Set your DVRs this spring to Reelz Channel for a Dolph Lundgren-hosted reality competition show called Race to the Scene, which might be the most potentially dangerous but too awesome not to watch TV show idea ever dreamed up: "Race to the Scene will feature pairs of contestants who race to and from actual movie locations as they compete in challenges and stunts inspired by memorable movie moments... [producer Justin Hochberg] and his partner Charlie Ebersol began talking to the network about the project a little over a year ago, and have since spent time selecting iconic scenes —think Bruce Willis jumping off Nakatomi Tower in Die Hard — for which to recreate." Can't wait for the barefoot 50-yard dash over broken glass! What could go wrong? [THR]
Although Emily Blunt came close to being cast in two different Marvel superhero movies, it’s not until later this year that she gets her first action-type role in Rian Johnson’s time travel thriller Looper. But her turn as a gun-toting farm girl is just the beginning for Blunt: She’s currently in intense training to play a lethal soldier in Doug Liman’s futuristic sci-fi All You Need Is Kill, opposite Tom Cruise.
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Christian Slater and Donald Sutherland star in the spy action pic Assassin's Bullet (formerly titled Sofia), about an ex-FBI agent (Slater) assigned to investigate the vigilante killings of terrorists in Eastern Europe. Action fans will know director Isaac Florentine's work from Undisputed II and III; take a look at the trailer debut, along with new images from the film and set, after the jump.
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Everyone knows there are kicks aplenty in the 1989 Jean-Claude Van Damme muy thai action classic Kickboxer, in which the Muscles from Brussels portrayed an American avenging his brother against a fearsome Thai fighter. But you really get an appreciation for just how many bone-crunching legs and feet and knees were unleashed in the action classic in this brilliantly hilarious, deceptively simple supercut that whittles Kickboxer down to, well, just the kicks. Your Monday must-watch is here.
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In movie terms, Jason Statham is a man without a country, an actor who fits so conveniently into a certain kind of movie that almost no one can think of him any other way. Where, oh where, can he go from here? Statham is the go-to guy for action movies that require an appealing, thoughtful protagonist who looks great shirtless, and Boaz Yakin’s Safe is, unfortunately, just more of the same, or perhaps even less of the same. It has neither the Red Bull–fueled crudeness of Crank nor the Frenchified lunatic vitality of the Transporter movies; it’s not even as cheaply entertaining as the generic hit-man retread The Mechanic. Safe shows Statham comfortably treading water, proving all the things he no longer needs to prove – chiefly, that he’s a terrific action performer who moves with more grace than pretty much anyone else in the film world. The picture fails to challenge him. Safe is safer than safe – it’s so relentlessly kinetic that it ends up being dull.
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Filmmaker Boaz Yakin has taken a circuitous route through the years tackling indie dramas (Fresh, A Price Above Rubies, Death in Love) and studio gigs (Remember the Titans, Uptown Girls) alike, not to mention his writing stints on films like Prince of Persia and producing duties on the Hostel films. But this week’s Safe, a frenetic throwback actioner starring Jason Statham, marks a return to his roots — both to the streets of New York he grew up loving and to the genre beginnings that gave him his start.
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This Friday Jason Statham charges into theaters as a cage-fighting ex-NYPD officer who protects a 12-year-old Chinese girl from the Triads, the Russian mob, and corrupt city officials in Boaz Yakin's throwback actioner Safe. So what better way to celebrate the stone-cold suaveness of Britain's most bad-ass action export than by penning a 10-word review of any one of his films? Transport yourself into Statham mode, crank up the chaos, and expend your best critique for your chance to snatch up the grand prize. UPDATE: Contest is now closed. Read the winning 10-word review!
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If the Tremor brothers were slightly less-deranged they might be the Southern-fried antiheroes of The Baytown Disco, whose trailer reveals a startling lack of disco and copious amounts of gun-battling, yee-hawing, and evil Billy Bob Thornton. (Oh, evil Billy Bob! How I love you.) Watch as Eva Longoria taps the trio of redneck bros to kidnap her godson -- and in the process, invite road warriors, Thornton's "whore assassins," and Stefan from The Vampire Diaries to hunt them down -- in Baytown Disco's Smokin' Aces-meets-Gigli trailer.
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This week's Guy Pearce-starring, Luc Besson-produced Lockout might look like a run of the mill action pic -- that vague title doesn't help things -- but, as the film's opening scenes show, it's got a blustery '80s-style hero at its core and a punny sense of humor to move things along. Get a taste for the brawny bravado and hijinks to come in the film's first five minutes, viewable after the jump.
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Ever since growling his way through 2008's gloriously B-movie-esque B-movie Taken, Liam Neeson's been enjoying his newfound status as the gruff hero with killer instincts and a particular set of skills that you want on your side in the event of a kidnapping/assassination attempt/jailbreak/wolf attack. So why fix something that ain't broke? Enter Non-Stop, Neeson's next actioner and an airplane-set excuse to see Neeson smash heads and deliver straightfaced epic one-liners.
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As a member of the Jakarta police force, Rama (Iko Uwais) is one of dozens of SWAT agents about to be trapped within the concrete walls of a tenement building run by a nefarious slumlord, set upon by machete-wielding thugs and forced to fight his way out using knives, broken doorways, and at times, only his bare hands. The fighting style he uses to do so, leaving a trail of broken baddies in his wake, is silat -- a lightning-fast, bone-crunching Southeast Asian martial art that gets its best showcase in Gareth Evans’ festival sensation The Raid: Redemption.
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This week at SXSW Movieline caught up with director Gareth Evans, whose Indonesian martial arts actioner The Raid: Redemption is set to knock your socks off later this month courtesy of Sony Classics. (Haven’t heard of the martial arts form silat? You will, come March 23.) With his film steadily collecting kudos left and right, Evans is already thinking ahead to his Raid sequel (working title: Berandal), and an insane, dangerous-sounding four-on-one car fight he plans on working into the mix.
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It's no secret that Disney's been scrambling to counteract bad tracking and mixed word of mouth on their mega-budgeted March actioner John Carter, so it's worth a look to see what they've done with the latest (and "final") trailer for the Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation. And behold! A trailer filled with nearly everything that makes John Carter worth going to see: Alien creatures, political intrigue, Taylor Kitsch in a loincloth, Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris, and lots of inventive, fantastical action.
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Expect Twitter to explode shortly with reactions to the Sundance premiere of Gareth Evans' The Raid, the Indonesian actioner that blew minds at Toronto but has been kept largely under wraps until now by Sony Classics, who smartly snatched up the pic and will distribute it this March. I caught The Raid last week at a pre-Sundance screening with its new score by composer Joe Trapanese and Mike Shinoda -- yes, of Linkin Park -- and can attest that the early praise was well-earned because holy crap, it's amazing. Everything you've heard about it? True.
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Watching mixed martial artist Gina Carano fight on television, director Steven Soderbergh was struck by inspiration: Why not build an action movie around the lethal (and yes, gorgeous) athlete to show audiences what a real action heroine could look like? Forget Angelina Jolie in Salt, or any number of actresses who’ve unconvincingly flitted their way through the genre. Carano was the real deal, a woman who can dole out punches with bone-shattering believability, leap between buildings, and battle Hollywood’s best leading men with aplomb, as evidenced in this week’s Haywire.
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