Adoration
of Action or Fond of Fury:
Love Letters To My Favorite
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi Flicks…
Love is in the air over
here at ‘Back OnLine. Back On Duty’. In honor of the upcoming
holiday, I've decided to express my love… for action movies.
Following (in no discernible order) are my personal love-letters to
several action movies covering the span of the last 30-ish years.
So, get your house coat
on, grab your chocolates, warm up some soup, light some candles, fire
up the Boys II Men album, burn some incense, open a bottle of wine,
light more candles, hide your pets from harm/love’s way and let the
good times roll. It’s about to get hot in here…
Judge Dredd (1995)
Oh Judge Dredd, how I
love thee; let me count the ways…. Um… Dredd was released in
1995. It was directed by Danny Cannon of ‘CSI’ fame. The
screenplay was written by Steven E. de Souza. De Souza is responsible
for screenplays to films like 48 hrs., Die Hard and Die Hard 2. The
cast includes Sylvester Stallone, Max Von Sydow (The Exorcist),
Armand Assante (Striptease), Jürgen Prochnow (Das Boot), Diane Lane
(The Perfect Storm), Angus MacInnes (Star Wars Episode IV: A New
Hope) and James Remar (Dexter’s Dad). The beginning story crawl was
narrated by James Earl Jones. The score was composed by Alan
Silvestri (Back to the Future). Stallone’s Dredd costume was
designed by Gianni Versace. With all this ungodly talent from all
these brilliant people involved with this movie, how could this movie
have not succeeded?!
This film belongs in my
category of “Loud and Obnoxious” films. ‘Loud and Obnoxious’
is a term of endearment I use for action movies I love. Other notable
films in this category include The Matrix (see below) and Predator
(also below). I really give a lot of credit to Alan Silvestri’s
score on this film. It gives me goose bumps more than any piece of
music I've heard before or since. Follow this link for a more
in-depth look at Judge Dredd and my comparison of it to Dredd 3D
(2012) right here at ‘Back OnLine. Back On Duty’.
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
First Blood Part II is by
far one of my favorite action flicks (hence why I’m waxing
nostalgic about it). I’m sure I've watched this movie 58,000
times over the course of my life. It never gets old. I still wanna
see Rambo stab Murdock in the gut at the end. Everything about this
movie screams ‘AWESOME’. I’m no expert on the Vietnam War, by
any stretch of the imagination, but POWs still there in 1985 seems
like a bit of a stretch. As a continuance of Stallone’s salute to
our boys who fought during the Vietnam War, this flick still rouses
(LOL) my patriotism. I remember his speech at the end like it was
just growled out by him: “I WANT…WHAT THEY WANT, AND EVERY OTHER
GUY WHO CAME OVER HERE AND SPILLED HIS GUTS AND GAVE EVERYTHING HE
HAD, WANTS: FOR OUR COUNTRY TO LOVE US…. AS MUCH AS WE… LOVE
IT…THAT’S WHAT I WANT…..”
To this day, every time I
tie my shoes (which admittedly isn't that often), I hear Jerry
Goldsmith’s score playing from the scene where Rambo is in the
mission-prep montage. Muscles and bullets and boots OH MY!
BOM BUM
BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Robocop (1987)
I’d be a blasphemous
Pirate-Cat-Hooker if I didn't mention my love for this cinematic
masterpiece. Paul Verhoeven explained this movie as “American
Jesus”. I’m not too fond of that notion but I love this movie,
real hard. I’m sure Brobocop (the fine proprietor of this site)
will agree with me that this movie is awesome. It has aged
exceptionally well over the years. Be sure and check out the unrated
cut of this if you haven’t already. Poor Mr. Kenney gets shot for
what feels like 30 minutes by ED-209 in this cut. Plus Murphy’s
demise is a lot more graphic. The satire seems just as poignant today
as it did decades ago. You have no idea how much I miss the 80’s. I
first recorded this flick from CBS on my VCR as a kid. I watched it a
million times. Years later when the DVD came out, I saw it for the
first time in all its glory. The (extreme) violence and profanity
threw me off, LOL. I had memorized the PG-TV version of the film. It didn't take long for me to memorize the R version. One of my
personally most quoted films of all time, Robocop will always hold a
special place in my chest cavity…
Predator (1987)
So, how does one put into
words the awesomeness that is Predator? A team of commandos, with
more bullets than ANY elite force should EVER have, embark on a
mission in a jungle and find themselves hunted by an
extra-terrestrial warrior with a woman’s reproductive organ for a
mouth. Another multi-faceted, multi-layered, over-the-top,
uber-quotable “Loud and Obnoxious” flick, Predator makes me
smile. I mean, where else can you see a 250lb man cut a palm tree in
half with a Gatling gun (aka Minigun)? In a land where a man’s
worth is measured by his testosterone level, bicep size and size of
his… weapon, Arnold Schwarzenegger is King. This movie is an
excellent exercise in 80s excess, boasting more rippling muscles,
bullets, bad one-liners, grenades, RPG’s, bullets and bullets and
more bullets than anyone can shake a severed, disembodied spinal
column at. I think this film finds a lot of people in their prime.
