I’ll Kick Your Ass!!! by Chris Derrick – Sympathy for the Devil #3
December 16, 2011 Chris Derrick 4 Comments
Remember when you watched a fist fight in a movie and DID NOT know if the hero was going to win the fight? That was back when heroes and villains alike didn’t all know some form of bone-splitting martial arts, when the fighting wasn’t augmented by bullet time or shot & edited in such tight close-up and rapid cuts that you can barely make out the action. These days it’s a fait accompli that the hero will swiftly dispatch his assailants a few seconds after the camera finishes showing all the villains… and pretty much walk away without a scratch. And that kinda sucks…
A certain amount of suspense and tension has been drained out of movies and TV in the last 10 – 15 years when extensive and intricate fight choreography approached such a precision level that the real chaotic brutality that exists in raging street fights evokes little emotional response. Even the martial arts actioners don’t seem engaging, and that’s their one-trick pony (true we’ve gone away from the early days of cinema when one-punch, off-balance KOs were the norm).
Every once in a while some filmmaker will go out of his way to make a fight scene grab your gut and squeeze it tight until the hero barely emerges victories, but taken through the ringer. When a naked Viggo Mortenson struggles to fend off his Russian mob assassins in David Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES, each shot is filled with a strangling amount of tension that makes that locker room fight one of the best in recent memory. Viggo gets slashed up a lot, and barely comes out on top. And every moment is a brutal, near-bone crushing blow… leave it to body destroyer Cronenberg to deliver this masterclass in hand-to-hand film combat.
There always a certain amount of stage craft that is involved in putting a fight scene together for the screen – choreography, positioning of the actors and “selling” the strikes, but the updates in image acquisition and image manipulation technology dissipate the anticipation and anxiety that most action films want to deliver and don’t.
Of course we go to the movies to see the hero triumph over evil and his (or her) inner demons, but the heightened digital technology that routinely undercuts the ever-important suspension of disbelief has mean yearning for pre-digital savage physical attacks, like the hotel strangling in MARATHON MAN (although Gaspar Zoe employed digital cinema tricks most potently in IRREVERSIBLE… only that’s not an action film).
I was watching TINKER TAILOR SOLIDER SPY the other week, and it brought back tons of memories of spy and action films from the late 70s and early 80s — when technology and green-screen, multi-layered stunt wasn’t the focal point of the action scene, but the uncertainty on the actors’ faces were the main draw, when fights had a certain amount of okay-I-could-lose-here to them. And then I remembered John Carpenter’s THEY LIVE, and underrated (that surely suffer from so odd budget cuts or studio tampering, I don’t know the story behind the film too well) but compelling fight between Keith David and WWF wrestling star Rowdy Roddy Piper; it’s a fight that maybe last two or three minutes on screen, and exhausts the hell out of the combatants – you just love it.
For some reason (and I’m too lazy to look this up at the moment), I think this film predates Jean-Claude van Damme and Steven Segall’s entrance into movies… I think that’s when kicking ass in films started going down hill; they spiked for a moment, but then genie was out of the bottle, and only inventive guys make a bare-knuckle brawl count.
JosephW
December 16, 2011 - 12:58 pm
“When a naked Viggo Mortenson struggles to fend off his Russian mob assassins in David Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES, each shot is filled with a strangling amount of tension that makes that locker room fight one of the best in recent memory.”
While I’m not disagreeing with your overall assessment, I think the REAL reason that fight is one of the best has more to do with the “naked Viggo Mortensen” than anything else. I mean, just ask yourself: Would this fight have been quite as memorable if Mortensen’s character were as clothed as his opponents?
Reg
December 16, 2011 - 7:14 pm
😀 Very dope reference! The fight scene between Roddy and the great Keith David is one of my all time favorites and high on the Rotten Tomatoes list of the 20 greatest fight scenes ever filmed.
I’d definitely include Old Boy and Tony Jaa’s Ong Bak. When I saw that for the first time my jaw dropped. Cats got HURT on that set…best believe.
Christopher Derrick
December 17, 2011 - 10:25 am
@JosephW — the fight scene was inventively devised that’s my whole point; if he was just wearing board short and still barefoot, the fight would have been just as memorable. But with his junk hanging out, it DOES make it more personal (just like the scenes in Die Hard when Willis is barefoot and pulling the glass from his feet).
Cronenberg’s vision, with his high penchant for punishing the human body, make the fight work on every level; he HAD to have Viggo naked so we could see all the nasty blood effects that his make-up team creates so well… you know he designs scenes so they can shine!
@Reg, I can give more modern Asian films a pass, because it’s like they don’t have to worry about worksman’s comp or lawsuits if half the stunt team ends up in the hospital… they’ll find more the next day who are just as willing!
JosephW
December 18, 2011 - 1:11 am
@Chris: I think you misunderstood my point. (I know you missed the “clothing” part. From what I remember of the film, the guys attacking Viggo were not “just wearing board short,” they were fully clothed–and wearing shoes.) However, what I was referring to was the fact that Viggo was naked throughout the scene. Most people don’t remember the scene for how well choreographed the fight was or anything about Cronenberg’s “vision”; they were zeroed in on Mortensen’s full monty. (It’s sort of like the way more people probably came out of “A History of Violence” remembering the stair sex scene between Mortensen and Maria Bello than anything else about the film. No matter what Cronenberg intended or what his vision might have been, the audience will remember things for their own reasons.)