\n<\/p>\n
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video<\/a>.<\/p>\n There have been plenty of \u201cJohn Wick\u201d copies, but David Ayer\u2019s \u201cThe Beekeeper\u201d is one of the few to get it right. In it, a rich man upsets a former assassin when his online fraud venture takes the life savings of a retired teacher (Phylicia Rashad), causing her to die by suicide. When the rich guy, Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), tells his security chief, Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons), that the assassin Adam Clay (Jason Statham) wants revenge, Westwyld is horrified. Clay\u2019s beekeeping isn\u2019t solely a retirement gig; it\u2019s also the code name for the government\u2019s off-the-books contract killers.<\/p>\n As you\u2019d expect, Ayer\u2019s film is a showcase for Statham. Few contemporary action stars can deliver his brand of ruthless destruction and savage wisecracks. To get to Danforth, Clay blows up office buildings, sets another assassin on fire and destroys teams of contract killers. It\u2019s all in a day\u2019s work for Statham, who gives us the blunt fierceness we desire.<\/p>\n Rent or buy on most major platforms<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Another film centering on a sadistic rich kid is the Korean director Park Jin-pyo\u2019s \u201cBrave Citizen.\u201d In Park\u2019s film, So Si-min (Shin Hye-sun) is a former champion boxer turned teacher who arrives at a high school whose students cower under the reign of the ruthless Han Su-kang (Lee Jun-young). Because Han\u2019s father is the school\u2019s major donor and his mother is a lawyer, he\u2019s allowed to act like evil incarnate. He decides which teachers are hired and fired and even caused one to die by suicide. The former boxer decides to wear a cat mask and begins targeting Han.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n You wouldn\u2019t think you\u2019d take pleasure in a high school student taking roundhouse kicks and swift punches to the jaw, but Han\u2019s depravity makes So\u2019s attacks the purest possible schadenfreude. By the time we arrive at a school-sponsored death match in a boxing ring, you\u2019re praying for this teen to get his comeuppance.<\/p>\n Stream it on Amazon Prime Video<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the director Robert Lorenz\u2019s \u201cIn the Land of Saints and Sinners\u201d Liam Neeson plays Finbar Murphy, a former contract killer in Northern Ireland who\u2019s tired of death. Similar to Clint Eastwood in \u201cUnforgiven,\u201d Finbar retires to a quiet town where he hopes to tend to a garden and forget his deadly past. When a fugitive Irish Republican Army bomber hiding out in town begins abusing a young girl, however, Finbar kills him. This causes <\/strong>Doireann (Kerry Condon), the fighter\u2019s vindictive comrade, to seek vengeance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Though set in a coastal town, Lorenz\u2019s film possesses all the hallmarks of a classic Western: the steady lawman (Ciar\u00e1n Hinds), the helpful neighbor (Niamh Cusack), the outlaw friend (Colm Meaney), and the quick-trigger gunslinger (Jack Gleeson). Add together a brooding, harmonica-infused score, vicious bomb threats and Neeson\u2019s ruminative desire to simply live in peace, and you\u2019ve got an affectingly moody retooling of the conscientious killer narrative.<\/p>\n Stream it on Amazon Prime Video<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A slacker, Taka (Sho Mineo) hasn\u2019t left his trailer since his brother Mune (So Yamanaka), an archaeologist, disappeared. The arrival of an orange cassette in the mail, however, jolts Taka into action. The recording tells him a cat cult is holding his brother hostage, and he needs to recover an ancient Egyptian box of Bastet\u2019s forbidden catnip to save him. During Taka\u2019s slow bicycle journey, he enlists an unhoused man named Takezo (Yuya Matsuura) and the deadly Ayane (played by the stuntwoman Ayane) to help him.<\/p>\n The writer and director Reiki Tsuno\u2019s \u201cMad Cats\u201d is a silly B-movie lark, featuring two heroes who are absolutely useless. Despite Ayane\u2019s best effort to train Taka and Takezo, neither man can fight or shoot a gun. It\u2019s up to Ayane to defend this hapless pair against catlike assassins in acrobatic firefights and nimble tussles whose punches are edited to sound like soft feline pawing in a film that\u2019s cute, fuzzy and gleefully violent.<\/p>\n\u2018Brave Citizen\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018In the Land of Saints and Sinners\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Mad Cats\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018The Roundup: Punishment\u2019<\/h2>\n