JOHAN FALK-SERIES- PART 6: NATIONAL TARGET

There is a lot of stuff going on in this film or the series as a whole. But if I would have gone into that, this blog post would have been even longer. I may write a different post  delving more deeply into the relationships and the different goingons one of these days. But for now, let´s stick to some stuff which I think is worth mentioning. It took more space than I expected.  I need to focus my mind. But there is an awful lot I skip through.I want to write about every single aspect, but the text would have been completely scattershot and unfocused if I discussed everything.

Previously on Johan Falk:

Civilian undercover informant Frank Wagner is forced to to take extreme masures in order to makes  his cover intact as a gangster within the organization of Seth Rydell ( Jens Hultén from Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation). Now Frank most definitely does not want to continue working for the GSI taskforce.

Plot talking:

A Mr K whose identity is still unknown is responsible for the drug trafficking  (probably among other sleazy things) to Sweden from Estonia. GSI is on his tail. But looses the trail. Not only does that rhyme, but it also means that GSI is in desperate need of superinfiltrator extraordinarire  Frank Wagner, despite him wanting to get out  (yet again). 

The promises that GSI has given to Wagner becomes more difficult to live up to as they are so dependant on his information. But he agrees to help, but this time he gets more emotionally involved, as his pregnant girlfriend by pure accident oversees him talking to a go-between to Mr K. The gangsters beat her up and as a result she gets hospitalized and loses the child in the process which makes Wagner furious. This is all unbeknownst to Johan Falk as the case proceeds. This builds some tension as it drives Wagner to become more vengeful and in the process threatens to blow the case and for GSI to lose the trail to Mr K once again.

More stuff to talk about:

Falk does not get to do a lot of action himself in this film. He does however gets arrested by the German police after tracking Wagner to a meeting with the Estonian mob boss in Stuttgart. It is Wagner who is the active actionpart in this flm. Gets into fistfights and foot chases and in the end gets revenge by killing Mr K. Falk is confronted with a situation in which he needs to bend the law in a pretty extreme way, by hiding evidence to let Wagner off the hook.

In your typical cop movie "super cop" Falk would have won the day, but what has actually being won by killing a high ranking leader in what will be revealed as part of a much larger organization? What information could have been gained from him which would actually lead to building a case and perform proper police work? Who knows. From a movie point of view, the bad guy dies, the movie ends and that is it. 

But what is great about the larger story that is being told here are”what are the consequences in the long run”. The story just does not end with the one guy get ting shot and killed.  It seldom does in real life. 

Scenes to jibber jabber about:

The scene which sets Wagners action in place is a very good one, but also pretty scary. After visiting his girlfriend Marie ( Ruth Vegas- Fernandez) and having an argument ( she does not like him still doing stuff for GSI) , he is confronted in the parking garage by a representative of the Estonian mob and his goon and suddenly a cell phone is ringing from a far. Wagner and the Estonians separates,  goes their own way and Wagner gets ready to get in his car and drive away when he overhears a violent conversation. This is shown entirely from Wagners point of view. As an audience member we know Marie has entered the parking garage, that she stumbled upon their meeting  and  that it was her cellphone that just happend to start ringing.

We now follow Wagners point of view as he moves to the location of the Estonians and him trying to find out what is going on. We follow him to the point in which he sees poor Marie beaten on the floor and his reaction.

It´s pretty effective use of point of view, I feel. We know, but Frank do not yet.  He might suspect however.  And we share his dread as we know and he slowly finds out. The guy threatens to kill her and her family, unbeknownst to him that Wagner is her family. Standing right there. This made me think of Death Wish and similar revenge movies. Usually  the protagonist seeks revenge for he is not there of the brutal act. The man is missing, not protecting his family for whatever reason, because if he was there you would not have a movie, he would have killed the bad guys right there and then. The End. Here Wagner must control his emotions in order to do what he needs to do. Even if it is his girlfriend lying there.  It is a fucked up situation to be in and the situation wouldn´t have occurred if he had refused to help GSI.

The following scene is also powerful. Marie lies in hospital and Frank is standing outside down below talking to her through the cell phone. Here we see visually the momentary distance Wagner has to his girlfriend but at the same time they are near and intimate with each other.

