‘Bangkok Breaking: Heaven and Hell’
“Bangkok Breaking: Heaven and Hell,” as the kids say, is a lot of movie. The writer-director Kongkiat Komesiri’s spinoff of his 2021 television series, “Bangkok Breaking,” begins on an epic note: Wanchai (Sukollawat Kanarot), a paramedic caught in the middle of an all-out urban brawl between housing project residents and aggressive Thai police, watches his comrade be burned alive in the melee. A despondent Wanchai leaves his paramedic job to become a food courier. Making a delivery on the new job, Wanchai inadvertently finds himself caught up in a kidnapping scheme involving the daughter of a gangster. He is taken hostage with the girl, along with his customer, a first-week nursing student.
A bit like “Speed” meets “Ambulance,” Komesiri’s class-conscious film is nonstop action. The chase sequences involving an E.M.S. van feature agile and propulsive stunt driving as Wanchai careens around a freeway, through buildings and past a mass protest. Much of the film also takes place in a local housing project, featuring action sequences that are detailed and visceral. This film even features a motorcycle gang bursting through flames with guns in hand, ready to inflict pain on the kidnapper, Wanchai, and whoever else gets in their way.
‘Beast of War’
Rent or buy on most major platforms.
The writer-director Kiah Roache-Turner’s film expands upon the shark subgenre by chronicling the discrimination directed at the aboriginal soldier Leo (Mark Coles Smith) and his white friend Will (Joel Nankervis) by their white Australian comrades during World War II. Through extreme difficulty, the pair survive boot camp. But when their ship is destroyed, they’re marooned on floating debris on the Timor Sea along with their prejudiced fellow soldiers as a deadly shark circles them.
On top of the film’s primary tension, residing in these men hoping to survive despite their baser instincts, the enrapturing atmosphere of hazy and overexposed backlighting creates a foggy surrounding whose depths hide frights. It allows Roache-Turner to not show much of the shark, just plumes of blood and screams. In fact, the best scene is when Will, armed with only a machine gun, attacks an approaching Japanese fighter — giving this gory film another enemy worth worrying about.
‘Tornado’
Stream it on AMC+. Rent it on major platforms.
Set on the British Isles in 1790, the writer-director John Maclean’s movie is an agile, genre-bending western-samurai film. It follows Tornado (Koki), a circus performer who angers a gang led by Sugarman (Tim Roth) and Little Sugar (Jack Lowden) when she steals their gold. In retaliation, the posse murders her adoptive father, Fujin (Takehiro Hira) and pursues her. Rather than flee, Tornado decides to hold her ground in the woods for a blood bath that would make Rambo blush.
The carnage is eloquently composed via Jed Kurzel’s expressionistic score, which inspires swirling angst, and Robbie Ryan’s overwhelmingly gorgeous golden hour photography. Maclean and Ryan’s love of silhouettes adds a mythical flair to the swift choreography of Tornado’s slashing samurai movements. The crafts convey so much animated energy, they leave you in a whirlwind.
‘Under Fire’
Rent or buy on most major platforms.
Two drug smugglers, the easygoing Griff (Dylan Sprouse) and a professional Abbott (Mason Gooding), are pinned down by a sniper in a gulch. The shooter has already taken out Griff and Abbott’s intended business partners, a cartel promising cocaine, when the pair realize that they’re both undercover federal agents. Griff is F.B.I. while Abbott is D.E.A. Together they must outmaneuver this deadly accurate sniper before they’re caught in his sights.
Directed by Steven C. Miller, “Under Fire” plays like a smaller-scale Michael Bay film. Miller relies on Bay-esque crash zooms, whip pans, and slow motion — often showing bullets piercing in and out of bodies — to color the film’s vicious shootouts. He also isn’t afraid to get dirty. With every hour these characters spend evading that focused sniper, you can see the dust build up on their clothes, giving a grounding to the movie’s outlandish style. Sprouse and Gooding are also an endearing double act, imbuing this intensely-staged work with some well-timed levity.
‘Wanted Man’
Dolph Lundgren, who played the monosyllabic foe Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV,” has formulated a fascinating late-career chapter for himself as a director-star. In his latest effort, “Wanted Man,” he’s Detective Travis Johansen — a racist, xenophobic cop dispatched to Mexico to bring back two people who witnessed the border town massacre of a cartel by masked bandits. It’s a simple job that goes awry when the three are ambushed by other bandits, leaving Travis wounded and one witness dead, with the other, Rosa (Christina Villa), taking him into her family’s protection.
As a director, Lundgren brings a workmanlike approach to the shootouts, whose booming blasts deliver palpable angst and anticipation. As an actor, Lundgren is working the same ground as Clint Eastwood in “Gran Torino,” offering the vision of a man who still could change for the better, even if it happens with him kicking and screaming. That combination of style and performance makes “Wanted Man” a desirable B movie.
The post Five Action Movies to Stream Now appeared first on New York Times.
