A man, a mission, a fiendishly clever bad guy, some guns and a few explosions. It's the classic recipe for a good action movie. Back in the 1980s, Shane Black became Hollywood's go-to screenwriter for that sort of stuff. He wrote Lethal Weapon when he was just 23 and went on to write scripts for Last Action Hero, The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight. As the forthcoming 12 Rounds bucks the recent summer blockbuster trend for self-indulgent CGI, aliens, superheroes and implausibly large-scale battles - to transport us back to a time when heroes would conquer villains with nothing more than courage, a revolver and a stock of sardonic one-liners - this is his masterclass of moves no action movie should be without.
1. An action-driven plot
That sounds obvious but I see a lot of movies these days that have a bunch of scenes that concern the plot and a bunch of separate scenes that feature the action. But you could lift all the action scenes out wholesale and it would make no difference to the meaning of the film. The action should always go hand in hand with the story so it's all invisibly interconnected. Take the original Star Wars movies: every action sequence is perfectly timed and is designed not just to excite the audience on a visceral level but also to reveal crucial elements of the plot and characters.
2. Highs and lows
An action movie should, like any other, follow the narrative traditions of literature. That means there should be subtlety, a slow build and a gradual bringing together of all the separate threads of the plot. To see all of it coming together slowly is very rewarding for the audience. But if you make everything go at 100 miles per hour from the outset, it loses any impact or meaning. I mean, if a flying truck lands on the bonnet of your car, it should be shocking and scary. But if stuff like that is happening constantly throughout the film, it becomes mundane. An action film can have too much action; picture an equaliser on a stereo, with all the knobs pegged at 10. It becomes a cacophony and is, ultimately, quite boring. Now picture the high-low variations in a film such as Jaws. The lulls, the high points: it's essentially a well-choreographed dance with the viewer.
3. Sudden impact
I have a friend who is a paramedic. Recently he told me about finding a guy who had fallen off a ledge over a freeway and died instantly. The guy had been skipping along with a friend, telling her about a party he was going to, hopped on to a ledge and a second later he was gone. That's how moments of drama unfold in real life. Quickly, spontaneously and with no warning. That's how they should be in action films, too. Violence and action should suddenly punctuate perfectly normal circumstances. Take the moment when the house explodes in Lethal Weapon: these two guys, who we've already established are a pair of plodding cops, wander up to the building and suddenly, boom! The explosion was immense but it was the only thing of that scale in the entire movie. It was supposed to be shocking and wild and sudden. You could see the protagonists were scared by it. Often, those moments are just stretched out for too long, like in Die Another Day: Bond is driving around on this ice sheet and his car flips on its roof. He pops the ejector seat to make the car flip back on to its wheels and the audience gasp. Now, if he'd quickly fired his rockets and nailed the bad guy it would have been the perfect end to the sequence and the audience would have applauded. But instead they stretched the sequence out for another 10 minutes and it just got dull.
4. Throwaway gags
I always have humour in my action movies. I think characters that make jokes under fire are more real. It somehow helps put you in their shoes. But only if the jokes are conversational and not stupid. I think in recent times people have gone overboard with a certain type of Jerry Lewis style. But I used to love older movies where the jokes were more throwaway: that effortless riffing that Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy did so well in 48 Hrs - remember when they're trailing a suspect and Eddie says: "For a cop you're pretty stupid, man. You're driving too close." And Nick says: "Yeah, well, most cops are pretty stupid, but seeing as you landed in jail what does that make you?" Real people in real situations don't stop and wait for their gags to be registered and applauded. They just chuck them out as they go along.
5. Subjective action
I try to make all the action in my movies subjective; to give a sense of what it would feel like to actually be a part of it. You might see a person disappear in the shadows and then a shot come out of nowhere. A great example of this style is the shootout scene in No Country For Old Men. You're in the protagonist's shoes. What surprises him surprises you. Another example, probably the best ever, is the shootout in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. You don't remember specific beats - just the crash of guns, the headlong suicide run, the crescendo and out. It builds perfectly and really creates a harrowing atmosphere.
>> To read the rest of the article at THE GUARDIAN click here
