Movies in the Action/Thriller genre

Benghazi. Few words have become more politicized in the last decade than this one, the Libyan city where, on September 11, 2012, two U.S. diplomatic compounds were sacked and four men (including Ambassador Chris Stevens) killed. It became a political...

When I think of director Richard Donner, my mind gravitates toward titles like Superman and Lethal Weapon - high points in the filmmaker's career. Recently, however, Donner's output has been less impressive, and includes the bloated excess of Assa...

The spy movie category isn’t so sparsely populated that the arrival of a mediocre entry like The 355 is going to excite anyone. Notable exclusively for having a quintet of female leads, the movie resides somewhere above Ocean’s 8 and below...

Perhaps the only way to approach Abduction that will not result in a 105-minute boredom-induced coma is to think of it as a comedy, preferably with a drinking game attached. There are laughs to be had, although none of them are intentional. Girls (...

If you’re more interested in visual razzamatazz than little things like character development or interaction, Ambulance may be your movie. If you prefer sweeping, hyperkinetic camera movements and spastic editing to a coherent narrative, Amb...

American Assassin is as generic an espionage thriller as you’re likely to find. Leaving no cliché unturned and offering a roster of predictable “twists” and unsurprising “surprises”, the production seems more like it was assembled f...

It’s not surprising that Angel Has Fallen exists. The first film in the series, Olympus Has Fallen, performed well enough ($100M domestic; $170M worldwide) to justify a sequel. London Has Fallen opened three years later to a less enthusiasti...

Atomic Blonde combines the storytelling intrigue of a LeCarre/Deighton Cold War spy novel with the in-your-face kinetic style of John Wick. The result, while at times a little too visually chaotic, is bracing. Headlined by a committed Charliz...

Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver seeks to inject a dose of high octane into a heist film while illustrating how it’s possible to make a car chase exciting in an era when few action staples have become more boring and predictable. The film also s...

The Batman, a reboot of DC comics’ most popular character, brings the franchise back into the shadows successfully embraced by Christopher Nolan’s phenomenally popular take but without the fetishism of the Burton/Schumacher years or the excess...