Day of Reckoning, on Tubi

Kyle Rusk is a stone-cold outlaw. Marshal Butch Hayden and his men also have serious outlaw tendencies. Getting caught between them is a lonely place for an honest cop like Sheriff John Dorsey to find himself, but he always does his duty. The ensuing standoff might just kill him, but Dorsey is running out of things to lose in Shaun Silva’s Day of Reckoning, which premieres this Friday on Tubi.

Rusk just knocked over another bank, but Hayden is waiting for him at his budget motel, for yet another reckless shootout. Somehow, the bank-robber escapes, but the Marshal figures he must be headed to his girlfriend Emily’s farm. That would be smack in the middle of Dorsey’s jurisdiction—at least for the next few weeks. His deputy, Danny Raise, looks poised to unseat him. To compound the insult, Dorsey also suspects Raise is sleeping with his wife.

Dorsey felt under-equipped for a Rio Bravo-style standoff at Rusk’s farmhouse. Much to the Sheriff’s disgust, he walks into a veritable hostage situation, in which Hayden’s deputy marshals, who are more like mercenary bounty hunters, are holding Emily Rusk as bait. They are all mean and untrustworthy, but Dorsey still must most likely fight alongside them when Rusk arrives with his biker-gang reinforcements.

Reckoning, (technically, Scott Adkins’ second such reckoning day, following Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning) is a gritty, low-frills B-movie, but Silva has full command of its neo-Western aesthetics. Although Adkins has much less screentime than the antagonistic marshal and sheriff, he has ample opportunity to show off his villainous chops. Indeed, he is entertainingly ferocious as Rusk. (He has moved away from bad guys, into leading action figure roles, but he still has the skill set.)

Topakk, from the Philippines

If the gangs chasing the Warriors back to Coney Island blundered into a warehouse guarded by John Rambo, it would have gotten very bloody. This is the movie that proves it. Miguel Vergara witnessed guerrillas beheading the surviving members of his commando unit. He then killed each and everyone of them. Of course, he lives with tremendous guilt and PTSD. It all comes rushing back to him when two desperate siblings barge into the warehouse where he works as a security guard—in a way that will be very bad for the corrupt Filipino drug cops chasing them in Richard V. Somes’ Topakk (a.k.a. Triggered), which releases tomorrow on VOD.

Vergara’s best friend Leon Ramos had the bad judgement to announce his wife’s pregnancy right at the start of their operation, so we all know what will happen. His wife Jane clearly has not forgiven Vergara yet and neither has he. This will be his first night finally employed, at a creaky old warehouse that apparently stores inflammable material and enormous circular saws, so we know what that means.

Bogs Diwata got caught trying to steal from the drug operation his sister used to mule for, so she agrees to make runs with him to work off the debt. During their first pick-up (yep, you got it), the corrupt Mayor sends Romero’s Elite Squad-like unit to wipe out the potential informants who could tie her to the illicit drug trade. Of course, they cannot leave witnesses like the Diwatas, but somehow, they make it to Vergara’s warehouse.

Honestly, Topakk might be the bloodiest action movie of the decade. Somes and company never hold back or water anything down. These are old school no-holds-barred beat-downs. Frankly, there is good reason the stunt performers of Tag Team Stunts get such prominent billing, because they were clearly busy.

For most fans, only Tag Team’s work really matters, but Sid Lucero happens to be terrific as Romero. He is far more complex than the rest of the villains, as a veteran and family man, whose own family will be threatened by the drug kingpins he protects. There are also several flamboyantly nasty henchmen, like the duplicitous Aquinta and sadistic Sarmiento, portrayed with sinister glee by Cholo Barretto and Vin Abrenica.

Sunray: Fallen Soldier

Most soldiers hope their service will keep violence and danger away from their homeland and families. Usually, that is why they sign-up in the first place. When tragedy finds their loved ones anyway, they might feel like they failed, but it is more likely that we failed them. Andrew Coleman (Echo 1) was already burdened with guilt stemming from the death of several comrades in Afghanistan. His daughter’s premature demise from poison-laced drugs pushes him over the edge. However, the illicit gang responsible gives Coleman a target and an outlet for his rage. He cannot fight the entire organization by himself, but Echo 2, 3, and 4 loyally rally behind him in James Clarke & Daniel Shepherd’s Sunray: Fallen Soldier, produced by and starring former Royal Marine Commandos, which is now available on VOD.