She is there in the distance, we as an audience lies closer to Frank and perhaps feels his momentarily disconnect as he needs to do what he has to do. 

I have never lost a child and don´t know what it is like. I have heard that couples can break up or disconnect with each other after losing a baby.  Maybe this is some kind of visual clue to their emotional state, I don´t know. I am probably full of shit. I have a bachelor degree in film. I do this kind of shit. Speculate wildly. This is not exact science.

But I think I made a case why this sets the film up in a great way. We feel for Frank now. As I have previously stated; killing  the guy may jeopardize the whole case. A neat twist on the revenge aspect which usually is handled in a more populistic and sensationalistic way in action films.  Here there may be consequences for taking revenge.

Although I wouldn´t mind seeing Joel Kinnaman starring in a Death Wish remake.

Next time on Johan Falk-series: Part 6: We see the return of familiar faces from Zero Tolerance. Are Johan Falk and  Leo Gaut really going to put their differences aside? Who the hell knows? Except people who´ve seen the movie, I guess.

JOHAN FALK -SERIES: PART 5; VAPENBRÖDER (BROTHERS IN ARMS)

Warning: this text is full of words.

Previously on Johan Falk:

GSI is an organisation that officially is being labelled a taskforce " spearheading" the war against crime.   Johan Falk comes back to Gothenburg after some years working a deskjob in Brussels. ( Luckily the filmmakers decided not to show  any of this as Falk is a man of action, not man of paperwork. ) As the type of cop who likes to see actual results being done, he seem to have found the right place to do some real police work.

It doesn´t take long before Falk realizes  that GSI operates  without the transparency that police organizations are bound to do.  And when he meet  civilian undercover informer Frank Wagner he gets confronted with some hard truths about the way GSI work.

Now:

In the next installment of the Johan Falk-saga suspicions are rising within the criminal organisation Frank Wagner (Joel Kinnaman from RoboCop, The Killing) is infiltrating.. There might be a snitch. And when push comes to shove Frank Wagner crosses a very dangerous line in how far he has to go to  keep his cover intact.

Wagner wishes to get out of this assignment and is hoping the police fulfills their part of the deal and gives him a new identity after doing this one thing.

The plot is about an arms deal , Wagner is a go-between guy in the deal and alert GSI by producing a list of contents of the type of guns that  some dudes wants to buy. This does not bode well as AK-47s and grenade launchers and all sorts of shit is on it. Military weaponry needed for unknown purposes. GSI needs to stop whoever  is buying because it might be for gang warfare.

The bad guys Christmas list. They seem to be up for very very naughty things.

"Time for positive thinking .At least there is not a nuke on that ..."

Plot talking:

That does not sound all that terrifying after all the nuclear wars Jack Bauer has prevented in 24, in which the stakes are much higher. But those types of high concept  plots might look a bit silly, as Swedish movies are restrained to more modest budgets to match the concept. It is also a bit tiring with each concept getting even more  ludicrous than the next in trying to outmatch each other.  That arms cache in this movie would have been shitstain on a  larger pile of shits in an American action movie where we are used to see bigger and more powerful armory. But I like it that they don´t try to emulate american excesses and weapon pornography in the same kind of way. The Falk movies have always felt more mature in that aspect.

It is from a more grounded standpoint, however, a very dangerous situation. All those guns loose and someone is intending to use them. Shit. GSI need to find them before they find out the hard way.

I can dig that type of restrained concept as it makes it a bit more believable.  But the real deal is what happens to the characters after the events rather and the larger themes of these movies that are being played out.  Wagners precarious situation as he is doing illegal stuff unofficially as his status as infiltator is not legal, but also the way GSI is handling the situation and how they operate  bending the rules and protocols as they seem fit for the work,

So shit can get seriously real if GSI can´t find the guns before it is too late.

The plot  clearly indicates why these films are so poorly labeled as crime drama, as the narratives are less on "whodunnit?"- mysteries than on a deadline-esque  narrative as all action films are based around. Something needs to be prevented before it is too late. Not figuring out why a  crime has happened and by whom. Johan Falk  are action films, not detective films. But the Falk-series are usually being marketed in the same categories as the Beck and Wallander series as part of a bigger trend of Nordic Noir, which I don´t agree with. However there is more stuff going on than pure deadline plots.

