Action Basics 3

Fast Five (Justin Lin, 2011)

The simple ability to create visual tension between antagonists is, by and large, a dying art these days (see: Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises). We are supposed to infer, through dialogue and plot, that they are nemeses, but their relationship is devoid of tension, simply because they don't exist in the same physical space. Even when sharing a shot, they aren't actually defined and affected by each others' presence, because it doesn't flow from anything, it's just another haphazard fragment lacking the cohesion of editing and space. 

The above is an exception, something truly basic, but in the formally limp wheelhouse of big budget contemporary action cinema, it floors with its elegant simplicity. Justin Lin, up to this point, understood only the motion of cars with his camera. This is the first time people truly felt ingrained in his formal approach. What's even better, and what makes this brief moment so strong, is its relation to establishing the tension and intensity between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson's characters (pungently homoerotic). 

The real star shot of the piece is, of course, when the camera, following Diesel's jump, captures Johnson crashing through the window. It is, much like in the sequence from Isaac Florentine's Ninja previously written on, a strong example of complimentary motion. It would be nothing without proper punctuation, which Lin provides with a neatly timed long shot that allows for clear detailing of Diesel and Johnson's proximity to each other. The concluding medium shot glares give us explicitly the personal undercurrent of the relationship.

Sadly, their actual showdown later in the film does not cary the same charge. However, Lin appears to be improving film-by-film in this franchise, each more punchy and exciting than the last, and if the trailer for Fast & Furious 6 is any indication, he's beginning to nail down kinetics outside of cars. 

Faster - George Tillman Jr., 2010

 Faster is a strange case of a film, in that it gets better as it progresses. So much better, in fact, that it feels almost like an entirely different film, as if the final 2/3 had to evolve out of the first act's primordial ooze. Shots and edits become more creative and evocative, the actors and characterizations gain depth, and what was heinously immoral becomes compelling and challenging.

The first act is cobbled together with those familiar, egregious signposts of contemporary action cinema: "cheeky" music cues, title cards, villains who are outrageously evil, etc. Some problems remain throughout; a hitman subplot, while ultimately emotionally affective on its own, would work better as its own film. But somewhere around the forty minute mark, the film tonally and stylistically shifts, not once looking back. The Rock's lumbering totem of vengeance becomes a moral terror, destroying families with each murder,  while Billy Bob Thorton's character (actually tolerable here) becomes more nuanced. Ultimately, in the film's final act, it reveals itself as a parable, an almost Biblical morality tale (as Ignatiy Vishnevetsky aptly pointed out).

What was a bland visual landscape becomes an atmospheric, metaphoric nightmare of neons, blues, and parched Nevada desert. In a striking composition, The Rock approaches a woman in bed while a television turned to a dead channel buzzes consistent, eerie white noise. The Rock's character, already sparsely developed, becomes less developed as the film progresses, until he merely becomes a force of destruction, moral and immoral alike. He's a man born of a dead channel, or, as he calls himself, the "...demon that crawled out of..." a man's personal, earthly hell. The semi-apocalyptic endgame slightly fizzles in the film's conclusion, the myriad of dark tones settling uneasily into something like resolution, but the film lingers as one that touches greatness. Contemporary action cinema could use more films like this.