When Coleman returned home, he carried the unfortunate events of his tour back with him. Inevitably, it affected his relationships with his soon-to-be ex-wife Elaine and their teen daughter Rachel, even though both women recognize and understand he still struggles with unresolved trauma. Even with a troubled father, Elaine is a pretty good kid, but when mean girls successfully peer-pressure her into trying coke, her mistake turns fatal.

Frankly, her boyfriend Cassius is considerably broken-up over it as well, but he left her alone, with a bad element. He should have known better, because that is his world. As the son of Lucian, a long-reigning druglord, he was directly involved in supplying the drugs. Consequently, Coleman wants Cassius dead—and he is willing to work his way up the organizational flow chart to get to him. He starts off wielding nail guns and hammers, but when his vendetta gets messy, his old teammates, Smudge, Sledge, and Harper (Echo 2-4), bail him out and help upgrade his hardware.

Sunray is a throwback to old school vet-turned-vigilante movies, represented by the likes of the Robert Ginty Exterminator films. Frankly, this film is so gritty it sometimes feels like sandpaper on your eyeballs. Yet, the directness of the action scenes is undeniably effective.

The same is true for 29-year Royal Marine veteran Tip Cullen, who broods like a house on fire as Coleman. You would be hard-pressed to find a more grizzled or gristly actor, but that gives him instant credibility in Sunray. Tom Leigh, Luke Solomon, and Steven Blades, fellow veterans all, have equal cred walking the walk and talking the talk, as Echo 2, 3, and 4. With Cullen they nicely create a sense of the fellowship that comes from serving together.

X-Treme Riders: Fast, Furious, and Thai

Kla and his friends are drug-running stunt drivers—and they are the good guys. Unfortunately, two of their fellow drivers were fatally double-crossed by the other gang they thought they were doing business with. It turns out, Kla’s sister Fun will be the featured fighter in the MMA championship sponsored by their new nemesis. Family is a big deal in movies like this, isn’t it? There is also a lot of fast driving in Sor Sangchai’s X-Treme Riders, which releases today on VOD.

In addition to their exhibitions, the X-Treme Riders also double as the special “cabbage” truck racers, until two colorful hench-people with grenade launchers ambush their latest run, killing Bank. Their boss Krit tells them to lay low, while he quickly tracks the killers back to Jo, the big city kingpin, who is also promoting Fun’s fight. Of course, Jo is pressuring her to throw the fight, because he knows she needs money for her mother’s heart-surgery.

Poor Kla has not spoken to his ailing mother in years because she blames him for his father’s accidental death—not completely without cause. Still, Kla’s teammates and their DJ, Pat, who is also his girlfriend, are a lot like his “family.” You know how that goes. Regardless, Kla and his cronies will be driving hard, while Fun fights her heart out, or not.

It is conspicuously obvious X-Treme Riders was conceived as a Thai Fast and Furious. However, it deserves credit for its willingness to go darker. Just for starters, the X-Treme Riders are flat-out drug-runners. There is also a surprisingly high mortality rate among the major cast of characters.

Kill: Featuring 52 Kinds of Knives

India's NSG commandos, the “Black Cats,” train to face the Pakistani and Chinese militaries (despite BRIC), so Captains Amrit Rathod and Viresh Chatwal should be able to handle a gang of bandits. They will be outnumbered 36 to 2. Of course, there are only two or three bad guys who match their skills, but the desperate thugs can easily kill Rathod’s beloved and her wealthy family. Consequently, the top priority for the NSG officers will be protecting innocents, but the bodies inevitably start piling up in Nikhil Bhat’s Kill, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Originally, Rathod took leave (with his wingman) to convince his true love, Tulika Thakur, not to marry the husband her wealthy and powerful father Baldeo Singh Thakur, had arranged for her. The “mission” was practically “accomplished.” They were simply waiting to explain things to her father back in New Delhi. Unfortunately, a band of cutthroats deliberately modeled on the dacoits starts robbing and terrorizing the train. When they recognize the wealthy Thakur, they figure they hit the jackpot. However, when Rathod realizes his Tulika might be in danger, he and Chatwal start working their way through the goons towards her train-car.

In terms of concept, Kill is very much Die Hard on a train, but it is about one hundred times more brutal than Under Siege 2. It might be more accurate to call it The Raid: Redemption on a train. There might be a lot of blood, but technically it is mostly bone-snapping melee rather than outright murder for the first forty-five minutes or so. Unfortunately, when Chatwal reluctantly kills a senior clan member, it stokes the gang’s rage. From there, the stakes and the body-count rise exponentially.

