And it doesn't matter if you now instruct me that in "So-And-So Movie" directed by Such-and-Such Director, produced two years before Boorman did Point Blank, there was a similar scene and that Boorman probably saw that scene before he set up his own such scene in Point Blank. Maybe. And Shakespeare stole the plot of Hamlet...what's your point? Nobody can or should be beyond influences. Your choice is to either enlist and reshape those influences for your own distinctive artistic purposes, or just chew the cud of them like a dull cow.
I've never seen the flailing-away scene before. It looks and feels like something that could only have been done by these actors in this scene in this movie. But the police captain chewing out the renegade tough-guy detective, and barking that if you pull another stunt like this, I'll have your badge? That scene I've seen. If the cop ain't Clint, I'm not interested.
David M. Brown is the publisher of The Webzine, and runs the blog for the Laissez Faire Books web site, where he has been discussing many urgently important topics of the highest possible interest to you.
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Article comments
1 - deano
It's an interesting point - how some directors and actors can take a scene that, obviously, we've seen many times before, and put a fresh spin on it that resonates and works.
One that sticks in my mind from a comparatively recent movie was the Bourne Supremacy, both its fight scenes and the chase scene. one might expect the usual 'kung fu'-based superspy fight that you get from the various thrillers and the James Bond films instead what you got was a brutal, highly kinetic fight that used both its characters and its environment to good effect.
The same element was present in the chase scenes which made a deliberate effort to "put the viewer" inside the car in a visceral "NYPD Blue" style of camera-work, a choice that made the chase much more dramatic and involving.
Again, it has been done before (notably in The French Connection) but in the hands of another director it would have been very formulaic. The movie plot itself is fairly standard and torn directly from the "thriller/spy" playbook but what made it work while other similar movies failed was the energy and approach. It breathes life into what could ahve been very stale material.
2 - David M. Brown
Good observations about The Bourne Supremacy. The French Connection was one of the movies I had in mind a la non-formulaic car chases. I also liked the extended chase in the second "Matrix" movie, which was really almost nothing but a chase scene. (I agree that the third installment fell a little flat, but I found #2 enthralling, including the rapid-fire Explanation of Everything that some complained about.)
There's an early fight scene in one of my favorite movies, Time and Tide, that I find mesmerizing. A cute young bodyguard scrambles in a stairwell with an assassin he has discovered (and who is not so cute but is interestingly devilish). A lot of missed blows and haphazardry...sloppy, desperate. Completely believable and fresh.
All the action in Time and Tide is very well done, for example all the hopping around at the apartment complex (not so believable, but still interesting)...but don't miss the stairwell scene...
3 - David M. Brown
P.S. Also, re Time and Tide, you don't want to miss the climactic scene in the station with the woman giving birth participating in the gun battle.... Actually, what the heck, just go ahead and watch the whole movie from start to finish.
4 - Bliffle
Yes, "Point Blank" is an excellent movie with the incomparable Lee Marvin, it's at #27 in my Netflix list of 170, so I'll reprise it in about a month and cop a dub for posterity.
And the point in that scene is instructive. One learns, as a man, that if a woman or a child starts beating on you it's not appropriate to hit back. Not necessary, either.
5 - T
Okay, I have to say that the fights scenes in Bourne would good. Too bad the camera was too choppy to let us enjoy it.
My votes for (1) very good fight scene: Grosse Point Blank--check out the highschool hallway fight, totally plausible and damn good effort.
(2) great car chase scene: Ronin--I can bet that when you see it, it will become one of your favorites.
Check them out.
6 - David M. Brown
I dislike Grosse Pointe Blank but agree about Ronin, a very absorbing movie.
It's been a while since I saw The Bourne Supremacy, but I don't remember being annoyed by the camera work.
Anyway, I don't always expect to see fight scenes perfectly. One critic of "Batman Begins" had that complaint...though the clobbering transpires in places like darkened warehouses where all the bad guys are continously confused about what's going on...and the viewer is the only one who's supposed to know exactly what's going on? I don't want to know everything about how Batman does what he does, I just want to be convinced that he can do what he does. More about "Batman Begins" in my review at TheWebzine.com.
7 - Eric Olsen
T, I agree with you totally on this that Grosse Point Blank scene: it is both bizarrely hilarious and brutally realistic, as is he movie in general, among my very favorite Cusacks.
Very interesting point and approach David, thanks!
8 - T
David, because of my marital arts background, I expect to see the fights as staged as they are. I don't think that hiding it leads me to believe the authenticity.
For me, I need to see the skill. If Batman is so good, then lets see it. I do say that Batman Begins was a good effort on that front.
I am not saying that Bruce Lee movies are classics. Maybe in their genre they are, but in general they are sub par movies. But he showed us why Bruce is a legend. He never hid his techniques. And in showing us his world, he appeared super human.
A good fight scene is one where the actor acknowledges the art behind the fight. I have to say that the Matrix movies got it right, but that was more show than go. I love plausible fights and I have two more for your consideration:
True Romance: Patrica Arquette's knock down drag out fight with the hit man. It is bloody and it is real as hell.
