Movies in the Action/Thriller genre

I'll be among the first to admit that Timothy Dalton is a fine actor. But giving a solid performance has little to do with being a good James Bond, and, as accomplished as Dalton is, he's a failure as 007 in The Living Daylights (to give him ...

2013’s Olympus Has Fallen was a surprisingly entertaining Die Hard knock-off set in Washington D.C. with intrepid Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) out to rescue President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) from the hands of terrorists....

Few will argue that The Man with the Golden Gun is the silliest of all the James Bond motion pictures (Casino Royale excepted). From the return appearance of Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton Davis) to the ridiculous martial arts fight where two s...

"I don't believe in heaven. I believe in pain. I believe in fear. I believe in death." So states Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg), elucidating his nihilistic creed during the film's opening moments. While the movie bearing the title character's name h...

For some reason, there has been a move by a few critics to politicize their reviews of Mile 22, Peter Berg’s tightly-constructed espionage thriller. I guess one side-effect of living in a hyper-partisan era is that some films aren’t allowe...

Miss Bala is a reworking of a 2011 Mexican film. Although the movies may share the same name, they have different agendas. The original Miss Bala focused more on the dramatic elements than the action/thriller ones and wasn’t afraid to get d...

The first star vehicle of the summer of 1996 is also the first major disappointment of the season. Mission: Impossible, the big screen resurrection of the popular late-'60s/early-'70s series, fails to generate much in the way of excitement or ...

Reliability. Of all the qualities one could ascribe to the Mission: Impossible movies, that one is the most cogent. This has especially been true since writer/director Christopher McQuarrie (who seems to be Tom Cruise’s personal screenwriter)...

Ghost Protocol is the fourth big screen Mission: Impossible movie and the closest the 15-year old franchise has gotten to being an unofficial James Bond adventure. Globe-trotting and action-saturated, the movie offers everything a good 007 yarn sho...

2015 has been a banner year for action-oriented spy movies. One early entry, Kingsman: The Secret Service, was a Valentine to '60s British titles. A similar claim could be made about the upcoming The Man from U.N.C.L.E. In November, James Bond wi...