American Assassin - 美國刺客

American Assassin (美國刺客) is an 2017 film. The movie stars Dylan O'Brien as the main character, Mitch Rapp. The supporting cast include Michael Keaton, Sanaa Lathan, Shiva Negar, and Taylor Kitsch. The movie is based on a novel franchise featuring Mitch Rapp.

Mitch Rapp loses his girlfriend and is almost killed himself when a jihadist group attacks during his vacation in Spain. Months later, we find that Rapp has self taught himself martial arts, firearms, and spying on terrorist groups. Rapp is set on taking jihadist groups down. When he makes contact, the CIA rescues him when the deals goes bad and recruits him. After a brutal training session, he makes it to the field and finds that a rogue former CIA agent is causing all the trouble and has enough know how to stay in front of the CIA. The cat and mouse catch begins and who will come out the winner?

Very slick film. From beginning to end. But it was a little too slick. Well made, but the story was engaging enough to keep me going. But I felt like I had already seen this in other forms. I hard to call it predictable, but I felt like I kind of knew what was around the corner. With weak box office receipts, it is very doubtful it'll be a film franchise. Might need time to reboot this.

BUT, this would be a great 10 part series on a Netflix or Amazon Prime. I haven't seen all of Jack Ryan, but this seems right up the ally of that type of movie.

Lone Survivor - 紅翼行動

Lone Survivor (紅翼行動) is an 2013 film. The movie stars Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, and Eric Bana. The movie is based on an 2007 novel of the same name.

A four man SEAL reconnaissance and surveillance team is tasked to track down and to kill an Taliban leader named Ahmad Shah. The go into the hills above a village to identify Ahamd Shah. However, they are discovered and a long drawn out stand off happens. As you can tell from the title of the film, only one member of the four man surveillance team makes it back alive.



The movie was a mild box office hit due to the time it was released. The film was released during January, generally a slow time of the year. It started a limited release run during Christmas of 2013. But did most of its business in 2014.

What did I think of the film? It was slow to start and bit of a let down at the end. But entertaining for the most part. It shouldn't be compared to American Sniper in any way shape or form. But it is a war time movie and it does go into a bit that war is not good.

Battleship - 超級戰艦

Battleship (超級戰艦) is an 2012 film. The movie stars Taylor Kitsch. The supporting cast include Alexander Skarsgård, Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker, and Liam Neeson. The movie is advertised as being based loosely off a popular board game of the same name.

Taylor plays a navy seaman that gets into trouble a lot. But he's such a catch that the admiral's daughter finds him hot. Out on a routine training exercise, they are attacked by aliens. The the reconnaissance crew sent by the aliens crash lands by an island in Hawaii. The navy's ships are there, including Taylors. After some display of ultimate power from the aliens, they settle down and try to phone home. Taylor and what's left of the navy try to stop them.

I saw this movie via both rented blu-ray and on HBO. I had a hard time sitting through the whole thing. Almost none of the main characters appealed to me. I flat out didn't like them. They had heart during the battle as they should, but on their off hours, I don't know. I'd avoid them. Which made avoiding this movie something I wanted to do. But HBO's constant reruns got me. I got through the movie over like a span of a month. Just like its box office take, something you don't really need to watch unless HBO repeats it like crazy again.

John Carter - 異星戰場:強卡特戰記

John Carter (異星戰場:強卡特戰記) is an 2012 film. The movie stars Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins. The movie is based on the legendary Barsoom book series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The movie is also noted as one of the biggest financial flops of the 2012 movie year. The movie cost an upwards of $300 million and generated roughly ~$282 million worldwide.

John Carter is an treasure hunter that stumbles on the Spider Cave of Gold. A gun fight breaks out and he's sent to Mars. Once on Mars, Carter has extra ordinary powers and helps on clan fight the other clan. We're introduced to the many clans, tribes, and cities of the planet. The technology seems to far more advanced than even modern day Earth. Just when there's a breaking point on Mars...I can't. It'll be spoilers.

The movie was not all that bad. Maybe it was because I went in thinking it would suck bad. It didn't. It was actually entertaining. I like sci-fi and this was well made sci-fi. The movie plot however was quite poor. Marry the great sci-fi and poor story telling, you get a decent film.