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Way of the Dragon (1972)
Way of the Dragon (1972)
1972 | Action, International
8
8.5 (2 Ratings)
Movie Rating
This film is a bit more lighthearted in comparison to other Bruce Lee films as there is a lot more humor and silliness than I expected during my first viewing. That's not necessarily a bad thing either. Most Bruce Lee movies have that 70s action movie cheese anyway and the weird thing is that it feels like that cheesiness is used to its maximum potential in any film Lee's a part of. Lee also doesn't actually fight in this film until about thirty minutes in, but it makes that first fight sequence and everything after so much better since you have to wait a bit for it. The payoff really doesn't get any sweeter than in this film either. Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee squaring off against each other to the death. Stop reading here if you want to avoid spoilers, but from the information gathered online Chuck Norris has only played a villain two times in his career and this is the only time his character has died. Besides where would the world be without Chuck Norris jokes? The man can blow bubbles with beef jerky, but we're getting off-topic. The Way of the Dragon is definitely worth seeing and/or owning for Bruce Lee and martial arts film fans.
  
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Olivia Munn recommended John Wick (2014) in Movies (curated)

 
John Wick (2014)
John Wick (2014)
2014 | Action, Thriller

"It’s a newer one, but John Wick or John Wick 2. I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed. I grew up doing martial arts, and I know that Keanu did all of his own fight scenes in it, and then I was working on Predator when I watched John Wick 2, and… I have a gun in Predator, and they were teaching me how to do certain things, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh! Keanu did this really cool thing. Teach me how to do it!” I love… Like, back in the day in kung fu movies, they filmed the fight scenes in wide angles so you get to see everybody doing it, but nowadays, everything’s like cut, cut, edit, edit, close-up of this, close-up of that. But we actually got to see Keanu in these wide shots because he’s doing his own stunts, and he’s kicking ass, and he’s amazing in it. I just love that, and I feel like we don’t get enough of that in American cinema anymore, or actually ever. You have to go back to, like, old kung fu movies and stuff. I just love watching that movie and the action of that. It’s a good one."

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Ninja Assassin (2009)
Ninja Assassin (2009)
2009 | Action, Drama
Slept on. A breathless, blood-soaked rager where shurikens get thrown like machine gun bullets and manifold enemies get shredded into human ballistic gel. Totally cockamamie lore put to the backdrop of CGI blade-chains and club music, ancient ninja cults just hanging out and making human sacrifices on rainy city rooftops and shit lmao. Nothing more than an excuse to rip apart a bunch of ninjas, gangsters, and government officials for 99 minutes - a decapitated head ends up in a washing machine at one point - but who wouldn't want to see that? I'll take the opposite opinion of the general consensus and totally gush about the style, I'm all for modernizing cheesy early-mid-2000s duels where we just started to really learn what mainstream stylized action was and went overboard with it. Also has an acute emphasis on physicality and production rather than leaving everything important up to the editing department - has a realized sense of framing and uses CGI as an enhancer rather than the full package. Lovingly embraces martial arts story tropes without undermining their importance, which many actioners would probably jettison out entirely. Feels much, much more like a successful and distinct love letter rather than a ripoff. Aesthetic as fuck, and Rain is godly in it.
  
Triple Threat (2019)
Triple Threat (2019)
2019 | Action, Thriller
Triple Threat, from prolific action specialist Jesse V. Johnson and currently streaming on Netflix, is exactly as promised – 95 minutes of complete ass-kicking from a ridiculous cast of ass-kickers who defy gravitational and physical logic with their supreme martial arts and combat skills. Unpretentious, unrelenting, and wildly entertaining, this is a throwback to old-school, non-CGI, action-programmers where the body count is absurdly high, the squibs are going off like crazy, and dynamic second unit work pumps up the aesthetic thrills – it’s the best pure-action film of the year and the best of its type that I’ve seen since The Night Comes For Us (also on Netflix streaming).

Starring an action fan’s dream team of Iko Uwais, Scott Adkins, Michael Jai White, Tony Jaa, and Tiger Chen. The various beat-downs that these guys dish out look beyond lethal. I loved the real-deal explosions and Jonathan Hall’s slick and steady cinematography which highlighted the insane choreography. Matthew Lorentz’s crisp editing wastes not a moment of the basic but hard-charging script by Joey O’Bryan, Fangjin Song, and Paul Staheli. But let’s be honest, we’re not here to experience Shakespearean-level swaths of dialogue. Triple Threat exists as an outlet for extreme thrills and near-constant mayhem.