Wagner is reluctant to help as he wants to leave, so that plot point is further developed in the discussions between Falk and Wagner. He has a family he wants to protect, he wants to have an ordinary life with them without looking over his shoulder at the same time as the GSI are too heavily depended on his informations and they can´t afford losing such a valuable source of information. Without him, they would have little knowledge of what goes on in the criminal underworld, which is proved by the information of the arms deal of which the police would be unaware off without Wagner.

Also, other stuff is going on.

Morally grey areas and undemocratic police work?

What is also going on is Falk questioning the tactics of the GSI. Especially lack of  due process and public insight into the clandestine operations of the organization. In order to get the results that are demanded,  GSI operates in murky areas and in a lot of ways illegal as they skip the procedural protocols that are vital for a police organization in a democratic society.

This is something that will end up being probably the single most interesting aspect of the series. Usually in American action films it is the rogue lone vigilante cop that gets justice done, rather than an effective crime fighting organization. In American films such as Dirty Harry there is more trust in the individual than the state in action films, to actually do things that work. which might be seen as an expression of american values in the belief in the strength of an individuals potential to make a difference. Or whatever.

(But I fucking love Dirty Harry as well.)

More jibber jabber:

Here those same  attitudes have devastating effects in the long run, which makes these action films something of a rare thing; a defense of democracy as it highly questions the effectiveness of such policework will have in the long run. Sure, quick results, as it is demanded by "higher ups" and media might seem good, effective police work. But when that same good, effective work  get some scrutiny, it starts to fall apart. But the reason GSI exists might be a symptom of that same mentality of quick headline fix of the higher ups.The pressure that is being put on lower level police to actually "do" things that they can easily present to the masses, rather than building cases, which  with proper legal proceduarls takes much more time. So, why not smooth out a few bums on the road to make life easier for everyone? The complex police work makes not perhaps for highly digestable news

I don´t have access to how the police operates, but these are some conjectures and thoughts I have been developing after watching these films several times.

Falk and  Patrik Agrell ( chief of GSI)  have a heated agrument regarding this. It is interesting that same lone vigilante cop ends up  being the one that question  the system. but then there is a very interesting scene in which a lower level officer enters the room and Falk quickly talks vaguely about what they  should be doing and how to proceed. "Sit on the information and wait"  Agrell says afterwards: "You´re startng to think like us now" and smirks.

That kind of behavior, to shut off information to the regular police officers,  becomes problems at times later on, as they unknowingly disrupt an entrapment, precisely as they have not been informed on GSIs operations.  Not always smooth sailing on the sea of illegal police activity, is there?

Thinking about this also raises the question why someone like Johan Falk, known for his reckless one man, non-transparancy activities, to be uneasy of GSIs collective non- transparancy  activities.  I mean he did police work without notifying anyone before. And did it oftentimes outside the law. How come he questions it now?

Falk seem to function as  the series moral voice that questions how this actually can be  approved on an institutional level, What he used to do was an act of a very stubborn individual with  TVS (tunnel vision syndrome) and was never considered tolerated behaviour. Like this is. Those were extreme circumstances he was dealing under. This is ordinary police work done  day-to-day without transparency. A different type of critique to police organizations from what we have learned from Dirty Harry.

But luckily we have some shooting too.

" Transparancy is fine, but I´ve had enough pf pushing papers!
Time to shoot someone! "

"Oww...."

There is just so much stuff to talk about that I have to stop myself here. There are plenty of  Johan Falk-action left to elaborate further.

Next time on Johan Falk:series Part 6: National Target: Falk gets arrested in Germany and other GSI shenanigans. And Russians!

THIS STUFF WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT THE FILM NICE GUYS, BUT WENT STRAIGHT TO HELL INSTEAD!

This was going to be a post about Shane Blacks newest film Nice Guys starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling. But it´s not. It made me think about Blacks first picture he wrote, The all-time classic Lethal Weapon ( directed by Richard Donner)´ His original idea was as a sort of deconstruction of Dirty Harry where the same type of character, the cop on the edge were a lot more psychologically scarred from the death of his wife . In  Dirty Harry, the death of Harry´s wife is just treated as something .....that happened. Harry seem pretty callous about it, Shut off. Like a real man should deal with it. Or the traditional way a man handles his emotions. Locking it up. Taking it like a man!