If you want beatdowns, Bhat and action-directors Oh Se-young and Parvez Shaikh serve them up pretty much non-stop (using 52 varieties of knives according to the press notes—so there!). Kill also has fewer timeouts than in Xavier Gens’ Mayhem or Dev Patel’s Monkey Man. You can almost think of it as the hallway fight scene from Oldboy maintained for a solid one hundred-some minutes.

Lakshya definitely has the chops and the presence to carry the film. Both he and Abhishek Chauhan (as Chatwal) look well trained in Krav Maga and Pekiti-Tirsia Kati. They also have decent comradely chemistry together. Even as the get tagged with injuries, Chatwal more than Rathod, they are more than credibly equal to the thirty-some pseudo-dacoits—at least according to the accepted logic of martial arts cinema.

Agent Recon, Co-Starring Chuck Norris & Marc Singer

You might not read it in online descriptions, but this is the third film in a trilogy. It happens to be the first co-starring the legendary Chuck Norris in his first film since Expendables 2, so it is easy to understand why the marketing would play down the earlier films. In one way, the premise is pretty straightforward. The bad guys have a compound, so the good guys must break into it. In this case, the hero has augmented alien super-powers he harnesses thanks to the late scientist, whose downloaded consciousness will be installed into a rather grizzled-looking android. Viewers piece together the backstory as best they can, but nobody will have any trouble understanding the red-meat action in Derek Ting’s Agent Recon, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

Jim Yung is sort of like JCVD in Universal Soldier—or so I’m guessing. After getting dosed with some alien dust, he acquired superhuman powers. The government whisked him away to a secret base, where Alastair trained him so well (before his body was killed) that he is now a full-fledged super-soldier operative. Not surprisingly, he is called in when a shadowy AIM or HYDRA like group experimenting with alien dust kidnaps Captain Lila Rupert.

Initially, Colonel Green and his team (of two) are skeptical of Yung, but the officer eventually agrees it would be handy to have his abilities for the assault—making it a full four people against literally dozens. Apparently, there was some sort of outbreak, so to kill the “infected” they have to shoot for their livers. Yet, headshots seem to be more effective later—so if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, just use your best judgement.

Speaking of judgement calls, it is not immediately obvious why Ting’s script lured Norris away from his ranch and back to a film set. However, the necessarily stoic Alastair android certainly does not require much heavy lifting from an acting perspective. This film is certainly nothing special, but it is still a happy sight to see him wielding a heavy caliber machine gun, like Django or Jesse Ventura in Predator.

Prachya Pinkaew’s Elephant White

In Thailand, you might just find a monastery next to a sex club. That will be handy for Curtie Church, a former “Agency” assassin who has gone freelance. He basically lives like a monk and he has taken on one of Thailand’s nastiest human trafficking gangs as his latest target. It starts out as a job, but it quickly turns personal in Prachya Pinkaew’s Elephant White, which airs on Bounce TV.

A grieving father, whose daughter was abducted and ultimately killed by the Chang Cao gang has hired Church to kill some of the gang and frame their rival Jong Ang gang, in retribution. Church might not fully believe him, but the more he learns about both gangs, the more intent he is on destroying them. He also finds an unexpected source of intel when Mae follows him back to the monastery belltower, where he has been hiding out.

It turns out Mae was once one the women held in slavery by the Chang Cao. After somehow escaping their brothels, she has led a devout, Zen-like life, which gives her an affinity for Church’s hosts. Of course, she does not approve of his guns-blazing approach to problem-solving. Fortunately, Church also knows “Jimmy the Brit,” an old Agency colleagues who is now making a killing as an arms dealer. Jimmy is a sleazy horndog, but when push comes to shove, the crimes of the Chang Caos and Jong Angs do not sit well with him either (and Church will push and shove him plenty).

Somehow, Elephant White initially flew under the radar with fans, even though it was helmed by Pinkaew, the action auteur who helmed the first Ong Bak and The Protector films. It also features Kevin Bacon shamelessly chewing the scenery and doing the weirdest Scott Adkins accent. Yet, it all works perfectly, especially when he is paired up with the strong, silent, and physically imposing Djimon Housou as Hunter.

One More Shot, Scott Adkins Comes Back for More

What did Jack Bauer do after each “day” of 24? Probably, sleep for a very long time. Fortunately, Jake Harris had a very long flight after exfiltrating terrorist financier and prime suspect Amin Mansur from a black site in Poland to the Baltimore airport. The operation cost him the rest of his SEAL team, but he survived—and boy is he angry. However, the same group that arranged the attack in Poland arranges a similar reception stateside in James Nunn’s One More Shot, which releases tomorrow on digital.

