This April at the movies has been pretty crazy. It’s been all action all the time, and as it happens that’s not such a good thing. Ir’s overkill to the point where movies are cannibalizing each other. You see there’s only so many movies a person can see in a short window of time. This is why movie studios are supposed to consider their release dates carefully, looking at not just what else comes out that same weekend, but the weekends surrounding it. Specifically the weekend right before or right after. And apparently someone missed the ball this time, because this April has become a monster pileup of movies that may very well all (or mostly) be decent when on their own, but when surrounded by these others, they just get lost in the mix.
The Minecraft Movie (April 4th)
Minecraft has the advantage of being the first April movie out of the gate. Then, on top of that, it’s not an action movie for adults like these other films on the list. It’s a kids movie based on a video game, and it has a built in following. The only thing it did for the month of April was get the month started with some huge box office success.
The Amateur (April 11th)
This was the first of the B level action movies of the month. It was a revenge thriller about a guy who used brains instead of muscles. It should have been cool in a Saw-like booby traps kinds of way. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. There’s just wasn’t enough action or traps or trickery and the ending was especially anti-climactic.
A Working Man (April 15th)
Here’s the next Jason Statham run of the mill B level action movie, or is it? First off, every once in a while, one of these Statham flicks turns out to be pretty great, like his movie Wrath of Man from a few years back. Add that with the fact that this movie was directed by David Ayer, who made Statham’s Beekeeper about a year ago, and was easily one of Statham’s better movies. A Working Man might have a title that makes it feel as generic as everything else, but it also might be a decent film.
Sinners (April 18th)
This is the one that everyone was buzzing about. Even Tom Cruise, who made a big public spectacle about going to see it, and how great it was. The movie is about twin brothers (both played by Michael B Jordan,) who run a speakeasy in the old times south. It’s a period piece turned vampire movie, and it’s directed by Ryan Cooler (Black Panther, Creed.) He and Jordan have been an unstoppable team for some time now, (they both had their breakout with Fruitvale Station and have continued to work together ever since.) But all that doesn’t mean the movie is good. The great Rotten Tomatoes score plus strong word of mouth, on the other hand, is a pretty good sign.
The Accountant 2 (April 25th)
Here’s the movie that truly got lost in the mix. More than any other. It just got swallowed up by all of the other action movies around it, and never really has a chance. Which is a real shame because the first Accountant movie was actually pretty good, and it’s nice that they made a sequel to it, starring both Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal, reprising their roles. This is a movie that really should have been released in August. I’ll never understand why studios are afraid to save things for that month, when there have been hits time and again (like Guardians of the Galaxy) which prove that audiences are still going to theaters at that time. It’s a month that is referred to as the dog days of summer, because it’s the end of the summer and people are tired, but it’s also generally an empty playing field at the theaters. So why not take advantage of that and release something like this at that time.
Havoc (April 25th)
A Netflix streaming movie that has just as much action and A-list star power as any of those others. Not to mention the director. Havoc might feel pretty familiar as a corrupt cops investigation movie, but in the hands of director Gareth Evans (the Raid movies,) it definitely rises above the others. Evans is one of the great action movie directors of our time. His choreography is seamless. It’s his movies and the John Wick movies as the best of our current time, and Wick even took inspiration from him, using his cast members for their third film. With Havoc, Evans has Tom Hardy in the lead role, and Hardy has certainly become a household name over the past decade with his Venom trilogy. It seems like ages ago that he could disappear into an indie movie like Locke and deliver his best performance yet. But with Havoc, this is the kind of thing that’s fun and gritty without being taken too seriously. The action is fantastic, even if the story is just okay.
Thunderbolts (May 2nd)
And that brings us to the start of the summer movie season. Literally the ad one day of May and we are into it with Thunderbolts, the first superhero movie of the summer. There will be two others, with Superman in June and the Fantastic Four in July. All nicely spaced out as if the studios got together and came up with a game plan of how not to step on each others toes and how to put distance in between their movies. It would have been nice if the studios releasing movies throughout the month of April had done the same thing.