The Action Movie

So, last weekend I watched the movie Safe House.  You know, the one with Denzel and Ryan Reynolds.  I did my homework before the movie and looked up its rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  Of course, the bar isn't necessarily raised high for action movies, so a 54% rating and a splattered tomato is the perfect sign of a decent action movie.

I want to say that an action movie at least in the 40% range or above I think is at least worth checking out, except for maybe The Expendables, that movie was just bad.  So, at 54% I took the risk.  It was a good risk . . . for 54% of the movie.

The movie started out quick.  The action scenes were crisp and the acting, video-game intense.  So, what happened after 54% of the movie passed by with vicious fury?  Well, I'll tell you what happened.  Have you ever played a video game and you got to that tricky level in which you wish you bought the strategy guide to aid you to the next level.  That level in which you just can't seem to get to the next, so you happen to face the same adversaries and baddies over and over again, until you are just running through the motions until the point where your character dies and you're throwing the remote for the hundredth time.  This is the same ill-fate that seems to befall most action movies.

It's a recycled gauntlet of torture . . . for the viewer.  And you wind up going through the motions with the actors as they carry you through one similar action scene after the other.  It wears on you.  You want to care for these characters, but you can't.  You want to root for them to live . . . but it's repetitiveness makes you wish there were commercials.

So, what is the action movie to do?  Simple.  Build your story with characters.  Not brutes with guns, who only know how to shoot a gun.  Give us real feeling.  Develop the protagonist.  Make them seem somewhat human at least.  An action scene is just an action scene if there is no heart.  But an action scene with characters that we can invest in . . . well,  that's movie magic.