Like One Shot, One More is filmed to feel like one long extended take. Maybe Nunn cheated with some digital editing help, but it looks legit. It also amplifies the intensity of the action sequences even more this time around. An early scene in which Harris and the wounded Agent Hooper (played by Hannah Arterton, Gemma’s sister) is a terrific example.

Since this is the second time Harris walks into an ambush, there must be a mole feeding intel to the bad guys. CIA bigwig blowhard Mike Marshall’s access makes him an early suspect, but Mansur himself has another candidate in mind. Mansur will rely on Harris to keep him and his pregnant estranged wife Niesha safe, in return for information on the dirty bomb he shipped to the same airport.

One More Shot is another disappointing example of a thriller that uses Islamist terrorists as a red herring, only to reveal that the “real” villains are in fact a cabal of greedy Americans executing a false flag operation. Perhaps Nunn and co-screenwriter James Russell might care to explain to the American and British sailors in the Gulf fending off Houthi missiles that they should really be concerned about a nasty corporation in Fairfax, Virginia?

However, there is no denying the action is first-class all the way. The second film surpasses the first in that respect, by a good measure. It also easily stands alone for those who start here. The airport setting (London’s Stansted) provides many opportunities for action set-pieces that Nunn and his experienced cast fully capitalize on.

Clearly, Adkins is at the absolute top of his game throughout OMS. He has no time for jokey winking at the camera. He starts the film in a quiet fury and his rage and intensity grows steadily with each scene. Michael Jai White has an excellent third-act fight scene with Adkins, but Nunn’s holds him in reserve for most of the film, just teasing brief appearances of White barking orders into a walky.

Park Hoon-jung’s The Childe

So-called "Kopinos" are embarrassing phenomenon for South Korea, because the half-Korean half-Filipino orphans are mostly the products of sex tourism to the Philippines, who receive no financial support from their deadbeat dads. Marco Han’s mother might be something of an exception (the nature of his conception is left diplomatically vague), but they lived in similar poverty. When his mother falls sick, Han starts looking for his father, whose employees happen to be looking for him too in director-screenwriter Park Hoon-jung’s The Childe (with its Olde English “e”), which releases Tuesday on BluRay.

As a boxer, Han is used to hard knocks, but his mother’s decline is a bitter pill to swallow. It seems too good to be true when his birth-father’s sleazy lawyer suddenly turns up, offering to take him to Korea—because, of course, it is. Weirdly, a mystery man with a sickly cough seems to be shadowing them, which, indeed, he is.

Things get a bit hectic once he arrives in Korea. For reasons he does not understand. Coughing Man (who refers to himself as “the Expert” or “Gwigongja,” the literal translation being “Nobleman”) is out to get Han, just like his entitled half-brother Han Yi, as well as Yoon-ju, a femme fatale assassin working for a rival family faction. In fact, the first half of the film does not make much sense, because the three villains seem to be squabbling over who gets to kill poor, clueless Marco.

However, Park really flips the switch in the second half. Everyone’s cynical motivation suddenly becomes crystal clear and it all culminates in a massively violent, but extremely crowd-pleasing action showdown.

John Woo’s Silent Night

What does Joel Kinnaman now have in common with Ray Milland and Shorty Rogers & his Giants? They have all appeared in a synch-sound movie with absolutely no dialogue (Milland in The Thief, 1952, and Rogers in Dementia, 1955). In this case, Hong Kong action master John Woo has better things for Kinnaman to do than make small talk. It is time for some holiday payback in Woo’s Silent Night, which opens Friday in theaters.

Tragically, Brian Godlock’s young son was killed during a street gang shootout on Christmas morning. The Christmas sweater-wearing father ran off after the thugs, managing to take several out. However, the gang-leader Playa put a bullet in Godlock voice box. He survived, but his voice did not. In its place, he nourishes a burning hunger for vengeance.

However, a normal guy like Godlock can’t simply show up at Playa’s compound, guns-blazing. He will need a full year of conditioning and training. Fortunately, the lineman has sufficient skills to iron-plate his new muscle car. Godlock also wants to make his move on Christmas Day, for the symbolic value.

There will be plenty of work-out montages and gearing-up Commando-style, but no talking. Woo and screenwriter Robert Archer Lynn contrive a lot of non-verbal communication—an arched eyebrow here and a shrug there—but it works well enough, because who really needs to hear Kinnaman anyway? Plus, there is a fair amount of texting between the Godlocks and Playa with his henchmen.

