It’s a fascinating franchise that can count its 21st film as one of the very best.Įvery now and again a film comes along that’s dubbed a 'game changer'. And yet, the film’s most thrilling sequence, somehow, is a lengthy card game. The controversy about Daniel Craig’s casting seems quaint now (a toxic fan made a whiney website – imagine the furore on social media that'll meet the next Bond), and it’s fascinating to look back, post Craig’s bored-looking turn in Spectre, and see the fire with which he absolutely owns the role, from the opening free-running chase to the airport battle and the climactic destruction in Venice. Although Judi Dench remains from the Pierce Brosnan era as MI6 chief M, this is a younger Bond’s first mission, in which we see him earn his 00 status with his first kill, and in which the gadgets are kept to a minimum (a defibrillator in the Aston Q doesn’t even show up for another two films). The third in the projected trilogy was promised but has yet to materialise.įinally able to adapt the first of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels (after decades of rights issues), the Bond franchise’s gatekeepers took the bold move of re-starting the entire franchise. The Raid 2 – a massive and unexpected expansion, keeping the extreme violence but adding a level of Once Upon A Time In Indonesia-style epic drama – followed two years later. But it’s not so much the destination as the journey, which is so intense it’ll leave you with actual bruises. They have to fight their way to the top of a tower block and back out again.

The premise is simplicity itself: Iko Uwais’s greenhorn cop and a small SWAT team are sent into the deadliest housing project in Jakarta, the kind of place that’d give even Snake Plissken second thoughts: a labyrinth of Silat-skilled villains and big bosses. Seemingly out of nowhere came the sudden arrival of one of the most blistering action films of the 21st century to date: a ferocious curio stemming from Indonesia but written and directed by Welshman Gareth Evans. Remarkable for its emotion – huge props to Hans Zimmer's sumptuous score – as much as its bombastic production values, Gladiator stands head and shoulders above the imitators ( Troy, Alexander) it inspired. Russell Crowe puts in a stoic performance as Maximus Decimus Meridius – father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, and so on – the military general forced into gladiatorial combat, who rules the ring and plots revenge against Joaquin Phoenix's effete, patricidal Commodus. Combining the two, the result is a film that feels tangible and tactile, still wowing with its battle scenes, amphitheatre showdowns, and evocation of the Roman Empire at its height. Are you not entertained? How could anyone fail to be swept along by Ridley Scott's Gladiator – a straight-up swords-and-sandals historical epic that snagged five Oscars and features blood-spattered beheadings? Scott made the film at a fascinating time – in the dying days of studio movies shooting on huge-scale practical sets, and at the dawn of CGI embellishments.

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