Mindlessly entertaining action fare for those blob-out days

Summer can be taxing. But, after long days chasing children or long nights pouring chasers, a bit of mindless action fits the bill as the perfect cure.

Reporter Vaughan Elder suggests three action films for those wearied by summer's demands.

Photos supplied.
Photos supplied.
THE ROCK (1996)

Directed by: Michael Bay.
Starring: Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris.

Feeling too drained for anything that requires brain activity? If your answer to that question was yes then The Rock is the perfect movie for you.

Directed by Michael Bay well before he became infamous for the abominations that are the Transformers movies, this movie has all the slick action and explosions anyone could want out of a 1990s action film.

And to top it off it has Sean Connery. The film follows Stanley Goodspeed (Cage), an FBI chemical weapons specialist who is tasked with stopping an evil and insane Unites States general who has taken 81 tourists hostage on the the abandoned island prison of Alcatraz and is threatening to bomb San Francisco.

Goodspeed teams up with an ageing ex-British spy (Connery), the only man ever to escape the prison.

Action, questionable plotting and more action follow, but the movie is propelled forward by the relationship of the two leads and it never stops being fun. Just leave your brain behind.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (2014)

Directed by: James Gunn.
Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper.

If you were one of the few people to not go and see the smash-hit Guardians of the Galaxy when it was at the movies (it made ever-so-slightly under $1 billion at the global box office making it the second-biggest picture of the year) then I suggest watching it over summer. In the role that launched him to superstardom

Chris Pratt plays the wise-cracking and morally dubious Peter Quill/Star-Lord who leads a hodge-podge group of superheroes which includes a talking tree and a gun-toting genetically engineered raccoon.

Despite fitting squarely in the super-hero genre, the space setting and the strength of the comedy set it apart from the seemingly endless parade of other movies based on comic book characters.

DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012)

Directed by: Quentin Tarantino.
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio.

After having the gall to kill Hitler (sorry about the spoiler, but most film folk have seen Inglourious Basterds ) in his World War 2-reimagined film, director Quentin Tarantino followed up by tackling the slavery era and the results are every bit as spectacular.

The movie follows African-American slave Django (Foxx) as he tries to track down and free his wife from an evil plantation owner (DiCaprio).

Django is taught the ways of the bounty hunter by a German bounty hunter posing as a travelling dentist (Waltz) and plenty of over-the-top violence and witty conversation ensues.

Django Unchained is definitely not for the faint of heart, but the breathtakingly bloody action and exceptional dialogue is sure to satiate the needs of any world-weary action movie fan.

 

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