List – R. Emmet Sweeney

Originally published in the January-February 2020 issue of Film Comment

By R. Emmet Sweeney

2010

Robot (Enthiran)

Androids Assemble

Proof that South Indian cinema could compete on the same level as Bollywood, this mind-bending sci-fi spectacular directed by S. Shankar, with stunt choreography by Yuen Woo-ping (!), is a robot-gone-bad Tamil blockbuster starring ageless Superstar Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai. The centerpiece is a cops vs evil robot battle in which the android, now replicated into hundreds of clones, arranges itself into different murderous shapes, including a ball of guns, a bullet-spitting snake, a drill, and in its final form, a skyscraper-sized giant who flips off the scientist who created him. It is a sequence of joyful, surreally mischievous destruction.

2011

Fast Five

Vault Heist

After Fast & Furious, Justin Lin wanted to ease back on CGI and put the emphasis on more practical car stunts. Wily veteran choreographer Jack Gill obliged with the most memorable sequence in the franchise, a daredevil heist in which Vin Diesel and Paul Walker drag a bank vault out of a building and onto the highway, connected to their souped-up Dodge Chargers with a length of cable. The vault model used weighed 10,000 pounds, and the stunt drivers make it swing into oncoming corrupt cop cars with jaw dropping precision.

2012

The Raid: Redemption

Hallway Machete Fight

The most influential action film of the decade is a relentlessly bloody low-budget fight film from Indonesia, directed by Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans. It introduced Iko Uwais as both star and fight choreographer, along with the Silat style of martial arts (which necessitates close range to utilize the sharp edges of knees and elbows). Its structure of one never-ending fight was a model for John Wick, Timo Tjahjanto’s The Night Comes For Us, and endless knockoffs like Jailbreak. It’s hard to pick just one fight out of the endless flow, but I’ll go with the machete fight in a hallway, in which Iko is outnumbered 4 to 1, and out machete’d by the same amount. After a establishing shot of the bleak setup, Uwais swiftly closes the gap and delivers a blisteringly fast array of high knees and elbows to various faces, ending with an exclamation point as he slams the final opponents head into the ground like he is cracking a coconut.

2013

Drug War

Final Shootout

Drug War is an exacting and pitiless mapping of cops, informants, and drug dealers, all triangulating to a deadly fate. It is another of Johnnie To’s rigorously composed gangster films, but the first made with Mainland money. This one feels more mechanical than the Elections or Exiled, as if they are playing out predetermined fates. Timmy (Louis Koo) is the snitch, who forces a collision between the undercover cops who are controlling him and the drug gangs he has been attempting to infiltrate. To orchestrates the final shootout in near silence, punctuated by short staccato bursts of bullets as Timmy tries to orient the cops and gangs against each other in a mutually assured destruction of crossfire. But the geometry fails Timmy as well, who ends up handcuffed to his own deadly design.

2014

John Wick

Red Circle Club

For Hollywood action films the 2010s were defined by the ascendance of 87eleven Action Design. Founded by ex-stuntmen Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, their innovation was being a one stop shop, selling complete action sequences to films still in preproduction, providing the choreography, the stunt performers, and the 2^nd unit direction. They would even train your star. Previously these were all separately staffed jobs, changing how blockbusters did business.

Stalhelski and Leitch, of course, went on to start the ongoing John Wick franchise, which was heavily influenced by Hong Kong choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, who they saw at work on The Matrix as members of the stunt team. The standout sequence in the first John Wick is the Red Circle nightclub shootout, an homage to Jean Pierre-Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge. Keanu Reeves is a model-like figure, like Alain Delon in the Melville film, who cuts through the Russian mob hangout with frictionless “gun-fu” and Brazilian jiu-jitsu takedowns. The muzzle flashes of the gunfight nearly matches the rhythm of the flickering disco ball lighting, and when Reeves emerges onto the nightclub floor, with undulating patterns projected behind him as the throbbing EDM fills the soundtrack, it momentarily embraces its destiny as a musical.