Woo invests in a long set-up that is surprisingly gritty and moody. Nevertheless, fans can rest assured, when Godlock finally makes his move, he delivers everything they could want from John Woo film. The body-count is spectacularly high and the action never lets up. You can see many of Woo’s stylistic flourishes (which are nicely lensed by cinematographer Sharone Meir), but it never overshadows the business at hand.

King of Killers, Starring Frank Grillo and Alain Moussi

If Jorg Drakos were more like big tech or big unions, he would just bribe politicians to regulate his competition out of business. Instead, the notorious assassin plans to personally usher his rivals into an early retirement. Should any hitman survive his unlikely tournament, they win 10,000,000 dollars. That money would help Marcus Garan care for his sick daughter, Kimberly, but Drakos might also hold some answers regarding the murder of Garan’s wife in Kevin Grevioux’s King of Killers, which opens Friday in New York.

After his wife’s untimely demise, Garan walked away from contract killing, but he needs money fast for Kimberly’s heart surgery. According to mystery man Roman Korza’s initial pitch, Garan was supposedly hired to kill Drakos. Then he discovers Drakos has set up this little assassin convention for his own satisfaction, to decide who is really the best of the best. He has lured them to a Tokyo highrise (it looks more like a mid-sized building in Cleveland, but whatever), which he tricked-out with secret mirrors and traps. The idea is the draw numbers to face him, like the Minotaur in the labyrinth, one by one, but Garan quickly figures out they need to break the rules to survive.

King of Killers (that’s Drakos’s nickname) is based on Grevioux’s graphic novel, but the narrative itself is pretty straightforward, in a meatheaded kind of way. However, it builds to an improbable twist ending that implies some extraordinarily irresponsible risk-taking. Nevertheless, it clearly teases an intended sequel that I would be totally down for.

Despite its moronic attempts at cleverness, King of Killers still has some terrific fight scenes. Frankly, this is probably Alain Moussi’s best showcase since the underappreciated Kickboxer reboots. He definitely has the right chops for Garan. Likewise, Frank Grillo chews the scenery spectacularly as Drakos, who is way more amusing than most shadowy super-villains.

Sisu: It’s Finnish for “Don’t Mess with Him”

Thanks to Putin, Finland is bringing some sisu to NATO. That is a hard to precisely translate Finnish word that roughly encompasses gritty determination and sheer, defiant guts. Aatami Korpi has it in abundance. His sisu became legendary during the Winter War against the Soviets, but so far, he has taken a pass on the Lapland War against the National Socialists. Unfortunately, a retreating German commander decides to declare war on him, which is a very bad decision in Jalmari Helander’s Sisu, opening Friday in theaters.

The Soviets took everything from Korpi, killing his family and burning his home—and then he totally lost it. His superior officers couldn’t control him anymore, so they just turned Korpi loose to kill Soviets, which he did, in legendary numbers. Now, he is a grizzled old prospector, who wants the world to leave him alone. Like Tom Waits in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Korpi proceeds from a few specks of gold dust in his pan to a considerable vein in remarkably short order.

Also, like Waits, Korpi will have to defend his diggings, but instead of claim-jumpers, he will be hunted by the retreating German SS company he encounters on the road to Helsinki. Officer Bruno Helldorf has been conducting a scorched earth campaign, but he is savvy enough to understand the war is lost. Looking to the future, he figures Korpi’s gold can set him up for whatever comes next, so he is willing to disregard orders to get his hands on it.

Frankly, Helander’s two prior features, Big Game and Rare Exports, sounded cool, but failed to live up to their high concept promise. However, Sisu is far and away his most successful film to-date, thanks to its archetypal simplicity. Much like Korpi’s superiors in the Winter War, Helander just winds him up and sends off into big action set pieces to kill Germans. It isn’t complicated, but its brutally, cathartically entertaining, especially if you have reached an age where at you really enjoy watching old guys kick butt.

Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday, on DVD

Mike Fallon is a talented fighter, but his preferred method for assassinations is arranging “convenient accidents” that the police never investigate with much thoroughness. It therefore makes sense that he would live to see another day of misadventures after the carnage of his first movie. It turns out Malta is a great place for a hitman to work, given its handy proximity to Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa. However, trouble still finds him there in the Kirby Brothers’ Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday, which releases tomorrow on DVD.

