Colombiana (Megaton, 2011)

Colombiana is a good action movie, but, looking over some of the reviews for it, I think David Edelstein - who doesn't like the movie - does a better job of describing it than most of the critics who did like it. For instance, Christy Lemire gave it a positive review and called it "sexy and silly": Zoe Saldana is sexy in the movie, but I don't think anything about the movie is silly (which is not to say that everything is presented with a completely straight face). This seems to me to be a distancing move of some sort on Lemire's part: a way to praise something while at the same time signalling she knows it's beneath her. Edelstein, on the other hand, called the movie "abstract and passionless" and wrote about Zoe Saldana's character being "too listless and strung-out and weirdly disembodied to make you feel much empathy" for her. I think Edelstein is mostly right - although I'd say "distanced" instead of "passionless" - but, for me, those are features, not bugs. By preventing the movie from working as simple escapism, they make the movie much more enjoyable: they make the movie something to engage with and not merely something to consume. It's a much more interesting experience than watching a straightforward action movie like Salt. (Edelstein is, at least, consistent in his preference for the conventional: he gave Salt a positive review.)

However, though I like Colombiana and think it's not really (or merely) a "fun", "simple" movie, I wouldn't call it "complex", either. The movie's structure, situation, and character are all fairly stock: what makes the movie distinctive is its texture - transitions where it zigs instead of zags or moments where an unexpected tone keeps me off balance. Two examples that stick out: the start of the first action sequence, when we realize that this little girl isn't going to be a victim (zigging instead of zagging) and a shot during the penultimate fight where Saldana, wielding dual submachine guns, wears a blank, hollow look (unexpected tone). There are similar moments in Besson and Kamen's Taken: the shock of Liam Neeson shooting his friend's wife and the narrowness of moral vision shown by his lack of concern for any of the other girls who have been kidnapped.

So, if complicated is the wrong word, what is the right one? "Textured" sounds too academic. "Rough" - as in, these are movies don't work smoothly, like "good" product should - is more descriptive, but might also imply that the technique of these movies is less than professional, which isn't the case. I'm open to suggestions. Other movies that are more "textured"/"rough" than they are complex: Larry Cohen's, Stallone's Rambo, Mario Bava's, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, and - raised to the level of world historical art - Sam Fuller's.

I think that's its worthwhile trying to theorize out this concept, if only because the language critics have to talk about these movies seems to hem them in. If I like movies like Colombiana or Taken, I might want to argue that they aren't just dumb, simple movies (as their critics might), so I reach for the opposite concept: for example, I might praise their complexity for the way they critique standard action movie tropes. But really, that's a bit of an overreach, as these movies don't so much offer a complicated critique those conventions as they put a spin on them that forces me to stay on my toes while I'm watching.

Screening Log: February 2009

Coraline (3D) (Henry Selick, 2009) ** - Selick gets just the right Roald Dahl-like balance between whimsy and nastiness, while downplaying the weaker elements from Gaiman's material. (For me, that's mainly Gaiman's Stephen King-like tendency to use hand-wavey mubo-jumbo to get himself out of the corners he's written himself into.) I liked the design quite a bit, although I'm not sure that the 3D added anything integral to the movie.

The House Bunny (Fred Wolf, 2008) (v) ** - A great performance from Anna Faris, some good performances from the supporting cast, not too much time wasted on the idiotic perfunctory romantic comedy subplot.

Crank (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, 2006) (v) * - Effective and entertaining as a cheap, nasty, gonzo exploitation movie. But there's a line between ironic commentary on a cultural phenomenon (in this case Grand Theft Auto-style rampaging male adolescent id video games) and an example of that phenomenon made by people who feel they need to cover their asses/hedge their bets.

The Abyss (James Cameron, 1989) (v) (r) *** - Kind of like Titanic: big, dopey, and despite the (at the time) cutting edge effects, very old fashioned. Watched (almost) back-to-back with Aliens, I am more-and-more convinced that the seeds of post-"Golden Age" action filmmaking (Michael Bay and Peter Greengrass) are here in Cameron's movies.

Aliens (James Cameron, 1986) (v) (r) *** - I'm not quite as impressed with this as I was when (a) I revisited Alien last year or (b) I've revisited other Camerons over the last few years. Lots of good stuff, of course, but a little bloated. As with T-2, there are scenes devoted to explicating the movie's themes that would have been better left out, because those themes - while powerful - aren't complex. Which is probably why I'd give John McTiernan's films from this period the edge: the themes there aren't necessarily any more complex, but they're worked out more fully within the boundaries of action/adventure.

