Ray Donovan (the movie) and Fistful of Vengeance

Two movies that cap off their series?

Ray Donovan (the movie)

Basically a movie length episode which ties up the story of titular character, the "fixer" Ray Donovan (Liev Shrieber) and takes place immediately after season 7. It contains a surprising amount of flash backs, but this is fine in that it is both important to the story as it echoes current events AND explains more about the dynamic between Ray and his father Mickey (Jon Voight). It's also nice to get to see most of the other cast members one more time, but ultimately that is what will temper any recommendation from me. This movie is definitely only for people who have watched all of Ray Donovan the series, otherwise it's probably best you steer clear.

Fistful of Vengeance

If only the enemies were better with guns...

Unlike the above, Fistful of Vengeance doesn't need you to know anything about its little supernatural / martial arts series called Wu Assassins. It's not even in the title! Instead a quick intro catches people up and we get to see Wu Assassin Kai (Iko Uwais) and company wreak vengeance against... demigods and their minions or something? Story was never going to be the strong point here, but this is actually worse than what was in the series. Also worse is the actual fight scenes which is a bummer. I don't mind the wire work, but having pumped up techno music to seemingly slow combat only highlights the slowness? Again better in the series, which leaves me to say don't bother watching this one unless you really liked Wu Assassins.

Snake Eyes and Black Widow

Movies with black clad protagonists!

Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins

More talkative, makes less sense.

When someone kills his dad, Snake Eyes (Henry Golding) dedicates his entire life to vengeance at any cost. This involves betraying a number of people many times and killing a lot of other people -because they were in his way- out of self defense *cough*. There are some nice action scenes (I particularly enjoyed the ones with Iko Uwais) but there are loads of over the top ones too.

It's one of those flicks where most of the bad guys keep forgetting to bring firearms and the only surprise in the plot is that they remembered to somehow link in G.I. Joe and Cobra to it, because if you don't see the title you can watch most of it without knowing it was a GI Joe flick. Anyway, this isn't something that I'd watch again or recommend and give it two disguise sheets out of five.

That would have been a twist!

Black Widow

Takes place after Captain America: Civil War.

Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) has no problem being in hiding due to her stance on the Sokovia Accords, but she doesn't actually get much downtime as a surprise mission comes up that involves reuniting with her "family". There are a few flash back segments to establish this newly revealed past and the story, humor and action segments are quite good. I do have to question Natasha's resilience though as some damage she takes during this film makes me wonder if she too took the super soldier serum.

Definitely a flick for Avenger or Scarlett fans, and one I'd watch again. I give this "passing the torch" three tight fitting suits out of five. It's pretty telling that whatever the next threat the entire Avengers team will need to face, whenever that rolls around there's going to be a drastically different line up based on what's happening in the MCU series as well.

Triple Threat

When one threat simply isn't enough.

Iko Uwais stars in this beat em up as the last survivor from a covert ops attack and sets out to get revenge on the team that wronged him. A team that includes the likes of Tony Jaa, Tiger Chen, Michael Jai White, Jeeja Yanin and Scott Adkins.

Definitely made for people that like their martial arts movies this story offers some fantastic fight scenes but has a very thin plot and a few too many "office scenes" filler.

Fight fight fight!

Also, all the gun play is total garbage with people not getting hit while standing in the open while dead no-name mooks seem to rain down around them - but that's to be expected since we want to see all those big names in hand to hand. It doesn't disappoint in that department!

Definitely one I'd watch again and one I can recommend to martial arts fans. I give this flick three threats out of five. See what I did there? Lol. :P

Wu Assassins

Surprise! You are now the chosen one!

One day a regular chef (Iko Uwais) randomly bumps into his destiny - granting him supernatural abilities (one of which is to make himself look like Mark Dacascos) and a quest to defeat all the elemental users known as Wu. As if dealing with the triad wasn't bad enough!

Some really good martial arts skills on display in this show.

While the triad / personal parts of this tale are passable, the whole concept of the Wu part and what they are trying to do is really flaky which they try to make up for by having some nice martial arts fight scenes. I'm almost inclined to say that it might have been better without the supernatural bit.

Anyway, this is squarely aimed at die hard martial arts (or Iko Uwais) fans - everyone else should probably just stay away. I give it 1.5 turtle shells out of 5.