVIE, with a gung-ho spirit very much deserving of those capital letters. The historical events in question relate to the bombing of an Australian warship by the Japanese in 1942, which resulted in the deaths of 100 crew members. A comparable event is depicted in the film, which is led by a raise-the-roof performance from Mark Coles Smith as Indigenous soldier Leo.
However, after the ship sinks—leaving Leo and other survivors bobbing around on debris—the arrival of a ravenous shark marks the crossing of a threshold, from juiced-up war drama to chomp-tastic midnight movie. Roache-Turner conjures a wet, sticky, vivid atmosphere, splashy and surreal, deploying particularly memorable use of fog and mist. This very well-paced film is now playing in Australian cinemas; release dates in other countries are TBC.
A House of Dynamite
Kathryn Bigelow’s pulse-pounding “what if?” film about America’s potential reaction to a surprise nuclear attack is perhaps not an action movie in the traditional sense, being filled with people looking at screens and attempting to stay calm. But good god, it’s a knuckle-gobbling ride—easily the most intense experience on this list. There’s a sense of impending dread from the beginning, boosted by jabbing violin strings and janky camerawork, before the premise really swings into gear and a consortium of Americans in control rooms comprehend the unthinkable, with just 19 minutes before the moment of impact.
The pressure cooker builds and releases three times, Bigelow replaying those 19 minutes from three different perspectives, including that of Rebecca Ferguson’s Captain Olivia Walker and Idris Elba’s POTUS. A bunch of bang-on performances bring heft to lines like “there is no plan B” and “surrender or suicide.” A House of Dynamite is a great example of socially conscious speculative fiction, delivering an inescapably powerful message.
The Lost Bus
You may have seen a fire-related disaster movie—like Backdraft or The Towering Inferno. And you’ve almost certainly seen a bus-related action movie—that one with Keanu Reeves and a minimum speed limit (or maybe that should read “minimum speed limit”). But have you ever seen a movie about a bus charging through wildfires? The latest film to be shaped in director Paul Greengrass’ famously restless, jittery style stars Matthew McConaughey as an everyman who graduates to heroism when he picks up a bunch of school children stranded in an evacuation zone, as the environments around them increasingly resemble a hell-on-earth inferno.
There isn’t a lot of story in this film, but there’s a lot of plot—a relentless succession of frenetic moments stitched into a simple narrative framework. As I wrote in my review: “There’s lots of bedlam in this juiced-up movie; lots of smoke, fire, debris, carnage.” It’s well acted, but what you’ll really remember are the experiential aspects of it; that whoosh of verisimilitude and adrenaline.
Play Dirty
Shane Black doesn’t have blockbuster-director fame, but, like his characters, he has street cred. The action auteur has been writing scripts for aeons—for instance 80s and 90s classics including Lethal Weapon, Last Action Hero, and Long Kiss Goodnight—and began directing his own screenplays in the mid-noughties, starting with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. His new production, which scores no points for innovation by casting Mark Wahlberg as a career criminal, is what you want from a Black joint: a genre film that’s sassy and playful but also packed full of grunt, with wily characters and enjoyable set pieces.
Wahlberg plays Parker, who reluctantly teams up with fellow thief Zen (Rosa Salazar) after she double-crosses him and murders the rest of his team. They hatch a plan to steal a priceless treasure from the dictator of an unnamed country—an elaborate scheme with Saturday-matinee vibes. There’s no reinventing the wheel here, and some of the staging feels a bit workmanlike, but Play Dirty is very solid ‘tainment—with a retro sensibility that helps prevent momentum from flagging.
Tron: Ares
There’s no shortage of crash-bang spectacle in the new Tron movie—most of it involving virtual objects that have been materialised so they can be spectacularly destroyed. Whereas its two predocessors (released in 1982 and 2010) sent humans into a digital realm called The Grid, this time its creations spill over into our reality, including Jared Leto’s advanced program Ares. At first, Ares can only exist outside The Grid for 29 minutes, so the race is on to find the “permanence code,” a discovery that will revolutionise the world and serve as a metaphor for artificial intelligence.
In one exhilerating chase scene, the code’s finder—game-company CEO Eve (Greta Lee)—mounts one of those iconic light-cycles and fangs it around town; what a sweet ride that would be. The plotting can be erratic (building to an epilogue that deserves immediate deletion) but most of the film is a blast, lit up with a burningly bright pinball aesthetic and set to an awesome score from Nine Inch Nails, which sounds less like music per se than a constellation of electric textures and energy.
