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2019 action film with 18% Rotten Tomatoes audience rating becomes a worldwide Netflix hit

2019 action film with 18% Rotten Tomatoes audience rating becomes a worldwide Netflix hit

Summary

  • 2019
    The hard way
    which has an audience rating of 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, was released directly to VOD.
  • The film has now become a streaming hit, ranking 9th on Netflix’s weekly global charts for English-language films.
  • The film’s success could help increase the popularity of its stars Randy Couture and Michael Jai White.



The hard way has become a streaming hit on Netflix. The action film, which is about a soldier who gathers a few friends to avenge his brother’s death in Romania, was released straight to VOD in 2019 and went largely unnoticed. It didn’t even receive enough reviews to earn an official critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, although audiences were mostly negative towards the release, giving it an 18% rating at the time of writing. The film does, however, feature some notable names, including The consumables Star Randy Couture and Spawnby Michael Jai White.

Netflix has now calculated its global top 10 most-watched English-language films for the week of July 1-7. The hard way landed at number 9 in the charts thanks to 3.4 million viewers who amassed a total of 5.4 million viewing hours. The series has managed to land in the charts despite being stacked with a host of more recent Netflix originals that have become hits, including Trigger warning, A family affairAnd Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.



The stars of “The Hard Way” haven’t completely turned things around

Randy Couture followed the film with a major action flop

Michael Jai White points a gun at someone's head in

The lack of critical and commercial reception for The hard way in 2019 seems to be turning. This could be good news for the stars who have had a rather uneven career in the five years since the film’s first releaseThis includes White and Couture’s co-star Luke Goss, who has only appeared in two films since 2021, the sci-fi thriller Dean Cain Overwrite and the Christmas film by Joan Collins A Christmas wish.

Luke Goss is best known for his roles as Prince Nuada and Nomak in the Guillermo del Toro sequels.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
And
Blade II
respectively.


Couture has also struggled to maintain his position over the past five years. His biggest roles since 2019 have been on television, in episodes of the HBO series Baller and the now discontinued NCIS: Los Angeles. What should have been a triumphant return to his successful cinema franchise, 2023 Consumables 4proved to be a commercial flop, as it only grossed $51.1 million in cinemas worldwide, on a budget of $100 millionThis is more than $150 million below the gross revenue of the previous weakest part of the year in 2014. The Expendables 3.

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9 reasons why The Expendables 4 flopped at the box office despite a franchise history of $800 million

Expend4bles had a terrible opening weekend and didn’t even reach number one in the box office, but the fate of this fourth sequel was sealed.


Michael Jai White had more success after appearing in another recent Netflix hit, 2024’s One more tryin addition to roles in television projects Kingdom Business And The family business. The two leads of The hard way have upcoming projects that could be boosted by the Netflix success of the 2019 film and thus put on a stronger footing. These include the 2024 thriller Scream before you diewith White and Ron Perlman in the leading roles, and the film “Randy Couture – A Middle School Robbery” F Plus.

Source: Netflix