Black Bag (2025)

Don't think too hard about the plot, which is full of outlandish extraneous details and relies on an impossible amount of inter-agent bedhopping (some of it blurring professional boundaries in very unlikely ways) and just enjoy the sleek, sexy spy thrills as Michael Fassbender's mild-mannered spy, George Wodehouse, learns his wife's name is on a list of five potential traitor agents.

★★★★☆

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Survivor (2015)

I like Milla Jovovich on screen but her clenched jaw and steely look here as government security specialist Kate Abbott - constantly dashing through gunfire, thrown back three times by explosions that she simply shrugs off, and appearing in new scenes by rising from behind alleyway garbage bins as if that is all we need to know since we last saw her - leaves the strong impression each scene of this wafer-thin action thriller was designed to segue into first-person shooter gameplay, a feeling amplified by Jovovich's long run as Resident Evil heroine Alice and by Survivor's superficial game logic, where action trumps story as Abbott is ludicrously accused of a bombing, hunted by a terrorist called The Watchmaker (Pierce Brosnan) and then, in a laughable end-title flourish, held up as relevant to actual post-September 11 US security concerns.

★★☆☆☆

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The Foreigner (2017)

A man - Jackie Chan in a surprisingly harrowing, emotional performance - heads to Northern Ireland to take down the terrorists responsible for the explosion that killed his daughter, and watching this 60-year-old reconnoitre Northern Ireland, magic up the materials he needs to create weapons, move freely around Belfast and the isolated country estate of Pierce Brosnan's Gerry Adams-like First Minister, and take out waves of "Authentic IRA" thugs, is as fun as it is ludicrous.

★★★☆☆

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Butterfly on a Wheel (US: Shattered / EU: Desperate Hours) (2007)

When their daughter is abducted, a devastated couple is coerced into performing tasks that further undo their perfect lives by a man who remains their constant companion for 24 hours, in this unlikely crime thriller with a twist at the end that is not as interesting as it would be if it were to be discussed by lawyers in a Butterfly on a Wheel 2.

★★☆☆☆

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No Escape (2015)

An American everyman uproots his wife and two daughters in a career move, landing them all in South-East Asia the day before civil unrest erupts; the movie is a string of low budget but high tension escapades as the beseiged four teach machine gun-toting Asian marauders not to mess with an all-American family, and goes to show dopey xenophobic action can be effective without multi-million dollar budgets.

★★★☆☆

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