The Top Ten Manliest Movies Of 2016
6) Kickboxer: Vengeance
In a beat ’em up movie what matters is choreography, agility, camerawork and editing. This movie wins in that respect. The actual fighting and stunt work is sublime… make no mistake, this is not some cheap and cheesy fighting you might see in Walker: Texas Ranger. It’s heavy and bone crunching but also with a lot of throwback to older beat ’em up movies with elegant high kicks, Hollywood style karate, the type that made us all want to become martial artists back in the day.
Kickboxer: Vengeance does a solid for the South East Asian tourism industry. What a nice looking movie this is, director John Stockwell has put every dime of his $17 million budget on screen. The golden sun is used effectively to bathe and cast shadows over the set (for example, Master Durand’s property), there are first-rate filming locations used to show us an often stunningly beautiful movie. Thinking about it, in the second Bourne movie when Paul Greengrass had a budget six times larger, he put Bourne in a similar climate (different country though) yet managed to make it look ugly, dank and miserable. So good on Stockwell for giving us an eye-holiday.
5) London Has Fallen
How can we forget this one? This is one of the top five manliest movies of 2016.
In the era of super hero hegemony, where it is mandated that every action hero wear leotards or dress as a toy shelf friendly rodent, men like Mike Banning are an increasingly rare commodity. In fact it’s almost a small miracle now that we’ve gotten two of these movies and that both of them have been good.
London Has Fallen comes in like a sorely needed air dropped care package of manly movie goodness, complete with witty one liners and brutal but effective action. With its plot about a terror plot taking down a major western metropolis, it’s almost like the movie Live Free or Die Hard wanted to be. But that movie was soft and silly, whereas this movie has skinned knuckles and perforated eardrums.
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