John Woo, the action maestro of Hong Kong cinema, is working at the top of his game in this double-barreled revenge thriller built around an absurd premise, outsized emotions, and one show-stopping action set-piece after another.
Tag: John Travolta
‘From Paris With Love’ – Euro-action on Hulu
From Paris With Love (2009), starring John Travolta as a cowboy of an American agent and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as an ambitious but untrained low-level agent assigned to assist, is another of Luc Besson’s English language Euro-action films, the contemporary equivalent to the drive-in action movie of decades past. Besson has perfected the formula in […]
Brian De Palma’s ‘Blow Out’ on Amazon Prime
Is it too sweeping to call Jack Terry, the movie soundman of Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (1981), John Travolta’s best performance ever? So be it. Who knew that De Palma—a director still more often than not dismissed as a technician with a Hitchcock obsession, a facility for bravura camerawork, and a penchant for split […]
‘Battlefield Earth’ – Worst film ever? Decide for yourself on Netflix
John Travolta, one of Hollywood’s most visible Scientology cheerleaders, dreamed of bringing Scientologist founder L. Ron Hubbards’ Star Wars-inspired sci-fi epic to the big screen for years. Be careful when dreams come true. Battlefield Earth (2000) is hilariously, flamboyantly, aggressively bad, a pulp fantasy built on same hokey tropes and clichés that were tired before […]