John Wick, Logan and the Current State of Action Movies in Hollywood

     The action genre has been in a bit of a dearth since the late 90's. The emergence of CGI and the increasing popularity of frenetic, rapidly edited action scenes has meant that many action films today feature subpar action set pieces, often filmed in constrained circumstances by a second unit. These sequences are shot with as much coverage as possible and then edited and in a rapid pace to make them feel artificially intense and to cover up any clumsiness. As a result modern action scenes are often incoherent, rarely feel connected with the story and any impressive stunt work is lost in the editing.

     Since the beginning of the decade this has been changing, slowly but surely. The first real sign of hope was 2011's The Raid, a foreign release, but one that did unusually well in the US. Later that year Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol took everyone by surprise, becoming the best received and most financially successful film in that franchise. Both of these films featured more old school approach to the action. Since then films like Mad Max: Fury Road have continued this trend but perhaps none were more successful or as surprising as 2014's John Wick.

     John Wick was made on a fairly modest budget of 20 million dollars. It was helmed by two directors who had previously on worked on second units and it's star, Keanu Reeves, hadn't had a real hit in almost 10 years. It opened to wide acclaim from critics, made over 80 million dollars at the box office, and became something of an instant classic.  All of a sudden, Keanu Reeves was cool again, and it was only a matter of time before John Wick got a sequel. That sequel, John Wick: Chapter 2, has gone on to even greater success.

     As a fan of the action genre I couldn't be happier about the success of these movie and the changes in the industry they seem to be promoting. A good action scene is like a well choreographed dance, if you shoot and edit it in a way where you can't appreciate the choreography or, worse, can't even comprehend what's going on, it kind of misses the point. There are exceptions to this however, realistic war films and crime dramas often make the violence intentionally off-putting or confusing. This can help to simulate the confusion and revulsion one might feel in an actual fight but it also helps to ensure that these films, which take their content seriously, don't glorify violence.

     This brings me to Logan, a film that is fully aware of the consequences that violence can have in a persons life, and explores how someone who has killed as many people as Wolverine, has to live with this. Like many Western hero's Logan finds that he ultimately can't escape his life of violence, it leaves scars that never really heal. As Laura says near the end of the film, quoting George Steven's Shane (1953), "there's no living with with a killing. There's no going back from one. Right or wrong, it's a brand. A brand sticks." The action scenes in Logan are not as amazingly choreographed as those in John Wick, nor are they as easy to follow, but that's kind of the point. There meant to be grueling, hard to watch even.

     A few years back I did a moral analysis of John Woo's The Killer (a film that, according to the directors, had an influence on John Wick). I ultimately determined that the portrayal of violence in that film, though problematic at times, was ultimately morally acceptable from a Christian perspective. I not going to diverge into a similar analysis of the John Wick movies here, though I will say that I think they ultimately work by portraying the violence as cyclic and a part of the corrupt world created by the film, as opposed to being cathartic or redemptive. I'll also say that the sequel, in many ways, helps this case by making John's plight a direct consequence of his actions in the first film.

     The point I'm making is that as glad as I am to see the direction action films are going, Christian audiences should always approach movies like this with caution. They should ask themselves if any given film wants you to question the violence in it and, if not, is that ok?