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Health & Fitness

At the Movies: Action!

You know you like ridiculous explosions and even more ridiculous plots. That's why we're looking at action movies.

It's been a while, Patchlings. But never fear, I have returned.

Today we’re looking at a genre that’s often decried as simple or a guilty pleasure at best, stupid or offensive at worst: the action movie! Action movies are characterized by, well, action. There are fights and explosions galore, and the plot revolves around high-energy sequences and the characters are often the second priority. But that’s not always a bad thing. I mean, sometimes I just want to watch stuff blow up and not really have to have emotions. This is what action movies are for. They're fun, they're easy, and they have thrilling things happen. Which is exactly why many of them are derided as cheap.

They’re also often seen as dude movies, where one or a group of gun-toting, muscle-bound hyper-males deliver bullets and one-liners with equal aplomb, save the world from a bad guy (bonus points if the bad guy is topical and/or culturally offensive) and maybe gets a babe at the end to dangle off his giant arm. That still holds true for many, and young men are the target demographic of many a studio, but, happily, there are plenty of action movies that give equal badassery and characterization to the womenfolk. And, as you'll see, they’re also often characterized by catchy, one-word titles.

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Today's list will be short because action movies are surprisingly hard to pin down. Plus I'm tired.

  • Dredd, Pete Travis, 2012. I went into watching Dredd reluctantly, not thinking I was going to like it. I’d seen the 1995 Judge Dredd, starring the ever-unintelligible Sylvester Stallone, and expected much of the same. I was, however, pleasantly surprised by Dredd. The eponymous character, played by Karl Urban via a series of grimaces, is actually not really the main character. The movie actually focuses on Anderson, a rookie Judge whose routine first day becomes a fight for survival when she and Dredd, her mentor, are trapped in a mega-housing project by a ruthless drug lord called Mama. Anderson, played by Olivia Thirlby, develops from a shaky noob to a slightly less shaky full-fledged Judge, and she’s a great character. She’s relatable and has flaws, yet remains smart, strong and badass throughout the movie. Dredd, on the other hand, remains fairly static during the film, although in this case, I didn’t think it was a bad thing. Most action movies have a part where the human frailty of the otherwise ass-kicking hero is displayed, but Dredd doesn’t allow for that. You get the sense he has a personality outside of his job, but he maintains control, maybe for Anderson’s sake, and it works. He never even takes his helmet off. The other thing I liked was how the female characters were handled. Anderson’s female-ness is never exploited, and when a character attempts to exploit the fact that she’s a woman, she shuts him down. Hard. On the other side, Mama is also female (making her a drug lady?). A frail, scarred former sex worker, she’s at once repulsive in her ruthlessness and pitiful in her desperation. You get the sense that she was made, not born, bad. There’s a nice parallel between Mama and Anderson, both women trying to make their way in violent worlds, as well as between Mama and Dredd. The sense I got was that, had their situations been reversed, Mama would have been the Judge and Dredd would have been the drug lord. Even their names—the protectiveness of  “Mama” and the fearsomeness of “Dredd”—suggest that the two characters could have gone either way. Overall, I liked Dredd. I really did. I even liked how they used slow motion, which is normally something that makes me groan (I’m looking at you, 300). However, be advised that this movie really, really gets into the splatter and the gore and is emphatically not for children.
  • Haywire, Steven Soderbergh, 2011. Haywire is the story of a special agent Mallory Kane, played by MMA fighter Gina Carano who is double-crossed and must fight back to save herself and her father from the agency she used to work for, as well as exact revenge upon them. This movie is simple in terms of plot, characters, and events, but director Soderbergh knows what he’s working with and makes the best of it. Carano, honestly, isn’t a great actress, but she’s a great physical actress. Her fight sequences are a pleasure to watch, and her limitations when it comes to portraying emotion are never allowed to come through too much, as the film concentrates on her actions as a steely operative; Soderbergh knows how to use Carano to her, and the film’s, advantage. Like Dredd, Kane’s personal and emotional life is not really featured, and it’s for the better. She has loyalty to her loved ones, and she’s kind of one of the guys, too, trading banter and having casual sex. She’s also a nice change from the Bond-girl-esque action female; in a meeting with an agent in a high-end restaurant, she admits, rather charmingly, that she’s not very good at being glamorous (she looks really good in that evening dress, though). In addition, some of the gender roles are reversed. In many, the audience is supposed to identify with the male character while the female characters serve as seducers, prizes, or those to be protected. Here we’re identifying with Kane, and the male characters take the traditional female roles—the conquest, the sexy double-crosser, and the family member in danger. I’m not saying this is the most intelligent or though-provoking movie I’ve ever seen, but I liked it. It’s conscious enough of action movie traditions to turn a few of them on their heads, while not being so self-aware as to be annoying or overly ironic.
  • Skyfall, Sam Mendes, 2012. I’m just going to put this out there, with full understanding of the resulting outrage. I hate James Bond movies. I hate James Bond. James Bond is not a character, he’s a suit and a gun. My first experience with Bond was Tomorrow Never Dies, which rankled me, even at eleven. Some of the Connery Bond films were amusing in their unbridled camp (hello, Pussy Galore!), but that is, as far as I’m concerned, all they have going for them. That’s why when the franchise was rebooted with Casino Royale, I was suspicious. I saw neither Casino Royale nor Quantum of Solace, but I liked Skyfall. This was the first James Bond movie where I actually liked James Bond as a character. He’s actually a character, for one thing. This Bond is not quite the darling of MI6; rather, he comes off as sort of old and tired, and somewhat jaded about the whole secret agent thing. He’s not a playboy, either, and he’s not without emotion, but this does not undermine him. In fact it actually makes his Bond-feats all the more appreciable, because you get the feeling that it’s a person, not a robot in a suit, doing them. The plot features Javier Bardem as a former agent out for revenge, and so the plot is smaller and more personal than some of the other films. No world domination here. The movie actually takes pains to twist many of the classic James Bond traditions. It’s a quieter, more mature take on the franchise, though not without explosions and guns.

I like to watch action movies on a boring weekend night when I can stay up late and there's nothing else to do. They're fun to watch with friends, as the action sequences often elicit exclamations on the part of the audience. That's always fun to do with a group. And before you dismiss action movies as immature or silly, know that these kinds of films can have some interesting things happening. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to leap off a skyscraper and land on a helicopter whilst firing a rocket launcher. All in a day's work.

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