Fallon still feels bad about killing all his colleagues in Big Ray’s hitman guild during the first film, but what can you do? What’s done is done. He wanted to lay low in Malta, but he soon found himself busier than ever. That is hardly surprising, considering former Maltese Labour Party Prime Minister Joseph Muscat (or his associates) hired a hitman to assassinate investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Talk about a friendly business environment—for hired killers.

Still, Fallon carries a heavy load of guilt over what happened. Technically, he was the good guy, saving his ex, but there is no getting around the fact he killed a lot of his friends. That is why he is uncharacteristically welcoming when his old mate, tinkering hitman Finicky Fred shows up in Valetta, looking for the internet girlfriend (whom Fallon assumes scammed him). Soon, they are teaming up on jobs, until Mrs. Zuzzer, a legendarily ruthless crime family matriarch kidnaps Fred. If Fallon wants him back, he will have to eliminate all the international assassins who have accepted the non-exclusive contract on her idiot son Dante, awkwardly including Big Ray. Ordinarily, Fallon would tell her to go pound sand, but that guilt still has a hold on him.

Like the first film, Hitman’s Holiday is a terrific showcase for Scott Adkins’ martial arts skills. He also shows off solid comedic chops, but never at the expense of the action. To Adkins’ credit, generously shares the screen with Sarah Chang, who definitely deserves breakout action stardom for her work as Wong Siu-ling. Essentially, Fallon has hired her to be like Burt Kwouk in the Pink Panther movies, attacking him once a week to keep him sharp. Of course, they team-up against some imposing martial artists and a psychotic killer-clown, who can’t feel pain.

Last Resort, More Thai Action from Jon Foo

It is nice to see some filmmakers resist the temptation of virtue-signaling. Of course, even if Jean-Marc Mineo made a show of cutting ten minutes of “gun violence” from his latest film (like James Cameron claims he did), there would still be one-hundred six minutes of guns blazing left. Basically, the other two minutes consists of our hero sitting on the couch watching cartoons. He has been difficult for his wife and daughter to live with since he came home from a mission-gone-bad, but when terrorists take his family hostage, he immediately reverts to action-mode in Mineo’s Last Resort, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Michael Reed was left for dead in Syria, but it was his captors who ended up dying. Since then, he has been such a mope around the house, his wife Kim is planning to leave him. She even went to the bank with their daughter Anna to open her own account. Unfortunately, they are taken hostage by a group of Islamic terrorists led by Cooper, a ruthless mercenary. It turns out they are really after a WMD stashed in one of the safety deposit boxes. Of course, Cooper thinks he can stall and deceive the Bangkok police, but Reed easily infiltrates the bank and starts knocking off Cooper’s gun-toting extremists, one by one.

Admittedly, Last Resort is not exactly original (the Die Hard elements are so obvious, they hardly need pointing out), but it goes about its business with gusto. It delivers dozens of shoot-outs and fight scenes that are all executed with energy and clarity. This is quality VOD-action workmanship. Mineo and much of the cast and crew previously collaborated on Bangkok Revenge. Since then, they have learned to play to their strengths. There is considerably less extraneous drama in Last Resort, and even more action.

Fantasia ’22: Special Delivery

In the movies, cars are supposed to be driven fast and then smashed to bits. Jang Eun-ha is just the person to do so. She is a special driver for a delivery service of dubious legality. She is not very welcoming, but when you absolutely have to be somewhere alive and in one-piece, Jang is your best bet in Park Dae-min’s Special Delivery, which had its North American premiere at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Jang also happens to be a North Korean defector, who now works for the chop shop-auto-resale-special delivery business owned by Baek Sa-jang, her former cross-border transporter. They are both pretty grouchy, so they get on well, in a bickering kind of way. She might lack charm, but she has skills behind the wheel. By now, she is to making regular late-night runs to the docks, so she doesn’t think much of her latest pick-up. However, the gangster disgraced baseball player Du-sik is fleeing is not just the mastermind of a sports-betting-points-shaving ring. Jo Kyung-pil is also a cop.

Tragically, Du-sik will miss his ride, but Jang still manages to pick up his son Seo-won, who happens to be holding a special banking flashdrive. Jang is not the touchy-feely type, but she recognizes a responsibility to keep the boy safe.

Obviously, there is a whole lot of flashy stunt driving going on in Delivery. The rev-and-go action is a bit of a departure for Park, whose previous films were the period mystery Private Eye and the Joseon con caper Seondal: The Man Who Sells the River. All the fast-and-furious stuff is very well executed, but the dramatic elements cribbed from The Client are annoyingly manipulative.