They Live: A good basher between Roddy Piper and one of the "aliens". This one is just fun to watch.
9 - David M. Brown
"I expect to see the fights as staged as they are. I don't think that hiding it leads me to believe the authenticity."
I think we're sort of speaking past each other, T. I'm not making any special brief against easily scannable fighting, or the action of a classic movie like "Enter the Dragon" with unique Bruce-Lee clobbering (though I think some of the action could likely have been done better--I liked the individual fighting better than the sprawling all-against-all stuff). It depends on the movie and what's going on in the movie. My brief is against cookie-cutter predictability and cliche, the evasions of the hard job of presenting something original and fresh, which is the only reason one would want to see a flick or any bit of it in addition to the flicks and bits of flicks one has already seen.
There are myriad ways of showing the same thing, any one of which might work in one kind of film with its sensibilities and aims but not in another. Whether a bit of physical action works also depends on the execution and other factors, not only whether it's original. On the other hand, there's no reason to say, "Nope, that isn't the way it's supposed to be" simply because it's not what we've seen before.
In the case of "Batman Begins," the approach throughout that movie was, as I argue in my article at TheWebzine.com, to often present the emerged crusader in fleeting glimpses. He is a creature hard to fathom despite all the explanation about the why and how leading to that emergence. So on the question of whether we "see" the Batman's fighting skill, I'd say we see and don't see it at the same time. We really have no idea how Batman got from the other side of the warehouse to just above and behind the guy with the machine gun. We don't hear him do it. We don't see the beams he clambered across. We don't know whether he swung or leaped or glided or what. We also don't quite know exactly what the Batman then does to knock the thug's lights out; we just see the cape coming down. But at that point, we really don't need to know every rivet. We're utterly convinced that Batman can do the things he does.
It's any viewer's judgment whether any particular approach in a scene works, but I wouldn't say it should be lopped from the director's options from the get-go because it doesn't mesh with standard parameters.
10 - Baronius
Good article. Valid points.
If I may go on a tangent here, an action scene is going to be more interesting if you care about it. The viewer who really wants the good guy to win, and doesn't know if he will, is going to watch intently. Near the end of "The Pelican Brief", I lost track of who the good guys were, because it was confusing and didn't hold my interest. There was no way the final action scene was going to be satisfying. Remember in "Misery", when the sheriff gets killed? The rescuer is supposed to rescue the good guy - what happened? That scene made you realize that anything could happen, and it made every other scene more compelling.
But back to your point. "Miller's Crossing" had completely original fight sequences. I don't know what was different about them, but they were jarring. Then there's "Final Destination". The whole movie turned the suspense scene on its head. It was like a slasher movie, except the supernatural stalker was replaced by the scriptwriter. There were fake-outs galore, but in the context of the film they made sense. The camera work was shameless.
One more Coen brothers reference, then I'll shut up. "Raising Arizona" was basically one continuous, multi-character chase scene. Child abduction as a game of tag. I didn't really like the movie, but it was original.
11 - David M. Brown
>If I may go on a tangent here, an action scene is going to be more interesting if you care about it.<
Well, yes, Baronius. I mean, yes I agree. (Yes you may do the tangent, also, but you were tricky there. I can't withhold permission after you've posted....)
I was focusing on only one ingredient of artistic success, but you're surely right. If we couldn't care less whether Bob lives or dies, the attack on him may be very interesting (like the opening of an "Avengers" episode with a man in a wheelchair trying to escape from a mysterious bouncing ball) but we're not going to be as involved as we would be if we've grown to care about him deeply over the past hour and a half. Even so, sometimes nerve-wracking suspense is accomplished very quickly; something of a feat.
There's a lot that goes into what works craft-wise and also into our subjective responses, which depend on craft but not solely on craft. There are movies I can say are good in many respects or even all, when considered as artistic execution of the moviemaker's purposes, but which I still can't like and would not want to ever see again. (An example is "Very Bad Things," which I found continuously repellant, even though I agree with the film's overt idea of satirizing self-help cliché, which is only superficially what it was about.)
Let's say I have good reason for my distaste, i.e., something that would be relevant for other prospective viewers, more universal than "Actor X has always rubbed me the wrong way." In that case, as a critic I should at least note the successes of craft even as I slam the morally vicious treatment of the subject matter (or whatever cardinal aspect I see as lamentable or problematic in the film). In practice, of course, what a movie is about and how it's done can't really be placed in separate boxes; they intimately affect each other. But I've noticed that some critics, if they dislike a theme (film is too pro-gun or whatever), will tend to downplay or ignore effective craft. Other critics will be too forgiving of artistic lapses if they can cheer a film's assumptions and sensibilities. I say that both subject and craft are the legitimate province of the critic, because both are the legitimate and necessary province of art. And to assess art, one can't proceed as if any of the major aspects that give it form are properly to be discounted or ignored. How these are to be ranked and integrated are further questions.
Back to you. I remember well any particular scene in "Misery," as it is one of my favorite movies. I loved what was accomplished dramatically with (usually) just two people in a house. And you're right, the bit with the sheriff is extremely effective.