NOV 9 — Action movies are very much like comfort food for me, and probably works the same way for a lot of dudes who grew up during the 1980s and 1990s, where action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal are at the top of the food chain while on the lower rungs are names like Chuck Norris, Billy Blanks, Mark Dacascos, Olivier Grunier and Cynthia Rothrock. Just like the definition of comfort food, action flicks provide nostalgic or sentimental value, often associated with that particular person’s childhood. Unlike the 1980s and 1990s where, even though the bulk of the action stuff we love are more often than not straight-to-video affairs, we can still find plenty of them released in cinemas, action flicks nowadays have almost exclusively gone straight to streaming and digital platforms, with the exception of Hong Kong action flicks, which can still find their way into cinemas, even Malaysian ones.
Because most of them go straight to streaming/digital, it is indeed very easy to miss out even on the fact that they have been released, or even exist. Here are three new ones that I think are worth checking out, with one of them even playing in local cinemas right now, albeit with only a limited release. The Shadow Strays Out now on Netflix, this latest film from Indonesian action/horror maestro Timo Tjahjanto is another satisfying ultra-violent fight flick that fans of the genre will gleefully lap up.
I’d still say that his 2018 Netflix fil.
