‘The Fix’ is an action movie for the post-War on Terror world

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“The Fix” has everything you could ever ask for from a Hollywood action-thriller: good guys versus bad guys, small arms combat, explosions, and a brotherhood of special operators coming together for one last, high-stakes, do-or-die mission deep inside enemy territory that will have you tearing through a bucket of popcorn.

What it also shows is an entire genre of military action movies slowly transitioning away from the Global War on Terror to what might be Hollywood’s new “big bad” guy—Iran.

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Headed to theaters everywhere on Sept. 11, 2026, “The Fix” stars Zachary Levi (“Chuck”) as Tucker, the leader of a veteran team of operators and Liam Neeson (“Taken”) as his onetime covert handler, Larry. After a secret (but official) mission goes awry, Tucker gets the band back together for an equally secret, but less-than-official rescue mission into Iran. This time, the team won’t have the support of the United States military behind them.

Wes Chatham (“Sheriff Country”), Quincy Isaiah (“John Rambo”), Jake Choi (“Reunion”), and Augusto Aguilera (“The Predator”) round out the team of special operators. It also stars Titus Welliver (“Bosch: Legacy”) and Iranian-born actors Navid Negahban (“Homeland”) and Elnaaz Norouzi (“Kandahar”).

As every veteran knows, the plan rarely (if ever) survives contact with the enemy, so the team will have to pivot on their feet if anything comes up. This is a movie, so of course it does.

Hollywood’s New Bad Guy

Every era has its bad guy. During World War II, Hollywood’s so-called “Big Bad” was, of course, the Germans. For most of the rest of the 20th century, we lived through the Cold War, and the movies were right there with us. There was no bigger threat than the Soviet Union, which gave us classics like “The Hunt for Red October,” “Red Dawn,” and “Rocky IV.”

The Soviets were possibly the greatest movie bad guys of all time, and after the USSR fell, Hollywood struggled to find a replacement. After the September 11th attacks, America soon had two new wars from which to draw action movie stories. But the feelings that permeated movies like “The Hurt Locker,” “Lone Survivor,” and “American Sniper” were more about supporting the troops fighting wars that had somehow begun to feel unending and unwinnable.

the fix team — (Briarcliff Entertainment)

“The Fix” isn’t like that at all. This movie is Hollywood (literally and figuratively) showing a move from the melancholy pathos of the War on Terror to something new—and potentially filled with possibility.

What we universally love about action movies (especially war movies) is everywhere in “The Fix” family, brotherhood, secret squirrel plot twists, and shootouts—lots and lots of shootouts. It even has a heist into one of the most heavily-guarded places in Islamic Republic.

But viewers will walk away with a feeling that they didn’t normally get during the War on Terror: the idea that we can win, even if the real-world headlines aren’t as clear on that.

And isn’t that why we go to the movies?

“The Fix” is in theaters everywhere on Sept. 11, 2026.

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