But then came the 80´s and men were supposed to be more in touch with their emotionals and their feels and all that shit and wear pink shirts all the time.  In fact there is a scene in Lethal Weapon that sums it up:

Sergeant McCaskey: You know, Roger, you are way behind the times. The guys of the 80s aren't tough. They are sensitive people. Show a little emotion to a woman and shit like that. I think I'm an '80s man...

Roger Murtaugh: How do you figure?

Sergeant McCaskey: Last night I cried in bed. So how is that?

Roger Murtaugh: Were you with a woman?

Sergeant McCaskey: I was alone. Why do you think I cried?

Roger Murtaugh: Sounds like an '80s man to me...

Martin Riggs is the new 80´s man. Burned out, alone, suicidal and more intense than any action hero at the time. Because a normal human being can´t just shut off the death of a loved one. Even if he is a real man! He needs a hug and good cry. There is no hugging in this one, but there is a great intense scene in which Riggs come close killing himself in his trailer, alone on Christmas Eve.

Which may be the reason it was so successful. Oh, shit! here is a macho guy who shows his emotions in an unusually raw way. What the hell is this all of a sudden? And then John McClane came along in Die Hard and followed that trend. A few years back Michael Biehn from The Terminator also allowed himself to be vulnerable in some tender moments with Sarah Connor. And not to mention when he is blown to bits, leaving the female character in charge. There are plenty of examples.

But, wait? Weren´t the 80´s extremely macho? Well, yes in a way.  Whenever there is a dominating discourse, it is usually ounterparted with a reaction towards it. At least it is something I have read somewhere. And it is called counter culture. As an example,  here in Europe you  could argue that the multicultural discourse has been countered with an increasing right wing extremism. Not everyone is happy about it.

So the demands of men behaving sensitive is countered with this ridiculously macho-as-hell movies of the 80´s. Or maybe the sensitivity was a reaction towards it, I don´t know. What is clear is that we can see contrasting ideals among male heroes in the 80´s.   I mean, stuff like Commando, Cobra,Action Jackson, Predator, not to mention the the Rambo-films has this´absurd, invincible ubermensch alpha male in the lead.

What was a counter reaction to what is for better men than me to observe. Or maybe I should read more, so I can learn shit? Whatever...

I am not a scholar on this, but I do believe that it is hard to define eras out of one particular line of thinking. There are alwasy discrepancies and disagreements from various cultural groups with different thinking. But it is always interesting to discover these contradictions and cultural disagreements in popular culture.

Any way? Lethal Weapon? Great fucking movie,

OH NO,ELMORE! WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU? PART 2 KILLSHOT: A SHOT IN THE DARK

A  visual  intepretation of the movie I saw. Don´t expect more

Killshot is one of my favourite books by Elmore Leonard. But when I saw the movie adaptation, it made me question how I could love such a basic plot. Again like in Part 1 it all comes down to how the filmmakers adapt the work. Admittedly, there were some really good ideas in Stick.  I liked how visual the bad guys were. Here there are absolutely none. All the scenarios are  exactly as I envisioned them in the book. Even the places! Places I´ve never even been to! What kind of bullshit is that?

The version I read and which I loved so much

The novel has a straight forward plot, but the characters richness support it to such an extent so you forget about it. In fact, I used to like how basic it was. there were no unnecessary bull. Just a fast forward moving thriller. A forgotten art, when most thrillers are so muddled with subplots and characters it makes it all the more refreshening when an author like Elmore Leonard has the balls and go ahead and write something that is so uncompromising. Mr Majestyk is another book like that. But that was based on Leonards screenplay to the Charles Bronson vehicle. And a great film it was.


A couple played by Diane Lane and Thomas Jane gets mixed up in a scheme by accident and gets targeted for termination by a half-seminaole professional hitman, Blackbird and his associate the twitchy psychotic Ritchie. The federal agents put the couple in witness protection but the bandits find a way to lure them out.

That is the plot. As basic as basic grammar. It sounds shit.  But the novel is so much fun to read. None of that is represented well here.

