CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 09/21/07

Deconstructing Destruction

By sean siska

Most viewers are content to enjoy American action movies for their visceral thrills and leave it at that. However, there is a surprising amount of depth in the genre that action fans should be happy to read about in Action Speaks Louder.

Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie (Revised and Expanded Edition)

Eric Lichtenfeld

By its very subject matter, Eric Lichtenfeld's Action Speaks Louder is a unique entry in the realm of film criticism. Huge swaths of forest have been decimated thanks to academic studies of silent historical epics, Asian horror movies, British sex films, and everything in between, but it's been exceedingly rare for American action flicks to come under the discerning purview of a serious film scholar.

Lichtenfeld traces the origin of the modern action movie to Dirty Harry. Written by a cadre of five scribes, including an uncredited John Milius and Terrence Malick, the film was the first, according to Lichtenfeld, to take aspects of the Western and update them with the urban landscape of film noir, the plotting of police procedurals, and the kind of graphic, often exhilarating, violence that exploded onto U.S. screens with Bonnie and Clyde.

From there, the action genre evolved from the realistic vigilante pictures of Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson to less realistic fare, as epitomized by the superhuman exploits of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone or the postapocalyptic scenarios of The Road Warrior and Red Dawn. Bucking that trend was Die Hard, which depicted a grounded hero in a familiar setting and sired a host of imitators. As CGI technology advanced through the 1990s, spectacle became the driving force of action movies, Volcano and The Day After Tomorrow being two examples. Unburdened by technical restraints, action filmmakers were able to bring convincing versions of videogames (Doom, Resident Evil) and comic books (Batman Begins, Sin City) to movie theaters.

Often, these movements overlapped, so instead of presenting information strictly chronologically, Lichtenfeld wisely opts to delineate his chapters by different action sub-genres (e.g., one chapter focuses on sci-fi films such as The Matrix and Robocop while another analyzes disaster movies like Dante's Peak and Independence Day). The reader comes away from the book impressed by the genre's malleability while also able to appreciate the conventions that connect movies as seemingly disparate as The Incredibles and Braddock: Missing in Action III.

Lichtenfeld takes his subject seriously, and his book could easily be used in a graduate-level film course. He examines not only the action films of the last 40 years, but also the social, political, and economic forces that shaped those movies (Lichtenfeld devotes more ink to the marketing of 1998's Godzilla than he does to the film itself; to be fair, the selling of the Roland Emmerich/Dean Devlin remake was probably the most entertaining aspect of the movie). While edifying, this information may not be of particular use to screenwriters. Thankfully, Lichtenfeld recognizes that "quality screenplays hold the most promise for well-made films, action or otherwise," and so delves into writerly concerns such as structure, characterization, and theme in both the genre's triumphs and its misfires. His analysis of Die Hard is just as illuminating as his epic takedown of Michael Bay (which should be required reading for anybody who still has the temerity to defend Armageddon). Lichtenfeld is even able to plumb the psychological depths of Jean-Claude Van Damme's Kickboxer.

The question has to asked, though, that if Lichtenfeld is willing to spend so much effort deconstructing a forgettable Van Damme flick, then why does he ignore so many other superior examples of action movies? He admits in his introduction that it would be impossible to detail every film in the genre, but it is still baffling to see that a movie with the stature of Aliens is discussed primarily for the ways it inspired the film adaptation of Resident Evil. Not merely because Aliens is a classic of the genre (Entertainment Weekly recently hailed it as the second best action movie of all time, behind only Die Hard), but because it bears so many of the hallmarks of the genre that Lichtenfeld outlines in the book. Set against an industrial landscape, Aliens is rife with imagery reminiscent of both the Western and noir, displays an obsession with weaponry and technology, and features a hero, intimately familiar with her antagonist, who achieves psychological regeneration through violence. Of course, I wouldn't have paid attention to any of those features of Aliens if not for Lichtenfeld's book.

Action Speaks Louder dissects a genre that is often dismissed as disposable or mindless and reveals that it is made up of more than just cool explosions and snappy one-liners.

Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie (Revised and Expanded Edition)
Wesleyan University Press
400 pages
$24.95

Buy it now

Sean Siska is a graduate of USC film school and writes screenplays when he manages to peel himself away from ESPN.

Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie (Revised and Expanded Edition) courtesy Wesleyan University Press
Robocop courtesy MGM Home Entertainment
Armageddon courtesy Buena Vista Home Entertainment/Touchstone
Die Hard courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

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