Nicolas Cage has made not one, but two of the worst action movies ever made.
Which films are they? And what Antonio Banders film
is the worst reviewed film of all time? Keep watching to find out!
The original "Hitman" movie, based on the moderately popular video game series of
the same name, was dropped into theaters in 2007. Criticism was levied at the movie's lousy script,
performances, effects, and action sequences.
Tragically, it was just enough of a financial success to get a reboot.
Enter: "Hitman: Agent 47." This reboot had one job, despite not needing to exist at all:
improve upon the lackluster original while building on the few things in
it that worked. As evidenced by its 8% Tomatometer, this did not happen. At all.
The movie follows genetically engineered killing machine/assassin Agent 47,
played by Rupert Friend, as he fights an evil corporation to unlock the secrets of his past.
The film also commits just about every action movie sin: A bad script;
lackluster performances; action sequences that steal from far better movies without
even being inspired by them to do something interesting; atrocious product placement.
Worst of all? The movie is boring. Game over.
Bruce Willis has starred in some all-time winners like "Die Hard." But he's also
made some serious losers — the biggest, most enduring stain being "The Prince."
We have to imagine that Liam Neeson turned down the lead role in this irredeemable schlock-fest,
in which Willis is supported by Jason Patric and Rain. Patric
stars as a former assassin who comes out of retirement to take down an old rival
and rescue his kidnapped daughter from a deranged Willis.
Sound boring and cliche? It is! Just do yourself a favor
and skip this one. Bruce will thank you for it.
Ah, Nicolas Cage. Once a respected actor, he eventually slipped and fell all the way down
the Hollywood mountain, emerging decades later at the bottom, covered in bruises,
as an internet meme associated with unwatchable schlock.
"Oh no, not the bees! Not the bees! Ah, in my eyes!!"
He's recovered a bit since then, but it'll take more than one or two well-received indie films
like "Pig" to salvage a filmography decimated by low-effort turds like "Bangkok Dangerous."
One of his most profoundly unwatchable duds, 2008's "Bangkok Dangerous" shouldn't
be confused with the vastly superior 1999 Thai original of the same name.
"Bangkok Dangerous" gets just about everything wrong in its attempt to tell the tale of a
lethal assassin who befriends a target and gets hunted by a former client in Thailand.
The screenplay and the execution are in a tug-of-war to see which one is the most inept
feature of the film. Everything is sloppy and uninspired and boring. That last one is the
greatest tragedy of all: The movie didn't even manage to fall into "so-bad-it's-good
cult classic" territory. It's just... blah. And there's nothing worse a film can be.
All the ingredients were there for Taylor Lautner to break out of the "Twilight"
series as a Hollywood superstar. And yet,
it didn't happen. Why? Well, his first attempt to legitimize himself as a bankable action hero,
2011's "Abduction," went hideously awry and did far more damage to his career than good.
The movie follows Lautner as Nathan Harper,
a troubled Philadelphia high school senior, who learns while researching for a school project
that he was abducted as a child. Like many other movies on this list, the premise isn't
the problem. If done correctly, it could have been a perfectly recommendable action thriller.
Unfortunately, it was done very, very incorrectly. On Rotten Tomatoes,
where the movie enjoys an Arctic 5% approval rating, the Critics Consensus reads,
"A soulless and incompetent [action thriller] that not even a veteran lead actor could save,
let alone Taylor Lautner."
That pretty much sums it up. Lautner simply didn't have the credibility, the acting chops, or the
support of competent writers and directors to salvage this miserably misguided bomb of a film.
"There's a bomb in the oven."
"... What?!"
There are a lot of bad movies based on video games, but most of them look like
cinematic masterstrokes compared to 1997's "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation."
This movie follows Liu Kang and his warrior friends as they fight to stop the evil Shao Kahn
from conquering Earthrealm. That all sounds fine enough, but when it comes to movies, it's not the
thought that counts, but the execution. And hoo boy, did this movie fumble that part. The writing
takes no chances on anything and still manages to confound. The cinematography is flat and
uninspired. The acting is unworthy of a student film. And the special effects aren't special.
On Rotten Tomatoes, where the movie enjoys an embarrassing 4% approval rating,
the Critics Consensus reads,
"With its shallow characters, low budget special effects, and mindless fight scenes,
'Mortal Kombat: Annihilation' offers minimal plot development
and manages to underachieve the low bar set by its predecessor."
Sounds harsh, but after watching this outrageous movie that shouldn't have ever been made,
we can honestly say that the critics took it easy on this inept film.
"Mother! You're alive!"
"Too bad YOU… will die!"
Milla Jovovich is an all-time low budget action queen, headlining a whole franchise of
questionable quality in "Resident Evil." But while many of her movies have their fans,
you won't find too many people willing to put their neck on the line defending "Ultraviolet."
The movie follows Jovovich as Violet, a martial artist
infected with a kind of vampirism in a dystopian world where such a diagnosis
lands you a death sentence. With her sword and friends by her side, she leads a revolution
against the tyrannical government that wants her and her kind dead. Sound inspiring? It
is — for aspiring filmmakers who probably figure they can at least do better than "Ultraviolet!"
"Samurai Cop" wasn't exactly cruising for an Oscar when it was released in 1991.
Its name alone should've given that away, but if you need further proof,
get a load of this premise: Joe Marshall, a police officer trained by samurai,
is tasked by the LAPD with taking down a Japanese drug ring known as the Katana.
Try to imagine the dumbest possible execution of this already silly premise. Got it? Well,
we regret to inform you that this movie is at least twice as stupid as that.
As you might expect, the acting is abysmal. The actual filmmaking craft is lazy and inept.
The fight scenes, which are really the only things a movie like this needs to nail,
are staggeringly, fascinatingly bad,
made worse by the fact that only a handful of scenes feature swords instead of guns.