Regardless, Park So-dam (probably best-known as the daughter in Parasite) is steely and amusingly sarcastic as Jang. If this were a Hollywood movie, the ah-men press would be all over themselves praising her as a “rare” female action hero, but Delivery is Korean, so its just business as normal over there.

Attack on Finland: Super Timely Nordic Action

Pretty soon, this attack on our Scandinavian friends could legally be an attack on us as well. That is because Finland has made an official bid to join NATO. As it presciently happens, preventing such a bid is part of the motivation behind the terrorist plot in Aku Louhimies’s Attack on Finland (a.k.a. Omerta 6/12), which opens this Friday in theaters and on VOD.

Finnish secret agent Max Tanner and Swedish agent Sylvia Madsen were working an op together that turned out very, very badly. However, Tanner still thinks they work well together. You know, really well. Therefore, he is happy to see Madsen coming to Finland as the “bodyguard” of Jean Morel, a French EU official attending their 12/6 Independence Day celebration. In reality, she is also investigating Morel for potential corruption and security breaches, but she will have to concentrate on the protective part of her assignment when Russian-backed terrorists take the entire presidential palace hostage.

While Madsen and Morel are held at gunpoint inside, Tanner serves as the official “negotiator” on the outside. Unfortunately, the FSB-controlled terrorists intend to demoralize the Finnish people, whether their demands are met or not. The Finnish security service can count on help from their Swedish and Estonian colleagues, but Madsen’s boss at the EU is not so reliable.

Based on Ikka Remes’ novel, Attack on Finland could not possibly be more zeitgeisty. It is also a lot like the 24 series in that a lot of “unthinkable” national tragedies will actually happen. Perhaps most importantly, Louhimies and company show the action film can be a viable vehicle to address serious geopolitical and national security issues.

Don Lee in The Roundup

A cop like Ma Seok-do does not need to carry a gun, because just look at him. It is just as well, since he is not supposed to pack any heat while in Vietnam. According to local law, he is not supposed to be chasing any criminals there either, but the “Beast Cop” from The Outlaws is always going to do what he does best. A ruthless band of kidnappers preying on Korean tourists is about to feel some pain in Lee Sang-yong’s The Roundup (a.k.a. The Outlaws 2), which is now playing in New York.

While technically a sequel, Roundup easily stands on its own. For fans of the previous film, it looks like Ma’s knees are holding up better now, but he is still just as huge. After taking down the Garibong-dong street gang, he has earned a bit of slack, even when his beat-downs make frontpage news. However, it might be convenient for the top brass to send him to Vietnam to escort a criminal who turned himself in at the consulate, while the controversy blows over.

Of course, Ma has to wonder why a crook would voluntarily surrender himself in a country without extradition. Fortunately, Ma has a knack for asking questions. It turns out the thug is hiding from Kang Hae-sang, the leader of a vicious abduction ring, who always killed his victims after receiving their ransom. His latest abductee was the son of a mobbed-up, usurious finance chairman, who did not take kindly to Kang’s methods. To find Kang, Ma can simply follow the dead bodies of mercs hired to kill him.

Once again, Don Lee (also billed as Ma Dong-seok) demonstrates massive screen charisma as Det. Ma. He is big, but he has a charming facility for humor—honestly, even more so than Schwarzenegger in his prime. Several times, Ma literally punches bad guys through walls and it always looks totally believable.

Dhaakad: a Hindi La Femme Nikita

Every few years, Hollywood gets proud of itself for releasing a woman-driven action movie like Atomic Blonde, pretending they just invented something revolutionary. Of course, it is nothing new or original to those of us who have been digging Michelle Yeoh and Angela Mao films for years. With this action heroine, maybe we can give Bollywood a few points for originality, but they still have to get the job done. Agent Agni always completes her mission, but the ride is a little rough in Razneesh Ghai’s Dhaakad, which is now playing in New York.

As a young girl, Agni’s parents were mysteriously assassinated, so she was adopted by her future handler in the super-secret, off-the-books Indian intelligence agency she now serves. Agni has been hot on the trail of a human trafficking ring led by Rudraveer, who rose up from the coal fields of Bhopal through a maybe not-so weird combination of class-warfare trade unionism, a cult of personality, and brute force. He also had the brains of Rohini, a madam turned master money-launderer.

Just when Agni though she had them cornered, her operation turns to coal dust (that’s a frequent metaphor in the film). As a result, she starts to suspect there is probably a mole informing Rudraveer. Yet, despite of her standoffish nature, Agni starts trusting her nebbish local contact, Fazal, and his wide-eyed little daughter Zaira. Of course, that gives Rudraveer a weakness to exploit.

