I go into current action movies knowing that the movie maker must make the following PC concession if he wants financial success:
1. The white man’s burden, in which whites have the duty to save people of color from themselves and evil whites must be present.
2. A black character of edifying conscience and superior morality must bless or contain the antisocial actions of the violent white hero.
3. The hero must have an improbable love interest who is, even more improbably, central to the plot.
4. The hero must not die, but must end the film in a domesticated state.
Also, long, agonizing twists and turns will conclude the action.
All 4 items were dully checked and I immensely enjoyed The Gunman, for whom Sean Penn was well cast. The knife and empty hand and improvised weapon scenes were well done, not as overwrought as most and seemed rooted in FMA and Silat rather than Hong Kong cinema choreography.
Of course, the leftist bent demands that the ultimate bad guys be private contractors working for private companies when they would more realistically be employed and handled by U.S. government actors. That said, the government worship was minimal, pace excellent and the predominantly Spanish location pleasing to the eye.
Penn’s character was well written and played, with attention to psychological stress and was ruined like most postmodern heroes by not being allowed to die after saving his lover, but must survive against all odds to be cast into her soft hands for domestication, submission and de-warriorfication, but only for the epilogue.
link › jameslafond.blogspot.com
Masculine Axis: A Meditation on Manhood and Heroism
I've seen it and it's OK. Javier Bardem has that convincing sort of physicality that one sees in amiable thugs like Ray Winston, Gérard Depardieu and Oliver Reed. Forget about Hollywood. Check out this little gem with Reed and Edward Woodward.
youtube.com/watch?v=euOo8Kvg5lw
Thanks for the video find, Bob.