Trafic (Jacques Tati, 1971) (v) (r) **** - It's not quite that self consciously artistic comic filmmaking is underrated in film buff circles as much as the necessary correction to the undervaluing of unselfconsciously artistic comic filmmaking that began several decades ago might have gone too far. Or (although this brings things close to the edge of meaninglessness) Keaton's gain in reputation often came at the expense of Chaplin's. But it's when watching a movie like Trafic that I become aware of what a self-conscious artist like Tati or Chaplin can do that someone like Keaton just really isn't interested in: provide along with a philosophical/temperamental take on the world and our place in it, an expansive and inclusive world view - a look at society, culture, etc. organized by a single, coherent sensibility.

The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) (v) (r) **** - Two random observations. (1) So much of the movie's scariness/creepiness is tied up in how Kubrick uses music (see also: There Will Be Blood). (2) Heath Ledger's Joker was so different from Jack Nicholson's Joker that no one seemed to notice that Ledger's Joker was actually Nicholson's Jack Torrance.

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) (v) (r) *** - This was the Original Theatrical Cut. I used to prefer this cut because I thought the voice-over tied it in nicely to the noir tradition. But really, despite references to The Big Sleep and Sunset Boulevard, this isn't much of a "classic" noir. It's something else - and the voice-over really does just get in the way. And I have to say that the final moment of the 1992 director's cut (the only other version I've seen at this point) - the elevator slamming shut - is (just about) infinitely better than the tacked on B.S. we have here.

Big City (Frank Borzage, 1937) (v) ***

Key:

(v) = Seen on home video (dvd, dvr, etc.).
(r) = Not my first viewing.
(s) = Short film.

Star system ("borrowed" from the Chicago Reader)

No stars = Not recommended
* = Redeeming feature(s)
** = Recommended
*** = Highly recommended
**** = "Masterpiece"
***** = A place in my personal pantheon

Action Movies, Part 3: Taxonomy!

Here's a brief history of the posts related to this conversation on action movies:

1: Movie Club discussion of T-2.

2: My first Gold Age of Action Movies post. Turned out to be the only one (the follow-up post on Speed remains half-written).

3: Sean's response is really worth reading. (That Speed post was supposed to address a lot of these concerns - honest!!! ;) )

4: Post on f/x and super-hero movies.

5: Sean's Bourne/Bond post and my response (check out the comments, too).

Which brings us (mostly) up to date... I'm going to use this post to regroup a bit and throw some more ideas out there.

I see two major trends in contempo American action cinema - two major branches on the family tree - and both are a response to the challenge of CGI-driven fx.

Branch 1: "Plastic Playsets and Comic Book Movies". These movies present stylized action in stylized worlds. The use of space in these movies tends to be expressionistic. There is an emphasis on self-contained settings and a decided lack of emphasis on creating the illusion of contiguous spaces.

(By which I mean: compare the opening of Speed - which goes to great lengths to show us the elevator shaft and exactly how the elevator shaft is connected to the rest of the building - or the entirety of Die Hard - where both the "geography" of the building and how the building fits into its surroundings are important - to the Matrix movies - where the major action scenes are set in places that are like closed-off levels of a video game (the rooftops, the hallway, the highway).)

This branch takes CGI and uses it to make movies more like comic books (once again, I'm following Bordwell), anime, and wuxia.

Major works include: The Matrix, the Star Wars prequels, Sin City, Kill Bill, 300, Beowulf, Speed Racer.

Minor works include: many videogame adaptations, 30 Days of Night.
Interesting outliers: Fight Club and Panic Room.

Branch 2: "Impact Impressionism". This is what I've been talking about in the Bourne/Bond post. There's a focus here on any number of techniques that read as "realistic" and are meant to give off a "you are there"-feeling. The illusion of spatial authenticity and integrity so important to "Golden Age" action movies takes a backseat to creating the illusion of integrity and authenticity of feeling. The videogame analogue here is the first-person shooter.*

Branch 1 uses CGI to create an intense fantasy experience, Branch 2 uses CGI (but tries to mask this use) to create an intense experience of realism.

Major works include: the Omaha beach sequence from Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Tony Scott movies, the Bourne Movies.

Minor works include: Mission: Impossible 3, Quantum of Solace.

Outliers (not fully action movies but indicative of the trend): Phone Booth, Tigerland, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later.

I tend to be more down, in general, on Branch 2 movies for a number of reasons.

