Tag: Action

  • Mission: Impossible (1996)

    Loosely based on the espionage TV series of the late 1960s, Mission: Impossible finds Tom Cruise as secret agent Ethan Hunt, the point man for a team of IMF spies headed by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight reprising the only character originally from the TV show). Trouble ensues when Phelps’ team is assigned to keep a list of…

  • Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

    With a knockout of a premise and an ample supply of firepower, Assault on Precinct 13 heralded the arrival of a promising, workmanlike genre director in John Carpenter. The action-thriller slipped in an out of U.S. theaters in 1976 with little fanfare, but quickly achieved cult status across the Atlantic and helped set the stage for Carpenter’s…

  • Plane (2023)

    I think it’s fair to say you will never see Plane as an in-flight movie. At least, I sure as hell hope you don’t. In Plane, after all, the fictional Trailblazer Airlines relies on faulty technology and pushes its pilots into dangerous situations, all for the sake of saving a few precious dollars. Can you…

  • Death Sentence (2007)

    As trashy vigilante fantasies go, you could do a lot worse than Death Sentence. That might sound like damning with faint praise, and perhaps it is, but director James Wan deserves credit for dressing up this Death Wish-knockoff with honest-to-goodness visual flair.  Kevin Bacon lends a welcome intensity to the role of Nick Hume, a well-heeled business…