ThisFilmIsOn

This weekend sees the release of action spectacular The Expendables. Truth be told it’s a more than adequate, enjoyable, fun, balls to the wall action movie. But nestling in that, rather high praise for Sly and co’s latest, is a derogatory word. Movie. Not film, movie. Action has been, and always will be, placed into the bracket of ‘movie-dom’ by people, well, people like me. Yet there are examples of pulse-racing, sweat producing, explosion-exploding films that have every right to be put on a par with their dramatic counterparts.

Debates of what constitute a ‘film’ rather than a ‘movie’ (basically anything that a pretentious wanker like me can stroke their oversized beard too) and action (over 13% of the running time must feature gunny bits, stabby bits or explodey bits) could run for days but instead let’s just got on with the list that in no way denigrates the awesomeness of Die Hard, Terminator, The Bourne Films, Indy, etc. These are just my pick of action films with a little more…

Action with a little more…Originality
Seven Samurai (1954)
Everybody steals from everybody, that’s Hollywood. To prove my point that line is stolen from Swingers. They probably stole it from someone else. To say that Akira Kurosawa was the sole source of all originality would be a big fat lie, but when it came to painting the blueprint for action his hands were awash with the same colour as my naughty mind. Huge amounts of Kurosawa could be included in this list (Hidden Fortress, Ran, Throne of Blood) but if one needs to be picked then it’s the MacDaddy of all action films, Seven Samurai. Not only has it been directly remade over seven times, most famously as The Magnificent Seven, but it’s also been massively influential to everything from Star Wars to A Bug’s Life.

Action with a little more…Beauty
Hard Boiled (1992)
Anybody who sits watching Strictly Come Dancing every Saturday banging on about how beautiful the twirls are should be forced, preferably at twin-gunpont, to watch John Woo’s Hard Boiled. Proof if proof were needed that violence can be as gorgeous as a sunset bathed in kittens. The choreography on display in such set pieces as the Hospital Shoot-out (see below) don’t require my bland descriptions. In any case action speaks louder than words.

Action with a little more…Heart
Leon (1994)
Dancing perilously close to missing out on the list due to it only having 12.7% action, I’m gonna round the figure up to an even 13% thus cementing Leon as the action film with the most heart. I’ve done this for many reasons but the main one is, Leon is the film that got me into film. It’s funny, it’s dramatic, it’s stylish, it’s cool, it’s even dare I say it, incredibly romantic. The Nabakov-lite relationship between Jean Reno’s 40 year-old hitman and Natalie Portman, his 12 year-old neighbour, is purposefully uncomfortable but also touchingly poignant. As director Luc Besson said at the time, “I was interested in talking about pure love. Society today confuses love and sex…that is why I chose to talk about two twelve-year-olds, even though one of them is 40″.

Action with a little more…Brain
Inception
For many reasons I feel slightly discombobulated adding Inception to this list. Firstly it’s only been out a few weeks and any ‘list’ compiled by anyone, anywhere, will feel my wrath for including anything on it post The Spice Girls. Even lists of who’s your favourite Spice Girl. I’m sure this inclusion will also warrant more “Get your head out of Nolan’s arse” feedback but quite simply for ‘Action with a Brain’, Inception takes the prize. You could easily argue the genre more fitting for the mind-bending epic is Sci-Fi but from the off Inception plays like a Bond film with an I added to the Q. As great as the action is, and as great a mindfuck as the story is, it’s the two together that make Inception so fundamentally awesome.

Debate away below. And as well as the usual healthy doses of undiluted love and vitriolic hate let’s all come together to try and figure out “The Action Film with a little more…Humour”. Because I couldn’t.