One is that, as a practical matter, I think it leads to sloppier filmmaking, or, rather, it allows the filmmakers to get away with being sloppier than they otherwise might be.

Two is that - and this might be my crankiness getting in the way of my judgment - critics tend to talk about these movies in terms of greater realism, ignoring the fact that the realism is superficial. And that's partly the filmmakers fault, in that Greengrass, say, adapts the cinema verite style from his "non-fiction" movies when he's making the Bournes.

Related to this: I see the "Impressionistic" Style as part of a larger trend away from a kind of filmmaking where meaning lies in the shot and towards a kind of filmmaking where meaning lies more in the rhythms of the editing (see also: Michael Bay). I think that this is an interesting trend, but that talking about it in terms of realism obscures the issue.

That's also why I'm skeptical about observations like Tom Spurgeon's (from this comment thread):

Wasn't the fact that Bond was indistinguishable from his opponents in some of the fights in the second movie part of the point? His actions gain clarity as he gains moral clarity and is able to better distinguish himself against the people he's fighting.

The way the two films use the action to compare Bond to others -- including the woman in this latest film -- is the most interesting thing about the two movies.

It isn't just that I don't buy that theory in this specific case. After all, we can tell Bond and Mitchell apart just fine during the chase, but not when they get to the scaffolding - the part of the sequence that would be the most difficult to choreograph and edit for clarity. And, aside from the chase that happens at the opera, I don't think there's much that distinguishes the rest of the action sequences from those of many other contemporary action movies.

I do think these techniques can be used expressively. I think that 28 Days Later's final action works in the way that Tom is suggesting the Quantum scaffolding fight works.**

Three is that I can't shake the sense that in these kinds of movies the filmmakers are working extra hard to put something over on me. It comes off as frantic and desperate.

*Steve Sailer's point about No Country for Old Men is interesting here: he argues that the Coens figured out you have to slow things down to give a "real" FPS experience.

**I also think this is part of what Greengrass does in Ultimatum.

Punisher: War Zone

I thought there were a lot of great, little moments in Punisher: War Zone, but, for me, the best part was when I realized that they were essentially serving up a bat-shit, gonzo version of Tim Burton's Batman.

Like - Jigsaw's origin sequence. In Batman, it's an accident that Jack Napier falls into the vat of chemicals that start his transformation into the Joker. But Punisher drops Billy into the recycling machine - and turns it on - on purpose. (Blowback is one of the themes of the movie.*)

I don't think the movie ranks with the best Punisher stories from the comic books (the Ennis/Dillon "Welcome Back Frank", the Ennis/Robertson Born, the Ennis/Corben The End, the Grant/Zeck Return to Big Nothing, the best stories from Mike Baron's run), but I think it's a pretty good Punisher story and more faithful to the comics than the last Punisher movie**.

But I don't think there are many - any? - super-hero movies that manage to stand alongside their best super-hero comics counterparts. Even something as great as Tim Burton's Batman Returns pales next to Frank's The Dark Knight Returns. And no screen version of Superman has come anywhere close to Morrison's All-Star Superman or Moore's Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? let alone Siegel's "The Death of Superman". The Spider-Man movies are enjoyable, well-made action/adventure/fantasy movies, but the Ditko/Lee and Romita/Lee Spider-Man comics are among the greatest works of American popular art.

One of the reasons I balk at ideas like the ones Tucker proposes in this post is that super-hero movies already give us super-hero stories with all of the idiosyncrasies filed off.

*"Blowback" would be a good name for a Punisher villain.

**I like the last Punisher movie, too, but for different reasons. It a more of a standard, but well-done, action B-movie.

Action Movies, Part 2: Bond/Bourne

Some thoughts on the action sequences in Quantum of Solace inspired by this post from Sean (read it first):

1. The new Bond films - especially Quantum of Solace - are drawing from and responding to the Bourne movies - at least in terms of how they handle action sequences. The foot chase over the roofs in Sienna, which happens pretty early in Quantum, is a more cleanly (and conventionally) put together version of the rooftop chase in The Bourne Ultimatum, but, like the Bourne chase, it is edited and shot to emphasize - viscerally, impressionistically - the physical impact the action has on the pursuer and pursued.

2. Like the Bourne movies - especially the two directed by Paul Greengrass - the new Bonds have adopted a faux cinema verite camera style to give the action sequences a feeling of greater realism than a more conventional style would. Following David Bordwell, I'd argue that this "realism" is superficial and that these techniques - shaky, probing hand held camera work, with lots of reframing on the go - cover up the fact that the action is just as super-heroic and over-the-top as anything in a John McTiernan or James Cameron movie.