The fight choreography in Dhaakad is often spectacular and frequently surprisingly brutal. In fact, it is almost shocking how hard-edged the film is, even by American standards (and especially for Bollywood). On top of that, Agni’s wardrobe is some of Indian cinema’s most fetish-satisfying leatherware, since Sunny Leone made her Bollywood debut.

Be that as it may, Kangana Ranaut clearly trained like a demon to play Agni. Even though she must have had lots of help from stunt performers, it is still a gruelingly physical performance. Arjun Rampal is also huge on the screen and massively sinister as Rudraveer. In terms of size, he seems to hulk up somewhere between Godzilla and Salman Khan. However, Saswata Chatterjee is just too sleazy-acting for figure like the handler.

Spiritwalker, on DVD

It is like Quantum Leap, but with non-stop fighting. Our protag’s consciousness jumps bodies every twelve hours, but thanks to his amnesia, he has no idea who he is or the identity of the people he inhabits. However, it turns out he is closely linked to all of them in screenwriter-director Yoon Jae-keun’s Spiritwalker, which releases tomorrow on DVD and BluRay.

Kang I-an (or “Ian” in the English subtitles) is having a very bad day. He doesn’t even remember he is Kang. That is something he will have to puzzle out on the fly. His only ally will be the nameless homeless who keeps crossing paths with Kang after each jump. Nevertheless, Kang keeps turning up just in time to save his former lover and colleague Moon Jin-A, even when it is very much out of character for the bodies he possesses.

There is a secret to all this that probably shouldn’t be revealed. Regardless, the important thing is the explanations work well enough, so viewers can just settle down and enjoy the wall-to-wall action. This is a total run-and-gun film, featuring fight choreography from Park Young-sik and Chung Seong-ho, who shared a SAG Award for the stunt work on a little project called Squid Game. Yet, Yoon also pulls off some wildly cinematic transitional scenes for Kang’s jumps.

This is a terrific rollercoaster ride, very much in the spirit of Cho Sun-ho’s A Day. A lot of casual streamers are just now discovering Korean film and TV, but they have been making some of the best high-concept thrillers for the last two or three decades. In addition to the fantastical twist, Moon’s honest and heartfelt Christian faith also helps distinguish Spiritwalker from the field. As a result, concepts like the soul and confession have real meaning in this film.

One Shot, Scott Adkins in One Take

Everyone that ever testified before a congressional committee has said “enhanced interrogation” or whatever does not work, because terrorists just make stuff up. However, the American military’s long-standing policy of not court-martialing POWs for anything they might divulge under torture would seem to contradict them (and it feels like a just position to adhere to). In Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows, it was taken for granted that resistance members captured by the Germans would inevitably reveal all they knew. (It is a practice we don't condone, but we're also opposed to governing by slogan.) Regardless, characters keep telling us harsh interrogation just does not work, so they resort to a Hail Mary to avert a terror attack in James Nunn’s One Shot, which releases this Friday in theaters and on VOD.

This ill-fated mission will unfold in one seemingly continuous take for Jake Harris and his small team of SEALs. Their mission is to escort CIA analyst Zoe Anderson as she collects terrorist financier Amin Mansur to shuttle him to DC, where a dirty-bomb attack he bank-rolled is due to explode. He has said nothing while site commander Jack Yorke held him, but when he sees his pregnant wife is within the blast radius, she is sure he will change his tune.

Unfortunately, a small army of terrorists attacks the black site soon after Harris and Anderson land. Apparently, Haken Sharef and his jihadists do not trust Mansur to keep his mouth shut. They have the initiative and superior numbers, but they did not expect to find four SEALs on this grim island rock.

The Rope-style one-take thing can be a distracting gimmick, but it works better than you would expect here. The way Nunn constantly pans across the field of battle, viewers are keenly aware of how each of the combatants is moving independently. When we lose sight of one, only to have them suddenly pop up somewhere else, it feels like a real combat experience. Despite the one-take pressure, there is still some cool looking fight choreography. Of course, it helps to have someone with Scott Adkins’ chops as the lead.

As you would expect, Adkins is totally credible as Harris. Dino Kelly, Emmanuelle Imani, and Jack Parr do not get to take their SEAL characters on much of a developmental arc, but they keep up with Adkins during the long extended fire-fights. Ashley Greene Khoury plays Anderson with workmanlike competence, but it makes no sense for a junior desk officer to be on such an assignment.