This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Talking head style documentary about the action movie genre, emphasizing the 1980s and early 1990s. Genre fans might not learn a lot; the speakers are the highlight. Directors, producers, writers, actors, and even music composers are featured. Scott Adkins, Michael Jai White, and Al Leong fans will likely really enjoy it.

Highly recommended for fans of action films and Gen-Xers.

I mean, it’s more a glorified clip show than a documentary, but it’s fun and scratches the nostalgia itch.

 It’s kind of got ADHD in the way it jumps from topic to topic very quickly, but the collection of talking heads make things enjoyable. The standouts of those were Michael Jai White, Scott Adkins, Shane Black, and Paul Verhoeven. This really is more a doc for someone who wants an intro to the action genre since it’s very surface level.

Fun but kinda pointless. Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

So want to see this one and the art poster by Doug Hills is very good, though I prefer Micah Brooks's version instead

www.kickstarter.com/projects/2141699743/in-search-of-the-last-action-heroes

Great fun but feel they didn’t cover a lot of stuff which hopefully means they will do another one!

not much of a documentary despite it being 2.5 hours... but if you wanna watch 2.5 hours of vaguely structured interviews with people like Cynthia Rothrock, Sam Firstenberg or Scott Adkins you could do worse I suppose!

Oddly doesn't start to feel propulsive in any way until everyone starts talking about the death of the genre/rise of the mainstream actor as action star. Could have used some more structure - I mean, toss some title cards up to delineate the eras of action filmmaking, or something

but yeah, digestible in chunks and has a lot of people you want to see talking about these movies, so worth a look

This is a must-watch, if you - like me - grew up in the 80s, and you're a movie fan.

Standard talking heads documentary, but it's a fun look at 80s action films, cheese included.

As a documentary it mostly just features talking heads, it's overly long and it feels a bit all over the place, but as I grew up on these films I really didn't mind spending the time and visiting those places. Impressive line-up of industry veterans too, including some of the genre's greats. Loved Matthias Hues admitting he put his VHSs to the top of the shelf in videostores while moving those of Van Damme down :)

Enjoyable

NON FILMS SEEN IN 2021

Not as structured as the In Search of Darkness horror documentaries, this does seem to go off on tangents.
Thankfully that's one of my only issues with this as the talking heads are all people who were involved in the making of some of the best action films of all time and the film choices looks like my letterboxd diary of the 90s!
If you grew up on Arnie movies like I did then this is a must watch and might even give you a few films to add to your watchlist.

Mostly talking head but a true love letter to 80s and 90s action hero’s and is great to here how it went down from the point of view of the B list hero’s. It’s a shame all the real big hitters like Schwarzenegger, Stallone, JCVD and Lundgren weren’t involved but very informative none the less. 

Kudos to Oliver Harper, been a fan of his YouTube Retrospectives for a while. Used to be a Projectionist too so explains the deep love of movies.

Terrific documentary by youtuber Oliver Harper on the action films of the 1980s. Harper brings the same box of tricks he uses on his videos only perfects it.

I enjoyed In Search of Darkness because it gave me a couple new movies to check out and fawned over the ones I already love. This documentary, not so much. It basically skims the surface of the greats and has no real narrative. Like other reviewers, I liked the talking heads they got but this should only be watched if you like the action genre and even then it’s a bit of a stretch.

It's your average talking heads style documentary movie, and it does what it needs to do, covering the ground that it says it well, and mostly gets away with it despite an unoriginal and fairly tired setup.

I do wish, however, that there had been more focus on the actual evolution of the genre from early cinema to today. How did we get from the superhero exploits of Zorro, all the way back to the superhero exploits of Marvel? What part did the Western play? I wanted more of that stuff, really, but in truth this is just a celebration of 80s action movies wrapped up in an "in search of" premise.

Decent but disjointed doc charting the rise and rise of the 80s action film.  Some excellent insights from both sides of the camera but some obviously missing names and really sloppy on-screen caption typos leaves it feeling second hand.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist! Challenge 2021
30. Watch a documentary
============================================================
First Time Watches - 2021

I had a long day of studying and staying focused. I thought putting on Oliver Harper's documentary about action films would be great as background noise. He has a calming and friendly voice and was excited to listen to his movie. Sadly, it was just 140 minutes of interviews. No real narrative. Not even a progression of story telling. And no narration, but only the people in front of and behind the scenes of these great action flicks. Yeah, I was left disappointed.