2015

Mad Max: Fury Road

Final Chase Back to The Citadel

Like The Raid, this is one long action sequence, though a chase film rather than a fight, a rolling revue of malformed steampunk freaks, pole jumping maniacs, and one demented power chord-playing mascot, all driving armored muscle cars trying to take down a one-armed Charlize Theron and a mute Tom Hardy. An overwhelming work orchestrated by George Miller and his longtime stunt choreographer Guy Norris, it is a testament to the remarkable stunt performers who labored for five months to get their vision up on the screen. It all comes together with overwhelming force in the final chase, a gonzo act of action filmmaking in which there are spectacular car crashes, blooming explosions, obscenely risky stunts (especially on those bendy poles that dip into moving vehicles), and hand-to-hand combat atop speeding wrecks that is pure piston-pumping poetry.

2016

The Final Master

Series of Duels

Chinese director Xu Haofeng is also a martial arts historian, and his films reflect his studies. He believes that “A real kung fu battle lasts only seconds. And the results of a competition between top practitioners are decided even before opponents begin combat.” The Final Master is another of his intensely ritualized takes on the genre, and it ends with a hypnotic succession of duels as Liao Fan, who trained for two months before shooting, consecutively defeats the masters from nineteen schools of kung fu in Tianjin. Fighters are doomed by their choice of weapon, stance, or target before the bouts have even begun, giving these fights an abstracted quality, as if they had already taken place and these are re-enactments or, perhaps more accurately, how-to manuals. Liao Fan often pauses at the end of each encounter, holding the winning thrust in place for examination by willing students.

2017

Baahubali 2: The Conclusion

Pindari attack on Kuntal Desh

The biggest Indian movie of 2017 was this mythological action melodrama directed by SS Rajamouli and starring the dashingly shirtless Prabhas. A complex tale of a warring royal family and the titular Baahubali’s (and son’s) thwarted path to the throne, its action scenes have an inventive pulp sensibility that recently went viral on Twitter (people love soldiers getting slingshotted onto a castle). I found the most joy in the Pindari attack on Kuntal Desh, when Baahubali Jr first meets his great love Princess Devasena (Anushka Shetty). Their meet cute occurs as they turn a bloody archery fight against Pindari warriors into a giddy dance, spinning each other around into position to kill dozens of unlucky soldiers. It’s love at first archery bow sight.

2018

Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Bathroom Fight

The Mission: Impossible franchise has become a reliable source of insane Tom Cruise stunts for years now, and Fallout is no slouch with its 25,000 foot HALO jump out of a jet. But my favorite of the Wade Eastwood designed set pieces is the bathroom fight between Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, and Liang Yang (an expressively intense stuntman getting his first extended acting job here) which is brutal, funny, and effortlessly conveys the personality of the characters. Cruise is mostly out of breath and a step behind, buying time to think his way out of it, while Cavill is a meathead monster who smashes Yang through a mirror and raises his fists as if he was in a golden gloves bout and not a black ops mission. Yang is the superior fighter to them both, and his face exhibits an intimidating sense of calm that will be pierced only when an unexpected fourth person enters the fray, rearranging the power dynamics for the last time in the fight.

2019

Avengement

Pub Brawl

The latest collaboration between British DTV kings Scott Adkins and director Jesse V. Johnson (their fifth in two years) is a bare knuckle brawler of a film. Adkins plays a small time London crook hardened by his time in the pen – someone put a price on his head so he is constantly getting into ugly, tooth shattering fights. The film tracks his revenge against the gang who put him into jail, holding them hostage at a grimy pub until his brother (Craig Fairbrass) shows up – and then all hell breaks loose. Adkins and fight coordinator Dan Styles opt for sloppy, inebriated violence, finding creative blood-spurting uses for 2x4s, crowbars, and conveniently placed pickled egg jars.

