about myself as I approach middle age is that I like to watch actors older than me pretending to beat people up. Which makes this a great time to (still) be alive, because that’s exactly what many of the best American action films of the past few years have been about: a man of a certain age who, when pushed to the limit, reveals the capacity to brutally mow down sneering younger antagonists who’ve underestimated him. Give me a seemingly mild-mannered older protagonist who can answer a question like “What are gonna do about it, ?” by grimly demonstrating everything he learned in Special Forces or the employ of the Belarusian mafia, and I’ll give you at least four stars on Letterboxd. Liam Neeson’s career-transforming 2008 revenge picture, and its two sequels are the modern template for this subgenre, along with 2011’s a perfect movie about the star of strapping broken bottles to his knuckles to fight a pack of wolves. But since then, everybody’s gotten into the act, from elder action icons like Jackie Chan and Jean-Claude Van Damme to Jeff Bridges (on TV’s ) and Bob Odenkirk (in 2021’s ). Even Denzel Washington has starred in a couple, and will do it again, at 68, in this fall’s .