3. Speaking of James Cameron: the tremendous emphasis the impressionistic Bourne/Bond action places on visceral, physical impact comes at the expense of any kind of focus on exploring and navigating spaces. Compare the rooftop chases from Ultimatum and Quantum to the backyard foot chase in Point Break. In all three cases, the way the bodies move - the way they encounter and overcome the obstacles in their way (see Sean's point about the Bourne/Bond characters being physical geniuses) - is important. But in the Bourne and the Bond, those rooftops are reduced to being obstacles - the filmmakers aren't interested in conveying a sense of Tangier or Siena - while the chase in Point Break is as much concerned with taking us through a tour of a certain kind of Los Angeles geography.*

(The big exceptions from the Bourne movies are the kitchen fight scene from Supremacy - which really is about confined spaces - and the train station sequence from Ultimatum - which is more a suspense sequence than an action sequence, but I shouldn't split hairs.)

4. The Bond movies remain more conventional than Greengrass' Bournes in that they do not maintain the faux cinema verite style throughout the entire movie.** I would argue that this makes the Bourne movies more conceptually ambitious and accomplished, but also rather tiring. In fact, I got tired watching Ultimatum in the same way and for many of the same reason I got tired watching Michael Bay's Transformers. Bay and Greengrass have different reasons for getting to a place where the individual shot means less than the rhythms of a series of shots. In Transformers, this gives us special-effects that are happening too quickly for us to appreciate in any way. In The Bourne Ultimatum, this gives us action scenes where it's not important that we can parse what is happening or how it is happening, as long as we get that visceral sense of stuff is happening.

5. This leads to a sloppiness in the way the action scenes are put together in these movies. In Quantum, the battle between Bond and Mitchell on the scaffolding is impossible to parse in the conventional sense of being able to figure out who exactly is doing what to whom - i.e. it's shot and edited in such a way that you can't tell Bond and Mitchell apart at least until its over (Bond is the one who kills the other guy).***

Do we have to understand it? Not necessarily: we can still appreciate all the flailing around for the rhythms of movement and editing. But it seems to me that we've lost something important.

6. I'd argue that these impressionistic action sequences lack a sense of orchestration. Well, that's not quite true, but several kinds of "organizational patterns" that filmmakers can use and have traditionally used to orchestrate action sequences are thrown out the window in order to better focus on impact and rhythm. There's really nothing in these movies like the long sequence in Terminator 2 where we start off with a foot chase in a mall, it escalates into a car chase through the streets, and ends up in the L.A. river with the T-1000 in a Mack truck bearing down on Arnold. There's build in what Cameron is doing - a simultaneous ratcheting up of danger, scale, and pace, all the while getting the most out of his chosen locations. But in impressionistic sequences, everything is pitched at the same the level.

7. I think the Bourne and Bond movies are only, barely half-heartedly "abstract" in any meaningful and/or beautiful way. They don't go far enough. Their formal concerns are completely superficial: the more conventional "organizing patterns" they got rid of aren't replaced with anything, let alone the more rigorous action abstractions of Kinji Fukasaku's 1970s yakuza movies or Michael Mann's recent work.****

8. Actually, maybe that's the problem: the action sequences here are less than conventional. That is, they take the conventional "Golden Age" action sequence, throw out any concern for geography, pacing, and orchestration, and overuse all those "you are there" techniques that give off a visceral sense of impact. They are conventional scenes that are doing less, but they are doing less a lot harder (not to mention a lot louder).

9. I should mention that I do like these movies, even though I'm not blown away by the action sequences. I think Sean really gets at what makes these characters compelling and I'd have only good things to say about the acting. I also think these movies are interesting in terms of how they present the post-millennial secret agent.

10. And just so you know where I'm coming from, Rambo is my favorite action movie of the year, so far.

*In deference to Los Angeles Plays Itself, I'd be happy to amend this to something like "creates its own imaginary version of Los Angeles geography", but I'd add that this tends to be a different kind of L.A. than we're used to from the movies. I think Cameron's L.A. movies, in general, are pretty savvy about using the geography of L.A. in this way.

**Not that I expect many people to get this comparison, but Quantum of Solace : The Bourne Ultimatum :: Hot Rod : Napoleon Dynamite.

***See also: the car chase at the beginning of Quantum.

****I could also mention Akira Kurosawa and Seijin Suzuki.