paul_haakonsen

While I have indeed watched the 1995 action crime thriller "Pik Lik Foh" (aka "Thunderbolt") once before, I needed no persuasion to watch it again here in 2025, as I am a fan of Jackie Chan. But it has been a long, long time since last time I watched it, and only remembered the movie by its title.

Writers Gordon Chan, Hing-Ka Chan, Paul B. Clay and Wai Chung Philip Kwok put together a good and enjoyable script and storyline. It is a pretty straightforward storyline that has a good amount of action and fighting in it, just as you would expect from your typical Jackie Chan fronted movie.

Aside from Jackie Chan, the movie does have some familiar faces on the cast list, with the likes of Anita Yuen, Michael Wong, Wai-Kwong Lo, Corey Yuen, Collin Chou and Shing Fui-On. The acting performances in the movie were good, aside from the casted villain played by Thorsten Nickel, as he was stripped of acting talent entirely.

There is a lot of good stunts in the movie, but then again, that pretty much sums up all of Jackie Chan's movies, now doesn't it? Needless to say that the stunts and action sequences were nicely choreographed and executed.

Sadly, the version of the movie I watched here in 2025 was dubbed in Mandarin, and not kept in the original Cantonese language. I absolutely loathe dubbing in movies, especially when it is not done well. Thankfully the dubbing in the movie was okay, but it was still painful to listen to, knowing that it was not the original language the movie was filmed in.

While "Pik Lik Foh" is a good and watchable movie, it is not among the best of Jackie Chan movies in my opinion.

My rating of director Gordon Chan's 1995 movie "Pik Lik Foh" lands on a five out of ten stars.

Of course I had never heard about this 2025 Japanese movie titled "Shinkansen Daibakuha" (aka "Bullet Train Explosion") prior to stumbling upon it by random chance. And given my love of the Asian cinema in general, of course I needed no persuasion to sit down and check out what director Shinji Higuchi had to offer.

The storyline was essentially just a copy and paste job of the 1994 movie "Speed", except the bomb is on a bullet train and not a bus. So I can't claim that writers Kazuhiro Nakagawa and Norichika Ôba particularly impressed me with the script for this 2025 movie. Not that it was a particularly bad movie or anything, by no means, but it just wasn't an original script.

I was not familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, and I will say that the acting performances were good. Nothing outstanding or extraordinary, but fair nonetheless.

While "Shinkansen Daibakuha" is a watchable movie, and thrilling enough for what it was, then it was ultimately also a generic and formulaic movie. Sure, if you're unfamiliar with the 1994 movie "Speed" and watching this, then you're in for an exciting treat, for sure, but if you have watched "Speed" then you might actually find this movie a bit bland and generic.

The effects in the movie were good, and that did help improve on the overall enjoyment of the movie.

I was adequately entertained throughout the course of the movie, but this is hardly a movie that warrants a second viewing.

My rating of director Shinji Higuchi's 2025 movie "Shinkansen Daibakuha" lands on a five out of ten stars.

Initially when I stumbled upon this 2023 Greek horror movie, I must admit that I was expecting some Lovecraftian horror, given the movie's cover and the synopsis.

Sure, I had never heard about this movie from director Konstantinos Koutsoliotas prior to sitting down to watch it, so I didn't really know what I was in for.

Writers Konstantinos Koutsoliotas and Elizabeth E. Schuch put together a script that proved boring and sluggishly paced. Sure, it was slightly Lovecraftian in nature, and I really wanted to like the narrative, but the storyline was just too boring and uneventful. And the character gallery was flaccid and bland, and people just standing around different locations playing guitar was so odd.

I was left with an overwhelming sense of 'was there a point to this narrative?' once the movie came to an end.

Give my extreme limited exposure to the Greek cinema, this being my second movie in my 49 years of living, to watch a Greek movie, then I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list. But I will say that the acting performances were good.

It was a nice touch that the sailor apparently served aboard a ship named Miskatonia. Definitely a tribute towards Lovecraft.

The effects in the movie were surprisingly good, and the effects were the ones carrying the majority of the movie, as the storyline was a massive swing and a miss.

My rating of "Minore" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.