The planets must’ve aligned. (Earth aligned with Uranus).
Follow this link for my
more in-depth look at Predator right here at ‘Back OnLine. Back On
Duty’.
Sin City (2005)
This movie seriously
changed my life (Artistically & Nerdily speaking). Frank Miller’s
Sin City blew me away. Somehow, I had NEVER heard of those comics up
to that point (how sad is that?) and this was my first exposure to
this world. Accordingly, immediately after viewing this flick, I went
out and bought up every Graphic Novel with Frank Miller’s name on
it. Say what you will about Frank Miller, Sin City the comics or
movie, but I've never seen better usage of negative space and high
contrast, period. Throwing several of the Sin City stories into an
anthology situation, I find this movie very well rounded. It also
benefited from brilliant casting. I mean, seriously, Mickey Rourke
wore absolutely no make-up on set, save for a wig and some Band-Aids.
That’s good casting and smart spending. The extended versions of
each individual story are now available and I suggest you peruse them
post-haste. This film also appears to be the most faithfully
recreated in relation to its source material I have ever had the
pleasure of viewing. ‘Nuff said.
The Matrix (1999)
The Matrix is another
movie I have quoted in times exceeding numbers of 800,000. I could
basically recite and partially act-out this entire film. I even
created a “Matrix Dance” in honor of this movie. Precious few
people have ever been privy to this interpretive dance celebration. I
think this movie hit at a time when computer graphics were really
starting to get their bearings and it meshed very well. The mixture
of Hong Kong style fight scenes with hard/industrial rock, slapped on
top of bazillions of slow-motion bullets just makes my heart pound.
It’s the same feeling you got as a kid when you broke a window out
with a rock and got away with it. That was not a confession and there
is no spoon…
Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Obviously, Episode V is
not completely full of blood, guts and violence, but that doesn't make it any less awesome of an Action/Adventure movie. Long ago, in a
state called California(?), George Lucas actually still cared about
this franchise and had not yet sold his soul to the plastic gods of
silicone. I've been told by my parents and other family members
that I watched this movie 83 times in the summer of ’85. OK so
one-ish viewing a day doesn't sound like much, but that’s pretty
respectable for a 4 year old, m’Kay?! I’m sure Episode V holds a
special place for a lot of you readers out there, so I don’t have
to tell you how awesome it is. I much prefer the crazy,
sausage-eating, senile Muppet Yoda to the CG green turd of later
years. Goes without saying.
300 (2007)
Frank Miller’s 300
holds a very special place in my heart. Not only is it an awesome
movie based on a Frank Miller book, it’s also the movie I watched
with Sarah (my Beautiful Wife) on our first date. Cleverly crafted by
Zack Snyder, of Watchmen and the Dawn of the Dead Remake fame (I
liked his Dawn, OK?!), it shows a very sexy Gerard Butler rubbing his
blood-covered, ab-rippling man-muscles all over some Persians….
Um.. I mean it shows some Spartans laying the smack-down on some
foo’s! Yeah, that’s it. Also keep an eye out for Michael
Fassbender in the flick as Stelios. Not to get too mushy, but this
flick floods me with very fond memories of being such a Nerd and
being scared to death of doing something stupid on a date with the
most beautiful woman I've ever seen. It’s also just an awesome
movie that shows Gerard Butler’s naked hiney on it. What else do
you need? I figure that makes this movie the perfect choice and my #1
Action Movie for Valentine’s Day. <Stares off into space with a
dumb smile>
Be sure to wash your
house coat, throw your chocolate wrappers away, wash your soup bowl,
extinguish the candles, turn off the Boys II Men album, safely
dispose of the incense, put the wine bottle in the fridge, extinguish
more candles and let your cats out of the basement now that we’re
done.
TOOTLES!
So there you have it!
Directive 4: (The Insane Ramblings of Frank Browning) thanks you for
your kind attention and asks what Sci-Fi/Action/Adventure Flicks make
your heart flutter?
SOUND
OFF BELOW YOU LOVE BIRDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Frank Browning
