Category Archives: Action Movie

Movie Review: Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning

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The good news is that, to ultimately save the life of Tom Cruise and any number of stuntmen who create the most dangerous movie stunts in the history of film, this eighth installment., “Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning” will most likely be the very last Mission Impossible movie. The problem with insane stunts like these is that for each new film, the producers always try to top themselves, and one day, during one mundane take of an action sequence, someone is going to be killed.

This new movie now has the most dangerous stunt scenes ever filmed, including the climax with two biplanes and Tom Cruise wingwalking, and climbing around both airplanes with a high probability of instant death. Some videos about these stunts explain the years of planning and risk involved (included in this blog) as Tom Cruise has once again topped himself, but has put his life in the most extreme danger in this movie.

As far as the rest of this 2-hour and 49-minute action film, there are times when the story is rather slow with a plotline that is overly crazy and complex, about a worldwide AI virus and the series of tasks required to find the source code and then trap the virus to save the world. There are also very dangerous scenes on a submarine where Tom Cruise spends a long period underwater looking for this container that, along with another device, is needed to trap the AI virus that is putting the world on the brink of nuclear war. This part of the action is the most far-fetched, with Tom Cruise at one point without a diving suit very deep in freezing cold water, something that would definitely kill any human being.

The rest of the cast includes the two regulars in this long-running movie franchise, including Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn and Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell, with Hayley Atwell as Grace, and did not include Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust who has been Ethan Hunt’s long-term love interest and was in the last Mission Impossible movie released in 2023. This is because she was killed off in the last movie, something I did not like about the previous Mission: Impossible film. I also thought the ending of this film was too similar to the ending of Mission: Impossible Fallout, released in 2018, and the film was unnecessarily long.

The Rotten Tomatoes reviews for this film are an anemic 80%, mainly due to the overly complex and convoluted plot, with my rating 100% for the incredible action scenes and a solid 85% for this movie.

Movie Review: Thunderbolts

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There have been more than a few bad Marvel movies released in the last few years, most recently “Captain America: Brave New World” (2025) and “The Marvels” (2023). The release of the new Marvel movie “Thunderbolts” was an opportunity to greatly improve the quality of this franchise. Unfortunately, mainly due to the crazy and mostly boring screenplay, this movie cannot be considered a step in the right direction.

The story starts with the main Marvel characters Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh, Bucky Barnes played by Sebastian Stan, John Walker played by Wyatt Russell, Ava Starr played by Hannah John-Kamen and a new superhere they call “Bob”, played by Lewis Pullman all trapped in a warehouse, for the first 10-15% of this film. There is no real way to make scenes where several people are trapped in a large series of rooms – interesting, especially in a film that is supposed to be a superhero action movie.

We later find out that Bob has superpowers that greatly exceed the powers of all the other superheroes, and later Bob turns to the dark side and has evil forces that can send people into some other dimension. All this does create several scenes of extreme special effects, but not enough to cover what I thought was a surprisingly bad screenplay.

There are some good father-daughter scenes between Velena and her father, Alexiei Shostakov, played by David Harbour, but not enough to fix what could have been a far better screenplay.

I was surprised that Julia Louis-Dreyfus took the part of politician Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, after reading this script. She seems completely miscast in this role, regardless of the mostly ridiculous story.

I have no idea why the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are on average 88%, with the most accurate review from critic Jeffrey Harris:

“The film exemplifies how The Multiverse Saga constantly stumbles and fails to find its footing, with the entire narrative amounting to little more than a groan-inducing, bait-and-switch joke.”

Due to the many flaws, and mostly bad screenplay I do not recommend this movie.

Movie Review: Sinners

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The new movie “Sinners” stars Michael B. Jordan, who plays two roles, Stack and Smoke, in a rare example of one actor playing twin brothers.

This film is set in the Deep South, 1932, Clarksdale, Mississippi, where twin brothers, Stack and Smoke, return home to open a juke joint. There is massive evidence of bigotry, and members of the Klan as Smoke and Stack, throw money around town, attempting to convince people to perform or work at the new juke joint. Much of this is rather slow and boring for most of the movie until the entire story takes a gigantic turn into murdering vampires and zombies and violent battle scenes, until the insane conclusion, making this the strangest turn on a dime story change I have ever seen in any movie.

This movie is both written and directed by Ryan Coogler, marking his fifth collaboration with Michael B. Jordan that includes both “Black Panther” movies (2018, 2022), “Creed” (2015), and “Fruitvale Station” (2013), Jordan’s first movie.

I was surprised that a promising story degraded into something that seemed more like a B movie, and another run-of-the-mill Vampire film. I was also surprised at the appearance of actress Hailee Steinfeld, who seemed miscast in this movie, playing Stack’s love interest.

The special effects, while well done, have been seen many times before, with battle scenes involving the living and the dead, and the various methods of how to kill a Vampire. At this point, enough of the killing of the already dead.

The biggest surprise is the extremely high and wrong 98% rating for this movie on Rotten Tomatoes, with my rating 75% and only a very small recommendation, because there is nothing new in this story, other than the sudden and drastic change in direction.