Do you feel like you’re drowning … but you haven’t even left your couch? Welcome to the Great Content Overload Era. To help you navigate the choppy digital waves, here are The Globe’s best bets for weekend streaming.
The Killer (Prime Video)
Nathalie Emmanuel as Zee in The Killer, directed by John Woo.Christine Tamalet/Supplied
For his big return to American filmmaking after two decades of semi-self-imposed exile, legendary Hong Kong director John Woo – master of operatic action, often backgrounding his gunfights with his signature flock of snow-white birds – last fall delivered what might be the most disappointing comeback imaginable with the holiday-set thriller Silent Night. So hopes are not exactly high for his latest film, The Killer, whose qualities are doubly dubious given that the movie is a remake of Woo’s most famous production. Oh, and this version of The Killer is going straight to streaming, being released on NBCUniversal’s Peacock in the United States and via Prime Video in the Peacock-less Canada.
Whereas Woo’s original 1989 hit took place in Hong Kong and starred Chow Yun-Fat in a breakthrough performance, this Killer 2.0 is set in Paris and gender-swaps the hero role with Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones, Fast X) as an assassin who turns on her employers. Lupin’s Omar Sy co-stars as the cop who becomes an unlikely ally, while Sam Worthington and Saïd Taghmaoui fill out the “hey, it’s that guy!” supporting cast. Unavailable to preview before my deadline, the film could very well be a late-career masterpiece for Woo. Or, given the director’s track record and its suffocating air of “lesser-than” elements, perhaps it’s good to have some top-tier Woo films (not only the original The Killer, but also Hard Boiled, A Better Tomorrow, Bullet in the Head, heck even 2017′s Manhunt) queued up just in case.
Hit Man (Netflix)
Glen Powell as Gary Johnson and Bryant Carroll as Walt in Hit Man.Brian Roedel/Netflix
I feel that an entire summer’s worth of columns can be devoted to tracing the curious, confusing journey of Richard Linklater’s comedy Hit Man from big to small screen in Canada. As noted several times now in this very weekly column, the Glen Powell-starring charmer was first released in this country exclusively in theatres, thanks to local distributor VVS Films holding the theatrical rights. This proved a problem for audiences who were bombarded by marketing from Netflix, which held the film’s U.S. rights and made a big splash of having its debut on the streamer, with only the most cursory of theatrical showings stateside.
After a few weeks, Hit Man became available to watch at home for Canadians, but only via premium video-on-demand, not Netflix or another subscription-based streaming service. Then the movie snuck quietly onto Hoopla, which is available for free to any Canadian with a library card. And now, in a moment of full-circle industry irony, Hit Man is available to stream on Netflix Canada. The funny thing is, though, that the movie is actually worth all the myriad release-method routes. Perhaps enough producers/theatres/distributors/streamers made money along the way, too.
Land of Bad (Hoopla)
Land of Bad arrived in theatres earlier this past winter to the faintest of fireworks.Sarah Enticknap/VVS
A muscular behind-enemy-lines thriller, Land of Bad arrived in theatres earlier this past winter to the faintest of fireworks. And while the film’s main mission – to turn Liam Hemsworth into an action star on par with his older brother Chris – doesn’t quite succeed, director William Eubank’s movie makes for better-than-average at-home viewing thanks to the support of Russell Crowe. The one-time Gladiator co-stars here as a U.S. Air Force drone pilot code-named Reaper, who from his base in Las Vegas must guide Hemsworth’s pretty-bro Rambo as he gets stranded during a mission in the Philippines.
Together with co-writer David Frigerio, Eubank takes a slow-and-steady approach to the action. Instead of having Hemsworth and his fellow grunts come in guns-a-blazin’, the script allows for a certain degree of character development. And the filmmakers’ decision to split the onscreen action roughly half between the harsh jungle environs and the drab bureaucratic environs of Reaper’s Nevada office results in a compelling juxtaposition of danger and politics, not to mention some fine comic-relief moments for Crowe, huffing and puffing as if Tony Soprano had opted for a life in the armed forces.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Crave)
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is already available to stream when it really should still be shaking and rattling multiplexes all summer long.Crave
Even though it might-slash-should be considered a bootable offence in George Miller’s home country of Australia to view his latest epic on a small screen, the realities of today’s film industry mean that Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is already available to stream when it really should still be shaking and rattling multiplexes all summer long. Oh well, I suppose any Furiosa is better than no Furiosa at all.
Separated into five chapters, the Fury Road prequel traces the origins of Charlize Theron’s badass, played here by the young Alyla Browne in the early going, then by Anya Taylor-Joy. The latter actor nails Theron’s thousand-yard-stare intensity, stewing in both toxic guilt and incandescent rage. And when the action sequences arrive, they are glorious. There are almost too many set-pieces to highlight, though an extended mid-film scene involving the attempted hijacking of a war rig is executed with a precise kind of glee. Each swerve of the truck and each dispatch of a body feels frighteningly real, with each frame a perfectly formed puzzle of a million moving parts. Perhaps even more so than Fury Road, Furiosa is a movie that punishes you for blinking. Good luck on that TV.
Alien and Aliens (Crave)
Sigourney Weaver and Carrie Henn on the set of the film Aliens, directed by James Cameron, in 1986.Bob Penn/Getty Images
To mark last weekend’s big-screen release of Alien: Romulus – the 10th film to feature those pesky xenomorphs, depending on how you view a short background moment in Predator 2 – Crave has added the first two, and inarguably best, instalments. Ridley Scott’s original 1979 film still packs a horrific punch, lacing an anti-capitalist screed inside a gory haunted-house movie. But it is James Cameron’s 1986 follow-up that takes the in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-scream antics to spectacularly violent new heights. As much a sci-fi thriller as it is an all-out war movie, the sequel has inspired so many imitators that its touchstones have looped back to influence Cameron himself. Sigourney Weaver’s hero Ellen Ripley walked so Avatar’s Jake Sully could run, leap and swim. All due respect to the ghastly frights Romulus director Fede Alvarez unleashed – including the franchise’s most horrific sight, the digital resurrection of a certain deceased actor – but Cameron’s film will never, ever say die.