MOVIE NEWS – September has delivered a surprisingly varied lineup for action fans, ranging from cartel pressure and a vicious frontier western to heightened revenge, large-scale destruction and another relentless Jason Statham manhunt. These five recent releases include Facing El Chapo, The Isolate Thief, Motor City, The Wrecking Crew and Shelter.

Facing El Chapo

Facing El Chapo, now streaming on Netflix, turns a real chapter from Joaquín Guzmán Loera’s criminal history into a tightly contained thriller. Director Chava Cartas keeps the focus away from the larger machinery of the manhunt and instead follows Arturo (Alfonso Herrera), a rigidly professional police officer in Los Mochis, and his rougher new partner Héctor (Noé Hernández). Their routine suddenly collapses when they cross paths with El Chapo (Héctor Kotsifakis) and his lieutenant El Cholo (Juan Pablo Cruz García), leaving both officers trapped in a situation where simply making it through the shift becomes an achievement.

The movie builds pressure in two completely different environments. Armed clashes between cartel fighters and Mexican Navy forces provide the external danger, but the sharper conflict unfolds in the confined space where the officers are holding their prisoner. El Chapo studies them, identifies the parts of their lives they cannot afford to lose and attacks those weaknesses with money and intimidation. Arturo has a family waiting for him, while Héctor is close to retirement. That dynamic gives the movie a surprisingly intimate edge, turning portions of the story into a psychological siege rather than another conventional cartel shootout.

The Isolate Thief

The Isolate Thief heads into much colder territory, both literally and emotionally. Mackenzie Foy stars as Ada Horn, left virtually alone at an isolated Union Army outpost after pneumonia kills her commanding-officer father. Her already precarious existence becomes worse when a wandering stranger played by Joe Pantoliano steals food and clothes from her and quietly hides stolen gold on the property. The treasure might look like unexpected luck, but the people searching for it soon turn it into a deadly liability.

Sean Bean plays Fiddler John Good, who arrives with a gang of criminals wearing stolen Union uniforms and quickly transforms Ada’s remote home into hostile territory. Director John Suits has little interest in a romantic version of the frontier; his western is built from cold, dirt, desperation and sudden brutality. Ada survives through nerve and intelligence, while the battered Emily (Odeya Rush) proves equally willing to fight their attackers directly. By the time the final gun battle erupts, the movie has stripped nearly every comforting western myth from the landscape.

Motor City

Motor City approaches revenge with the opposite philosophy, turning 1970s Detroit into a deliberately exaggerated visual playground. Alan Ritchson plays John Miller, an autoworker whose relationship with Sophia (Shailene Woodley) makes him the target of her jealous former boyfriend Reynolds (Ben Foster). Reynolds has Miller framed for cocaine possession, destroying the relationship and sending him to prison. Years later, Miller emerges with very little interest in moving on peacefully.

Potsy Ponciroli gives that familiar premise a distinctive identity by drastically reducing the amount of dialogue and allowing music to steer entire sequences. David Bowie’s Cat People (Putting Out Fire) drives an early eruption of violence, while Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain turns Miller’s arrest into something closer to an operatic set piece. Ben Foster throws himself into Reynolds with complete abandon, and the finale eventually reaches the kind of excessive, heightened action associated with John Woo at his most playful.

The Wrecking Crew

Prime Video’s The Wrecking Crew puts Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista together as estranged half brothers whose personalities could hardly be further apart. Bautista’s James Hale is a disciplined military commander, while Momoa’s Jonny prefers a much looser relationship with rules. Neither man had much affection for their private-investigator father, but his suspicious death forces them into the same investigation in Hawaii, where the trail eventually leads to Yakuza killers and a corrupt businessman played by Claes Bang.

Director Ángel Manuel Soto does not treat destruction as background decoration. Whenever the brothers collide with their enemies, the damage spreads far beyond the people actually involved in the fight.

The movie’s huge freeway sequence makes that philosophy impossible to miss. A helicopter opens fire into active traffic as civilian vehicles spin, crash and erupt around the protagonists. Rather than pretending the devastation is incidental, the movie embraces it as part of the fun. The Wrecking Crew understands exactly what kind of oversized action comedy it wants to be and happily leaves wreckage behind to prove it.

Shelter

Shelter gives Jason Statham another dangerous loner trying unsuccessfully to erase his past. Michael Mason once served in the Special Forces, but now he has reduced his world to an isolated lighthouse on the Scottish coast. That carefully controlled existence ends when he pulls Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) from a capsized boat. Injured and suddenly without family, the girl forces Mason to leave the protection of his hidden life and search for help.

The moment he does, old enemies and institutions rediscover him. His former superior (Bill Nighy), the current head of MI6 (Naomi Ackie), police forces and a determined assassin all become part of the chase, while modern surveillance technology makes disappearing almost impossible. Ric Roman Waugh combines the relentless pursuit of The Bourne Identity with the bruising close-quarters combat associated with John Wick, giving Statham another showcase for the precision that makes even a length of steel chain look like a purpose-built weapon.

Source: The New York Times