hmv previews... 2018's Best Movies - Action
Over the next two weeks, we're going to be previewing 100 of 2018's best movies. We continue with action...
Red Sparrow
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, Mary-Louise Parker and Jeremy Irons
Director: Francis Lawrence
Release Date: March 2nd
The movie is an adaptation of Jason Matthews' best-selling novel, which follows Jennifer Lawrence’s Dominika Egorov, former prima ballerina turned state intelligence officer.
Despite her reservations, Egorov is drafted to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress in the service and asked to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a first-tour CIA officer who handles the agency’s most sensitive penetration of Russian intelligence.
Den Of Thieves
Starring: Gerard Butler, 50 Cent, Pablo Schreiber, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Evan Jones and Dawn Olivieri
Director: Christian Gudegast
Release Date: February 2nd
Gerard Butler leads this action-packed crime saga in which we follow an elite unit of the LA County Sheriff's Dept. and the state's most successful bank robbery crew as the outlaws plan a seemingly impossible heist on the Federal Reserve Bank and the police plan how to stop it.
Beirut
Starring: Jon Hamm, Rosamund Pike, Dean Norris, Shea Whigham and Larry Pine
Director: Brad Anderson
Release Date: TBC
Set in the throng and turmoil of 1980s Beirut, Jon Hamm plays Mason Skies, a former US diplomat returns to service to save a colleague from the group responsible for the death of his family
The Commuter
Starring: Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Florence Pugh, Sam Neill, Elizabeth McGovern, Jonathan Banks and Patrick Wilson.
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Release Date: January 19th
This tense action drama stars Liam Neeson as Michael, an insurance salesman who is on his daily commute home when it quickly becomes anything but routine.
After being contacted by a mysterious stranger, Michael is forced to uncover the identity of a hidden passenger on his train before the last stop.
As he works against the clock to solve the puzzle, he realizes a deadly plan is unfolding and is unwittingly caught up in a criminal conspiracy.
Skyscraper
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller, Pablo Schreiber and Noah Taylor
Director: Rawson M. Thurber
Release Date: July 13th
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson leads the way in this fiery blockbuster as Will Ford, a former FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader and war veteran, who now assesses security for skyscrapers.
On assignment in China, he finds the tallest, safest building in the world suddenly ablaze, and he’s been framed for it. Now he’s on the run...
Proud Mary
Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Billy Brown, Danny Glover, Neal McDonough and Xander Berkeley
Director: Babak Najafi
Release Date: March 23rd
Empire star Taraji P. Henson plays Mary Goodwin, a very successful and utterly no-nonsense hit woman working for the mob in Boston.
Then, however, her life is turned upside down when she meets a young boy whose path she crosses when a professional hit goes wrong and she leaves the boy orphaned.
Widows
Starring: Viola Davis, Cynthia Erivo, André Holland, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, Daniel Kaluuya, Liam Neeson and Colin Farrell
Director: Steve McQueen
Release Date: November 9th
Steve McQueen follows up his hugely successful and highly decorated 12 Years A Slave with something a little more fun.
In this movie, which is based on Lynda LaPlante’s bestselling novel, four armed robbers are killed in a failed heist attempt, only to have their widows step up to finish the job.
With a killer cast, a script co-written by Gone Girl’s Gillian Flynn and McQueen’s wonderful eye, this looks like a highlight of 2018…
Three Seconds
Starring: Ana de Armas, Rosamund Pike, Clive Owen, Joel Kinnaman and Common
Director: Andrea Di Stefano
Release Date: TBC
Roslund & Hellström's hit Swedish crime novel is taken to the big screen in 2018.
House Of Cards star Joel Kinnaman leads the way, he plays an ex-convict working undercover who intentionally gets himself incarcerated again in order to infiltrate the mob at a maximum security prison.
Roman J. Israel Esq
Starring: Denzel Washington, Colin Farrell, Carmen Ejogo and Shelley Henig
Director: Dan Gilroy
Release Date: February 2nd
In this fiery thriller, Washington plays Roman Israel, a driven, idealistic defence attorney who, through a tumultuous series of events, decides that his years of fighting the good fight are over and he wants a taste of the good times.
Naturally, there are consequences...
Overlord
Starring: Wyatt Russell, Jovan Adepo, Jacob Anderson, Bokeem Woodbine and Pilou Asbæk
Director: Julius Avery
Release Date: October 26th
This strange, semi-historical, fantasy action epic, arrives in cinemas later this year, with production overseen by JJ Abrams.
Set in 1944, we follow two American paratroopers who are shot down over Normandy in the midst of the D-Day invasion. As if things weren’t bad enough, they then discover that the Nazis are using supernatural forces against them. Oh dear...