And what we do get as far as swordplay is unintentionally hilarious. Some of
the pratfalls when actors get shot or punched are fine, but the flat blocking and overall
dumpy-looking presentation looks like it was made for a soap opera in the '70s.
Luckily, "Samurai Cop" achieved the best possible outcome for a movie worthy of this list:
It's established itself as a bonafide, so-bad-it's good cult classic. That's
rarely the original intention of a filmmaker, but movies this lousy need to take what they can get.
"Why did you come under?"
“Because I'm an undercover cop!"
Nothing is more '80s than ruining the legacy of a surprise one-off hit movie with half
a dozen increasingly lousy and unnecessary sequels. And one of the worst offenders is
the "Robocop" franchise. The original, about a nigh-indestructible crime-fighting cyborg,
is a disarmingly sharp satire of American culture run amok
that absolutely bleeds glorious '80s schlock. The sequel, however, was a significant step down,
pulling in less money and far less critical acclaim than the first.
And it was only downhill from there. Unwilling to accept
that the first movie said everything the franchise was capable of saying,
even after the original star and director wisely turned down the opportunity to do a second sequel,
new director Fred Dekker proceeded to beat an already-dead horse with 1993's
"Robocop 3." In this movie, our increasingly silly hero tries to avenge his former partner while
fighting to save Detroit, Michigan from falling into the clutches of an evil mega-corporation.
As evidenced by its placement on this list, the movie was a critical and commercial flop. On
the Tomatometer, where it enjoys an appalling 6% fresh rating, the consensus reads, simply,
"This asinine sequel should be placed under arrest."
Between the hokey, ham-fisted messaging, the outrageous-but-witless action sequences,
and the feeling that the franchise had essentially run its course, we can't help but agree.
"I'd buy that for a dollar!"
"Speed" — in which Keanu Reeves tries to save the lives of bus passengers
after discovering the vehicle was rigged to blow if its speed dropped beneath 50 miles
per hour — was one of the most inventively entertaining action flicks of the '90s.
"Speed 2: Cruise Control" was not. Reeves was smart enough to steer clear of this
misguided 1997 sequel, but Sandra Bullock and Willem Dafoe got run right over.
In the story, Dafoe hijacks a cruise ship and sabotages its control systems,
ensuring it will crash into an oil tanker if it isn't stopped.
Jason Patric plays a cop vacationing with his girlfriend - that's Sandra Bullock - who
do their best to bring the evil Geiger down. It's later revealed that Dafoe's character was
seeking revenge against the cruise line for firing him when he got copper poisoning. We
sincerely hope the screenwriter wasn't trying to blow minds with that reveal, but whatever.
In the end, the heroes save the day by steering the ship into a town on the island of Saint
Martin instead. Which seems… even worse? It's worth noting that the crash landing
scene is still one of the most expensive and elaborate stunts ever filmed. All of this
earned "Speed 2" eight Razzie nominations and a crushing 4% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Kirk Cameron-fronted "Left Behind" movies, based on the novels of the same name,
weren't much to write home about. But they almost look like award-season contenders at this point,
because the 2014 Nicolas Cage-fronted reboot was historically bad. Bad enough to rank
among the worst movies that Nicolas Cage has ever made, which is really saying something
The movie only used the source material sparingly and focused more on action
than theology. Maybe that approach could've worked in more competent hands,
but it certainly didn't pan out here. In this movie, Nicolas Cage plays Rayford Steele,
an airline pilot who's in the air when the Biblical rapture occurs, taking the souls of
Christians to heaven and leaving behind billions of grieving, dumbfounded survivors. Meanwhile,
Rayford's daughter Chloe tries to navigate a panic-stricken city in search of her brother,
who is among the countless missing. It actually sounds like a great premise for a movie.
But the filmmaking decisions made throughout the story,
which are never short of baffling, ruin whatever potential the movie might have had.
The result is a hysterically incompetent action-drama-disaster-thriller-Christian
movie that doesn't come close to succeeding in any of those genres.
There's one name that stands head and shoulders below the rest when it
comes to devastatingly unwatchable action movie garbage: German filmmaker Uwe Boll.
Often helming and self-financing video game adaptations with predictably disastrous results,
Boll makes movies so proudly devoid of wit, ingenuity, and competence that schlocky SyFy
originals look like "The Godfather" in comparison. One of his movies, 2005's Christian Slater-fronted
"Alone in the Dark," is often, and deservedly, listed as one of the worst films ever made.
The movie is an adaptation of a 2001 video game from the franchise of the same name.
The only thing the movie has going for it is that, between the mind-numbingly stupid screenplay,
special effects that would've looked dated in an early '90s TV movie,
and Tara Reid's performance, it is absolutely hilarious to watch.
And here we are, at the absolute bottom: "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever."
This mess about two rival special agents who eventually join forces to take down a common foe
starred the usually reliable Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu. In a surprising turn of events,
the game that was inspired by the movie was a whole lot better than the film.
Thing is, "Ballistic" is not just a bad movie. It's not even just the worst action
film ever made. It is literally — get this – the worst reviewed film in the history of
Rotten Tomatoes. We're not kidding. Not a single one of its 118 reviews was positive,
resulting in an ultra-rare 0% fresh rating. The Critics Consensus puts it thusly:
"A startlingly inept film, 'Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever' offers overblown,
wall-to-wall action without a hint of wit, coherence, style, or originality."
It's true. And it's worth reading the delightfully snarky reviews,
if only because they are way more entertaining than the film.
"Ballistic" indulges in every imaginable cliche and choreographs its reveals so clumsily
it makes you wonder if the movie meant to keep anything a secret from you in the first place.
Congratulations, "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever:" you are officially the worst action movie of all time.
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