COLUMN: A Smaller Slice of Action, Please

By Tobin Barnes
This is going to sound un-American. NASCAR fans aren't going to be happy with me. The NRA is going to think I'm a Pinko. Mixed martial arts guys are going to think I'm light in the loafers.

But here goes, anyway.

Look, I'm not a fan of "action" movies.

Yeah, I agree. That's a pretty bold statement. Makes me an instant suspect.

Despite all the action in "action" movies--and, oh my goodness, there's plenty to go around--I'm almost always bored by it all. I usually have a hard time even finishing a typical "action" movie, let alone liking it.

But I do have to admit those movies are true to their billing. Unlike a "comedy," which often isn't funny, an action movie always has plenty of action.

But, whoa, you say. How can I be bored by "plenty of action"?

Cars are crashing in bigger numbers than they've ever crashed before and in more exotic, unusual places, and, not only that, but in new and unique ways....

Bullets are spraying in their millions, blood is spurting by the buckets, and people are dying in the hundreds....

Gimcrack gizmos, special effects, and computer generated shebangs are zipping and zapping all over the place....

And you say you're bored?

Yep, bored to tears; that is, when I'm not being repulsed by all the mass-market-pleasing violence.

Take Django Unchained, for example. Infinite shooting via western six-guns with hundred-round clips, white honkies dying in piles, and blood, blood, blood.

Well, to me, that's just violence porn.

When too much violence is happening, it can't be absorbed. It's a video game, not a movie. It all becomes meaningless.

Maybe that's the point, but then what's the point?

So much is going on in these so-called blockbusters that none of it is remarkable, let alone memorable, despite all the perpetual whizz bang. Action isn't in the script, it is the script.

There's so much there, there, there isn't anything there anymore. It's become vacuous movement, signifying nothing.

It didn't always used to be this way. Storytelling had deaths, violence, and destruction, sure, but it was ladled out as the plot required, not exaggerated as an end in itself.

That all started back in the late 60's with Bullitt, the Steve McQueen "vehicle" where he and his green

Mustang terrorize the streets of San Francisco tearing after two middle-aged gangsters in a black Dodge.

No doubt it was thrilling stuff at the time because such eye-popping stunt work was relatively new.

Then came The French Connection with a similarly apprehend-or-die obsessed cop careening through New York City streets with many times more dodge ball citizen-contestants at risk from someone sworn "To protect and to serve." He was trying to save us from drugs, but who was saving us from him?

And ever since the geometric inflation of crashes, shootings, deaths, maiming, destruction, and mayhem have mushroomed on our movie screens.

Almost universally, those involved in real-life violent situations, even bystanders, suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome, oftentimes for the rest of their lives, but we sure don't seem to mind experiencing violence at its goriest as our entertainment.

Weird.

People seem to want to be tough guys until the rubber hits the road, then they don't think so much about being a tough guy anymore.

As for me, put a hold on the "action," please. Instead, give me artfully rendered story and character development and put in the action only where it belongs to believably serve the plot.

Keep the horse in front of the cart.