This was a troubled production, as well, from what I have heard. And the nicest thing I can say is that everyone seem to have been extreme professionals in going out of their way to at least making the film not look like complete dogshit. And I give the film that. Everyone seems to be a professional about the project. None of it looks bad. the acting is solid, the directing is solid, the cinematography, of which I m not a fan of, is at least solid.. And the pacing of it makes it work. It is a solid piece of filmmaking that works. But it lacks any kind of soul or personality of it. It is not a fun watch. It makes me continue my habit of hard drinking.

I
Apparantly this is an indjun:

A....seminal Rourke...? (urgh)

His dipshit companion looks like this:

"Yahoooo!"

The couple look like Superman´s mom and The Punisher. That is all you need to know.  I´m not gonna bother. You know why,assholes? Because the couple in the book was not depressing, they were somewhat likeable. Apparently the studio felt, that problematic couple sells. I think we know the answer to that. People do not watch movies to see their own troubles.


It makes me sad writing about this film. It is such a dire work..  It is really nothing wrong about it per se. The  only thing it does different is complicating the relatonship between the couple by making them  struggle.  In the book they were a happy couple. Here it is more of a married couple trying to make up their differences. But it makes it even more depressing. Because now the story has no fucking purpose because of it! Jesus Christ,dudes!Did you not read the novel? The couple was a fun one. they are not fun anymore. Why would you care about then anymore?

This is such a depressing movie, you´d better off reading the book. Read Killshot by Elmore Leonard and your life will blossom.like a spring flower. Watch the film adaptation and yout flowers will die.

Next time on How to fuck up an Elmore Adaptations:?

OH NO,ELMORE! WHAT DID THEY DO TO YOU? PART 1: STICK TO THE BOOK

 This is going to be a non-chronological ongoing series of failed Elmore Leonard adaptations.  Hopefully not in any way ranting, but looking at them and why they don´t really work as films  or if they have somethng that speaks for them.

Elmore Leonard, master of crime fiction passed away on August 201th 2013. He left a legacy of higly entertaining pulpy crime novels  and western stories for the rest of us to enjoy and hopefully pass on to new generations of readers of bad ass literature. A lot of his work has been adapted into television series and movies. Most notably Justified, (based on the Fire in the hole short story), Get shorty, Out of Sight and Jackie Brown ( originally titled Rum Punch).

There has been hit and misses among them. The biggest mistake has always been failing at capturing Leonards language and transfrom it visually. Sure the amazing dialogue is easy enough, but the tone in his command of the language, the dry humour has always been a big part of why his books are so enjoyable. Since the 70´s he gave up on western stories as they were not profitable anymore and tackled crime fiction instead, Inspired by George V Higgins The friends of Eddie Coyle Leonard started to write about the criminal underworld and the people who dwells there.

But not people who are emotionally scarred or carries the weight of the world on their shoulder. I think we have enough of those selfaware pyschologically crippled characters in crime fiction. He writes about dangerous people, that you actually like to hang with. Often, very stupid people who don´t know they are, but you wouldn´t want to meet them in real life. They are fleshed out, flawed, but not depressingly flawed. They feel human and you often find yourself laughing with them or at them. The books are usually highly character driven pieces in which there are long scenes of characters shooting the shit with each other. Something I belived influence Quentin tarantinos early works.

The plot of Stick concerns excon ernest Stickley jr who just got out of the slammer and is hanging out in Miami with  two-bit criminal  Rainy. He agrees to follow Rainy to deliver some money to some highly dubious individuals. Shit goes bad. Rainy gets killed and Stick  escapes. Now he has basically no where to go, but his streetsmart skills help him out even though as things gettng more complicated as the people who shot his friend want him dead. Normal people would have fled Miami, but not Stick. He sticks around and find himself in a position to make some hustling.

The plot seems like straight out of a Parker-novel. especially The Hunted ( also adapted several times), but with more hustling and scheming.

When Burt Reynolds decide to adapt Stick and star in it,, which is a very enjoyable piece of material , he got to be careful. The main character Ernest Stickly Jr, known as Stick; ex-con, finds himself almost directly in harms way being hunted by homocidal psychos and drugdealers. The great thing about the book is how Sick handles himself. He is at first so out of his league dealing with cuban drug dealers that it makes him likeable. In terms of smart, he is streetwise, but not very wise at all. It´s fun to follow him negotiating the quirky characters of rich hustlers in 1980´s Miami and how he comes out of it.

