Action cinema, at its best, is pure kinetic storytelling: movement, stakes and consequence fused into something visceral. From the disciplined fury of Seven Samurai to the operatic scale of The Dark Knight, the genre rewards directors who treat spectacle as a means rather than an end. Browse Macca's reviews below to see which films clear that bar.
Rating: 2.5★
Will Smith is one of the most frustrating actors working today, and I mean that in the most conflicted way possible. The man is either absolutely brilliant or completely terrible, with very little middle ground in between. I've felt that watching Hancock, I've felt it watching
Rating: 1.5★
Sometimes a film baffles you in ways you genuinely weren't expecting. I went into Bobby Boermans' Dutch action thriller Invasion (or Invasie, as it's known in its home country) completely blind and with an open mind, and I came out the other side scratching my
Rating: 2.5★
Look, I'm not going to pretend Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a good film. It isn't. But here's the thing I keep coming back to: it's a better film than I thought it would be, and that counts for something. Not
Rating: 3.0★
There's a certain kind of cinema that doesn't just ask you to suspend your disbelief. It grabs you by the collar and drags you headfirst into the chaos. Hardcore Henry is exactly that kind of film, and from the very first frame, it makes absolutely no
Rating: 3.5★
There's a shot early in A Bittersweet Life where the camera simply holds on the protagonist, standing in the rain outside a restaurant, suit immaculate, face unreadable. Nothing is said. Nothing needs to be. Kim Jee-woon is already telling you everything about this man, his world, and
Rating: 1.0★
Let me paint you a picture. You sit down for a film challenge, press play on what you think is the first entry in a franchise, and spend the next ninety minutes slowly realising something is very, very wrong. The story feels like it's referencing events you never
Rating: 1.0★
Some films are bad in an interesting way. Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon is not one of them. It's bad in the way a damp Tuesday afternoon is bad: no drama, no spectacle, just a grey stretch of time you'll never get back. I watched
Rating: 3.5★
Let me be upfront about something: I never quite clicked with Fury Road. I know that puts me in a minority, and I know the reaction I get when I say it. But it's true. I found it relentless in a way that felt exhausting rather than exhilarating,
Rating: 2.0★
Let me be honest with you: I went into Mad Max: Fury Road fully expecting to join the chorus of rapturous praise. The reputation precedes it like a shockwave. And yet, somewhere in the middle of its relentless, thundering two hours, I found myself not thrilled, but exhausted. Not dazzled,
Rating: 2.5★
When Gareth Evans and Iko Uwais unleashed The Raid on the world in 2011, the response was somewhere between astonishment and mild disbelief. A Welsh director working in Indonesia with a relatively modest budget had produced one of the most viscerally efficient action films in years, a single-location siege
Rating: 2.5★
There's a moment roughly halfway through this film where I genuinely lost track of which robot was fighting which, who was winning, where it was happening, and frankly why I should care. A jumble of chrome limbs and grinding metal fills the screen, the camera whips around at
Rating: 3.5★
There are films you see at the right moment in your life that hit like a thunderclap, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was exactly that for me. I was a wide-eyed teenager picking up what felt like a "decent" rental, and what I got was something closer
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