In the space of three films, Luc Besson proved himself a talented director of immensely entertaining genre films. La Femme Nikita is an action classic; Léon: The Professional is pure awesome; and The Fifth Element is gorgeous, magnificently goofy sci-fi.

So when did he become cinema’s equivalent to James Patterson?

That’s not exactly fair; Besson’s works are usually brainless, but watchable, while Patterson’s books (his and those he “shares” with other authors) are nigh unreadable. But Besson has taken a page from Patterson and more or less retired from directing and taken up producing scripts (usually his) that are slapdash at best, relying almost solely on a director’s prowess and the charm of the actors (see: Lockout, Taken, The Transporter, District B13, etc.).

Another is Colombiana, a spiritual sequel to Léon, following a young girl’s rise from innocent to trained assassin as she methodically hunts down her parents’ killers. But where Léon benefitted from Jean Reno’s and Natalie Portman’s charismatic performances and Besson’s verve behind the camera, Colombiana gives us Zoë Saldana (2010’s Star Trek reboot) and director Oliver Megaton (Transporter 3), a man with a Transformer name and an inability to keep the camera still.

In the best action films, we see the stunt. District B13 is entirely stupid, yet nonetheless one of the genre’s best of late, its director understanding that his parkour-trained actors are best served simply by pointing the camera on them and letting them do their thing (see also [seriously, see it]: Gareth Evans’ The Raid: Redemption). Megaton also puts parkour into some chase scenes, but keeps cutting to different angles, so that we never actually get a sense of the physicality. Hell, you edit me like that, I look like an Olympic gymnast (if you knew me, you’d know why this is absurd).

It all boils down to gunplay and explosions, keeping the viewer’s eye distracted and a few great character actors employed. You could do worse, but you can do way better.

A note on Saldana: We need more female action heroes, and she seems an actual talent, selling the emotional scenes far better than the script deserves. But for the love of all that’s holy, someone get her a protein bar. Can we please stop putting firearms in the hands of people who weigh less than the guns they carry? It’s distracting and physically ridiculous (see also: Angelina Jolie). —Corey Redekop

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Essentially War Games made for the cost of a No. 10 combo meal at Taco Bell, the jaw-droppingly dated (even for its time) Terminal Entry centers on a group of computer geeks who sit around playing simulation games all day long. Their latest obsession is one called — ready for this? — Terminal Entry, in which they maneuver terrorists to plunder and kill.

Unbeknownst to them, the damn thing’s not a game at all! They’ve hacked into a military computer and are ordering real-life terrorists to make real-life attacks and real-life kills, the crazy kids! The situation grows even crazier when the high schoolers order an attack on themselves. Only then are our boys tipped off that they’re playing for keeps.

Do our socially challenged teens — among them, Heathers‘ Patrick Labyorteaux and Rob Stone, the eldest son from ’80s TV sitcom Mr. Belvedere — have what it takes to fend off a highly trained and highly armed unit of bad guys? Well, when one of the boys puts a tie around his head Rambo-style, I guess the answer’s a resounding “Yes!”

Truth be told, there is no reason to watch this film past the initial eight minutes, during which 1984 Playboy Playmate of the Year Barbara Edwards (Hard Ticket to Hawaii) steps out of the shower. Ever. So. Slowly. —Rod Lott

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Didn’t see 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra? No big whoop, because only two members of the titular elite military team return for the sequel, Retaliation, and one of them is a mute whose face you never see, while the other dies in the first act. In fact, only three Joes in that initial attack remain standing: Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson, Fast Five), Lady Jaye (Adrianne Paliciki, Red Dawn) and Flint (D.J. Cotrona, Venom).

The clean slate allows for an early franchise reboot, of which incoming director Jon M. Chu does not take full advantage. With Rise, Stephen Sommers didn’t leave the bar set all that high, but Chu fails to clear it nonetheless. Perhaps its lack of song-and-dance sequences proved too intimidating for the Step Up sequelizer, but so much of Retaliation feels like a retread — and worse, its back half bears the sunny-late-afternoon look of a direct-to-video sequel.