The problem with this film is Reynolds himself. He plays Stick as your prototypical all-knowing macho-as-hell manly man, which is not who Stick is. Not only that, the studio forced Reynolds to re-shoot parts of the movie, which is evident as the last part of the film makes little sense. Not only the bad deviations from the novel halfways, but the forced shoot em up- finale which is nowhere to be seen in the book- A poor attempt of making the film more commercial. [We here at the Explodable World of Action believe in dumb action . And encourage it whenever we see it. Unless the source material is badass in itself. And does not require meddling studio executive jerkoffs.] Add to that some  really awkward scenes in which it is obvious that the studio wanted more of the goofy Reynolds as seen in Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Banddit, rather than the Sharkys´Machine Reynolds.

But as a result it feels half-assed. It starts off pretty good. And some of the more colourful villains of the book has been recreated for memorable, although cheesy, effect.

Here is Moke, the psycho hitman who has targeted Stick for termination:

"he´s an albino,, so don´t say anything,ok?"

And then the out-of-his-fucking-mind piller chomping Chuck,who´s largely responsible for the death of Stick´s friend and heavily in league with a Cuban drugdealer named Nestor:

Jesus Christ, Charles Durning! Where the fuck have you been with that hair, those eyebrows and that shirt? You look like a goddamn garden gnome!

Then there is the aforementioned Nestor, the crimelord  who, I don´t know the correct technical term for it, is into sacrificial voodo bullshit. In a scene when Stick askes the drugdealer permission to take out Chucky (not on a date)  Nestor shows him around his mansion, picks up a scorpion and: goes into a creepy room lit with candles and a lackey on his knees, trying to motivate the lackey with the scorpion.

Stick: "Are you having a litte motivation seminar?"

So that is all  good. The film does more of an external visual presentation of these quirky characters from the book, which is sensible. In a 90 minute actionthriller you don´t want to delve into the psychology too much, but get the narrative running. Visually you get who they are. And that is cinema. So, that´s pretty cool, I guess.

But then , there is this cheesy shit.A preposterous montage scene: in which Stick is jogging on the beach to stock montage music:

Yeah, thanks for the shot of your sweaty legs...

Yeah, thanks a lot for that, Burt.. The 80´s  really got to you. You were really Stick-ing it to us.
But it´s also kind of hard to judge it for what it is. A product of its time. So was the book in the warped depiction of what was going on with the cocaine cowboys in Miami at the time.

In conclussion. I liked the first hour of it or so, but then the obvious reshoots demanded by the studio makes the picture take a real hard turn towards the worse

Read Stick instead of watching it. Stick to Stick by Leonard..

Addendum Note: Stick-The Book is also a semi-sequel to Swag, which is aruably one of Leonards finest books. The film and the novel does not require you reading it. But I highly recommend it.

Next time on How to fuck up an Elmore Leonard novel: Killshot from 2009

LIFE OF ACTION

Allright, this is a book I´ve been meaning to buy for some time. It´s written by a like-minded guy who enjoys the same kind of action-films I like myself. The book contains quite a lot of interviews. ranging from actors,stunt-people to filmmakers. From Scott Adkins , the formidable force from Undisputed 2-4, to lesser known stunt guys and girls and filmmakers.

There are some more well-known stars here like Dolph Lundgren, but also a som people I´ve never heard of before which makes this a package for both newcomers and aficionados. There are a lot of information that might not be new for hardcore fans, but there are also a lot that is new. At least for me. A nice balance of different levels of information. I approve. I really do.

One slight problem I had was  the Andy Lau interview. Now, I understand the difficulty of getting superstars  to agree to an interview, but the superficiality and the diplomatic answers from publicity interviews are limited in getting earnest and personal answers, and it is a shame. But I am interested in seeing Detective Dee, which I haven´t, So it´s not entirely without merits.

I also would have  liked to have perhaps a more fullpage pictures, maybe a couple of posters  of some stills. It would be great to have a full sized poster of Boyka in action from the Undisputeds on my wall. Perhaps it´s a licensing issue, I don´t know.

