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Strike Back: Vengeance

July 27, 2016
TV
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Strike Back Vengeance Season 3 Trio Philip Winchester, Sullivan Stapleton, Rhashan Stone, Liam Garrigan, Rhona Mitra, Charles Dance, Vincent Regan, Natalie Becker, Shane Taylor, Stephanie Vogt

Strike Back: Vengeance (Season 3) – when a billionaire acquires four nuclear triggers in order to re-shape Africa, only section 20 can stop him. Continuing with the UK/US collaboration, this takes everything that worked about ‘Project Dawn’ and made it all bigger/louder/better. Every episode is wall to wall action; with dozens of set pieces, hundreds of deaths, and a load of whiz-bang sex scenes. The entire season is 100mph, and it’s simply great fun. The characters feel more rounded, the leads’ chemistry is fantastic, and it’s very professionally made – but things like ‘character development’, ‘plot’, and ‘direction‘ are background noise to the explosions, gunfights, stunt driving, and spec ops that march the show forward. It’s hard to believe that such a ridiculously intense level of action (huge set pieces every 10 mins or so) can be done on a TV budget – the 10 episodes are paired off into FIVE 90-minute long mini missions that run together. In a world of toned down and heavily edited 12-rated action films, the swearing, sex, and sensational action makes this feel like something from ‘the good old days’. Completely knowing, and aimed directly at young male action fans, Strike Back Vengeance is a show that only really does one thing (infinite ammo, high-octane action turned up to 11), but does it brilliantly – making it a truly unmissable show for action fans

Score: 8.5/10

Strike Back Vengeance Season 3 Sniping Philip Winchester, Sullivan Stapleton, Rhashan Stone, Liam Garrigan, Rhona Mitra, Charles Dance, Vincent Regan, Natalie Becker, Shane Taylor, Stephanie Vogt

Kick-Ass

April 14, 2010
Film Reviews
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Kick Ass: A guy who’s only power is being invisible (to girls) sets out to become a crime-fighting ‘superhero’. in order to remain original, which it does pretty well, Kick Ass avoids the usual comic book clichés – however the film suffers because the story’s pretty flat. All of the main characters are well-played, especially Cage and Strong, although you don’t see nearly enough of anyone that isn’t Dave Lizewski/Kick Ass; and as a lead he’s not that interesting! My biggest problem was that it kept leaping between American Pie style comedy, shock value, grim & realistic violence, outrageously OTT fantasy/comic violence, romance, gangster… This will drag you through so many genres (sublime and ridiculous) that you never know what’s coming or how you’re supposed to react.  Some of the action scenes are fairly frantic and unclear, especially the lame “doom style” night vision shootout!! It should have been about 30 minutes shorter and borrowed a lot of visuals from the recent Spiderman flicks. Despite the bashing above it is good fun, pretty entertaining and there are LOADS of comic-references for your inner-nerd to pick out – for me however it was a bit too superficial and the saturated trailer campaign absolutely ruined all the best bits.

Score: 6/10