The Joes plot their revenge on archenemy Cobra, that über-evil organization which now has control over the White House, thanks to a POTUS double. In a nice nod to his Man with the Iron Fists passion project, The RZA plays a blind martial-arts master who imparts equal dollops of wisdom and training to the secondary ninja characters; meanwhile, the Joes enlist the aid of the original G.I. Joe, aka Joe, now retired. He’s played by Bruce Willis, who scowls through his extended cameo in such a way that he looks bothered to have come in on a Saturday. Joe’s house is an ode to the Second Amendment, with guns and other weaponry stashed behind cabinets, within hidey holes and in a safe whose code, naturally, is “1776.”

Too bad this second-parter isn’t as revolutionary. Chu stages one bang-up set piece, in which Snake Eyes (Ray Park, The Phantom Menace’s Darth Maul) engages in a swordfight against a squad of fellow ninjas … while leaping from cliffside to cliffside. The rest of the action is strictly at a superficial, shit-blows-up level: passively entertaining as it unloads, forgotten soon thereafter. —Rod Lott

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After receiving the double-whammy news that his elderly mother suddenly has sold her land and been placed in a nursing home for a vague blood disorder, Hollywood stunt man Jingo Johnson (Jesse Vint, Macon County Line) returns home to Black Oak. It’s a depressing little town — the kind where the only thing to do on Saturday night is watch a talent show of kazoo-playing and helium-singing.

Jingo immediately runs afoul of two people in particular. One is a stogie-smoking developer (Robert F. Lyons, Death Wish 2) who not only now owns the Johnson farm, but is dating Jingo’s ex (Karen Carlson, The Octagon). The other is Sheriff Grimes (Albert Salmi, Caddyshack), a man so shorn of scruples that he tells the wife he’s cheating on why he doesn’t spend time with her: “Because you look like sumthin’ a wolf ate and shit over a cliff.”

Something with his mom’s situation just doesn’t sit right with Jingo. One might say that more he noses around, the more he’s stuck in a conspiracy — a Black Oak Conspiracy!

This Roger Corman production was a big one for Vint (the poor man’s Dennis Hopper, and that’s not meant as a slam), for whom this represented a first try at writing and producing. The directing, however, was left in the hands of Bob Kelljan (Rape Squad), who fills the flick with enough fistfights, shoot-outs, car chases (one scored with goofy music bearing that sound of plucked rubber bands) and casual sex to make it a solid, overlooked entry in redneck-vengeance cinema. —Rod Lott

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On the scale of action heroes, a huge leeway is given for personal charisma. Talent hopefully plays a part, but personality carries the day. So, in the top tier, we find such charismatic ass-kickers as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood and Dwayne Johnson: men with widely varying degrees of acting skill, but there’s no denying they have the goods.

Then you begin a rapidly sliding scale to the bottom. Jason Statham clings to the top berth; Wesley Snipes was high and now is plummeting; somehow Val Kilmer and Cuba Gooding Jr. are in there; and at the bottom of this godforsaken mineshaft of brawn, we find “heroes” with all the personal magnetism of chewed bubble gum: Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Hulk Hogan, Kurt Thomas (Olympian turned Gymkata star) and now, former “Stone Cold” wrestler Steve Austin, a man as strong as an oak and twice as thick.

The Condemned, another variation in the “hunt men for sport” subgenre, pits hardened criminals against one another on a deserted island for the amusement of Internet looky-looks. Of course, Austin is there among the pack, and of course — spoiler alert — he’s not who he seems to be. No, he’s not a ruthless murderer with no conscience; he’s a government-trained assassin, which somehow makes him … better? I guess? At the end, the filmmakers try to graft on a “we are all culpable for watching” moral which falls as flat as the dialogue and is offensive besides, given how craven its attempts to show bodily carnage are.

None of this even matters; such movies live or die on the strength of their action and their stars, and boy howdy, The Condemned is one dull-as-afternoon-tea-with-Grandma flick. Overuse of shaky-cam techniques renders any fight scene impossible to follow, and overuse of Austin renders any possibility of emotional connection moot. Capable of only one facial expression (mild annoyance), the man is 64-slices-of-American-cheese boring. It’s a blessed relief when the camera cuts away to focus on fellow convict Vinnie Jones (Snatch), who brings his usual soccer hooligan energy to his scenes, and is the only one who looks like he’s having any fun. The man’s a psychopath, but at least he’s trying to be entertaining. —Corey Redekop

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