Mike Fury gets some great answers out of the more unknown ( initially to me , at least)  talents which made me look them up. 

Take Eric Jacobus.  He  has some great YouTube videos. I highly recommend checking out the Rope a Dope videos. Martial arts in a Ground hog day/Edge of Tomorrow concept. Very creative, funny as well as containing great martial arts sequences and manages to build a quirky world at the same time, using only action  and little to no dialogue. More cinema than most movies made today.

Life of Action is clearly written by a guy who is serious about action. It is refreshing. A lot of people seem to  think of action films as something to get drunk in front of. Unfortunately, it can be said for most of the time. But there are also a lot of hard working men and women who bleed for their interest of putting up great fight scenes and not only that, they try to elevate the genre by focusing on better story, plot and characters. by being innovative and creative in a genre that is held in very low esteem.

And it comes through in the interviews. For example Don "The Dragon"Wilson emphasizes the importance of story in today's action movies and uses The Bourne Identity as an example. The movies that were produced back in the 80´s and 90´s were in hindsight crippled by generic plots and bad acting. But look at the movies by Garth Evans (The Raid 1 &2, Merantau) and you see you can craft powerful action cinema using character and story. I think as an art form,  action/martial arts films need to develop with the times, but also not overuse technology like

A suggestion for the next volume might be an interview with the fight choreographer for the Netflix show Daredevil.  I think the most recent blend of the old school action and modern sensibilities can be found in that. It is  a superhero franchise, which is in vogue, but the attention to both the action choreography and the character and story is so good it brings tears to my eyes.

Good book, good read and I liked it!

MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME- The Final Chapter

The third installment in the Mad Max saga has an even bigger scope,  bigger production values, goofy 80´s popsongs in the credits and Tina Turner. It also features less violence and carnage, but has also interesting quirky characters and setups. Not too mention plenty of pigs, long  before someone told George Miller  that four hundred pigs was way too much and  Miller decided to take it down a notch and make a smaller more intimate film about just one pig; Babe.

Where The Road Warrior was for the most part a silent film, this one has much more dialogue, is a slow burner of a film and focuses more of world building mythology. The result is a very impressive, ambitious movie. With four-hundred pigs and a dozen kids. In the last movie, gasoline was a commodity. Now it is pigshit. The manure creates enough energy to sustain the large community that is Bartertown that Max drifts into.

In the opening of the film Max loses his car and tracks the thief to Bartertown. A town where you can barter. The settlement is involved in a bit of a power struggle. The overworld is controlled by Auntie (Tina Turner) and the underworld in which the pigs are being fed and handled is controlled by the dynamic duo Blaster/Master. Blaster is a big doofus muscleman and Master  a midget who rides on Blasters back and is pretty much in charge of the power supply and is in a better bargaining position for power than Auntie.

Auntie sees an opportunity to change the power dynamic and hires Max to get rid of her compettition. This leads to a duel within something that is in the title of the film. Thunderdome. but not beyond it. Not yet. A gladiator arena where two men enters and one man leaves. It is a very impressive sequence with plenty of extras and with Maurice Jarres bombastic score you know this is something different from the previous films.  As it turns out, Auntie sets Max up and put him in exile from Bartertown. Max is being forced into the desert (Beyond Thunderdome) and collapses there from the dry heat. A bunch of kids finds him, keep telling themselves that he is a savior and is going to take them away. Jesus, kids! Do we really Need Another Hero?

Somehow I used to think as this as a post apocalyptic Peter Pan. But instead of taking the kids away to a Neverneverland, Max tells them it´s just a bunch of bullshit and you are better off living where you are now, you ungrateful brats.

You might think that this movie severely lacks in  the automotive vehicular destruction. Well, not really. Max takes the kids back to Bartertown and manages to escape with a really cool train. Auntie does not like that so she sends her army of terrain vehicles after it.

The vehicles are actually cooler looking than anything in Road Warrior, but less impressive than Fury Roads steroid induced monster machines.So we do have a cool chase sequence to end the film. And Mxx is left in the desert, leaving the kids well on their way to discover the ruins of an ancient civilization of assholes. (SPOILER:It´s us)

And in the desert has he been, ever since. Forgotten with time and generations. Until...