#action-thriller

#action-thriller

For a director so celebrated for his masterful urban crime thrillers, in which contemplations on brotherhood and fate are inextricable from violent cop-versus-crook setpieces, it's a surprise to discover that Johnnie To wasn't all that interested in making action films to begin with. "It was [producer] Tsui Hark's fault," To said of The Big Heat (1988), the first of his many films in that genre. "He told me to do it."

For seven effortlessly bingeable hours supposedly showing the adventure in real time, our man on the pressurised inside deduced complex situations from misplaced washbags, sent coded messages via fruit cartons and dying men's phones, saved lives, averted disasters, and got Kingdom Flight 29 landed safely by Holly Aird so that he could return to his family, even though viewers agreed the scenes with them in between the plane bits were very boring indeed.

No Country for Old Men's Anton Chigurh was the scariest thing to come out of Latin America since Argentinian inflation. So it's taken a surprisingly long time to see a direct imitator: the dark-clad avenger El Corvo, played here by Marko Zaror. Not only does he have the gauche coiffuring (bald on top this time), but also the philosophical penchant, asking imminent victims if they've given themselves a present recently.

We first meet him speeding across the Algerian portion of the north African desert with a companion called Carlos (Nezar Thalal) on their way to Beirut to exchange a great deal of cocaine for some antique statues, when bish, bash, wallop, what's happening?! An ambush by a militant group armed with machine guns who kill Carlos and are about to kill Max? But then one of the group turns on the others and kills all of them stone dead instead,

In near-future Thailand, food is scarce, but federal propaganda assures us that life is worse elsewhere. Purposefully isolated from the outside world, Thai society is still more or less functional, thanks in part to the efforts of a wealthy entrepreneur named Mr Vasu, who popularized a new type of food made from processed insects.