Post a Comment On: Horrorthon

Oh my GOD, that was incredible. It's an Indian action movie about a renegade robot or cyborg played by a chunky Indian dude with a white skunk-streak in his hair. He has magnetic powers, or something, and this enables him to pull ridiculous stunts. Eventually there's an army of that guy and they mesh together to do crazy stuff, like a giant snake made out of guys with a guy tongue that sticks out and the guy on the end fires machine guns.

But they're GREAT. They're cheesy, cheaply done and too over the top, but the narrative of these action sequences in this make the Transformers movies look like the pile of poo they are. This is exactly what I'm talking about when I rant about good vs. bad action scenes; this is some real imagination and skillful execution at work here.

The reason they keep basing movies on comic books is that the best action comics pack a punch that action movies should aspire to any chance they get. Filmmakers get crazy about the costume, the origin story, the romantic B-roll, but what they really need to do is find the quicksilver charge at the core of your favorite moments of action -- that perfect blend of adrenalin and fun that keeps you coming back to your favorites.

I have a million examples, but for now I'll just mention the battle in the foyer from Matrix: Reloaded. I remember taking DCD to see this when she was 8 months pregnant. I wanted to make sure she saw it because new babies make it hard to see movies.

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Right here I remember her saying "Oh, that's beautiful." It loses something as a still but it was fun for me in that moment because I knew she was grooving on the exact same action bass beat that I was.

That I do, all the time, like when I watched that scene just now (the dvd chapter title is "Blade Leapers"), or when I throw in the dvd to watch the dogfight from The Cowboy Bebop Movie or the Racer X intro scene in Speed Racer.

You can do it this weekend. I know it took me almost two weeks to get to it, but please: set aside ten minutes and watch this crazy clip. If you're not convinced, chew on this: it's an Indian language clip with a voiceover translating it... in Russian.

Click on it!