No film here is good or bad. It is only like something.

2007 · Thriller

A welder out hunting finds a case of cash beside several dead men and takes it, which brings a very patient killer after him. An ageing sheriff follows behind, always arriving late.

• HeavyStrongly heavy

2014 · Action

A retired hitman is pulled back in after some young men break into his house and take the one thing he had left. It runs on a strict underworld etiquette that the film never stops to justify.

• Plot-drivenStrongly plot-driven
• FastStrongly fast
• HeavyClearly heavy

2008 · Crime

Two Irish hitmen are sent to a picture-postcard Belgian town to lie low after a job, and one of them is bored out of his mind. They wait for a phone call.

• IntimateClearly intimate
• Character-drivenClearly character-driven

2010 · Action

A dozen samurai are quietly gathered to kill a lord whose cruelty the shogunate would rather not discuss, and they turn a whole village into a trap. The last three quarters of an hour is one long battle.

• Plot-drivenClearly plot-driven
• HeavyClearly heavy

2004 · Thriller

A Los Angeles cab driver picks up a smooth passenger who offers good money for a night of stops around the city, and the first stop goes badly. It is one night, mostly the two of them in the car.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2002 · Action

A nameless swordsman is brought before the king of Qin to explain how he killed the three assassins who had been hunting him, and tells it more than once. Each version gets its own color, and the fights are closer to dance than to brawling.

• EpicClearly epic

2023 · Comedy

A mild college professor moonlights for the police, posing as a contract killer in sting operations, and turns out to be very good at inventing a new man for each job. Then one of the women he is sent to trap likes the man he is playing.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2023 · Action

John Wick goes looking for a way out from under the crime syndicate that has put a price on his head, which means Osaka, Berlin and Paris. Nearly three hours long, and most of it is fighting.

• Plot-drivenStrongly plot-driven
• FastClearly fast
• EpicClearly epic

2003 · Action

A woman wakes from a coma and starts working through a list of the people who put her there, beginning in a suburban kitchen and ending in a Tokyo nightclub. Huge fights, chapters out of order.

• Plot-drivenStrongly plot-driven
• FastClearly fast

2012 · Science fiction

In a near future where the mob sends people back thirty years to be shot on arrival, a young hitman is sent a target he recognises. Fast to begin with, then it stops somewhere quiet for a long while.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2002 · Crime

An enforcer for an Illinois mob boss in 1931 takes to the road with his twelve-year-old son after a job goes wrong. Slow and quiet, and it tells you more with pictures than with dialogue.

• RealisticClearly realistic
• HeavyClearly heavy

2019 · Crime

A truck driver falls in with the Philadelphia mob and spends decades doing what he is told, including for a union boss the whole country knew. Three and a half hours, told by an old man looking back.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyClearly heavy

2023 · Thriller

An assassin waits in an empty Paris office for a target, and when the job goes wrong he sets about the people who sent him. Chapter by chapter, with his voice in your ear the whole way.

Sits near the middle on every axis.