By R. Emmet Sweeney

IFC News

December 30th, 2008

A pratfall can be a work of art, a study in disruptive motion, a klutz’s ballet. This choreography of humiliation is perhaps the least garlanded act in contemporary film, as no Oscars will ever be won for kicks to the groin or tumbles down the stairs, regardless of their originality. Only in retrospect have the golden slapstick silents gained credibility and the brilliant purveyors of today’s guffaws are suffering the same critical fate (although the hurt, it must be said, is not felt in their checkbooks). So here is my list of the top five pratfalls of 2008, some of the strongest and strangest feats from an otherwise lackluster year. Some are from masters of the form (Will Ferrell, Anna Faris), while others seamlessly blend the side-splitting spill into their respective and respectable narratives (Robert Downey Jr., Mathieu Amalric, Pixar). All show a clumsy physical grace (as do their stuntmen), a healthy respect for their audience and a blissful embrace of the stupid. (Click on the images below to see them full size.)

1. “WALL-E”
Directed by Andrew Stanton
Pratfall: Handholding Gone Wrong

“WALL-E” is packed with brilliantly conceived falls, but my favorite is perhaps the smallest, and its bittersweet tragedy is worthy of Chaplin. It occurs after our trash-compacting tramp’s beloved Eve begins hibernating, and he tries everything in his power to wake her up. After surviving lightning strikes and shopping cart attacks, he’s determined to get romantic with the fembot, conscious or not. He leashes her with Christmas lights and rows her through a river of sludge to a prime sunset viewing spot. With visions of “Hello Dolly”‘s handholding climax in his CPU, he pries open her arm slot and grabs for dear life. Then her arm snaps back, pinning his hand inside her body’s shell. As he tries to pull himself out, he tumbles off the bench and crashes into a neighboring garbage can. It’s a quick, painfully funny gag that effortlessly encapsulates WALL-E’s innocent, desperate loneliness.

2. “Step Brothers”
Directed by Adam McKay
Pratfall: Christmas Eve Sleepwalking

Sure to be the bane of sober-minded critics for decades to come, the works of Adam McKay and Will Ferrell are unabashed odes to anarchy that have consistently been dismissed for their immaturity and childishness. “Step Brothers” literalizes this complaint, presenting Ferrell and John C. Reilly as man-children joined by their parents’ remarriage, and it’s by far their most surreal and senseless (in the best sense) work. In one of the film’s many improvised sequences, these already regressive brothers are shown sleepwalking on Christmas Eve, shouting gibberish and piling presents in their parents’ bedroom, before finally hoisting the tree and shoving it onto the bed. By this point, their increasingly aggrieved father, played with manic glee by Richard Jenkins, vows to wake them up out of their hysteria. Bad move. The two sons turn barbaric, screaming and clawing at their father until they aggressively toss him down the stairs. André Breton would approve.

3. “A Christmas Tale”
Directed by Arnaud Desplechin
Pratfall: Henri’s Curbside Face-plant

Mathieu Amalric creates a strange kind of alchemy with director Arnaud Desplechin, turning despicable characters into adorable eccentrics — a coup achieved in “Kings & Queen” and now “A Christmas Tale.” Amalric’s Henri Vuillard is a loudmouth drunk who’s been banished from his family by an uptight sister. At his lowest ebb, walking tipsily down an abandoned sidewalk and softly muttering to himself, he pauses at the edge of the curb, staring into his own private abyss. He slowly tips forward, until, in a long shot, he falls face first into the pavement, his back ramrod straight all the way down. He later learns to unload his bile with a smile on his face, like the rest of the Vuillards, but this wonderfully depressing acrobatic feat is an apt representation of the psychological hole he’s fallen into and can’t escape, but which he later cleverly redecorates.

4. “The House Bunny”
Directed by Fred Wolf
Pratfall: Header in Outdoor Café

In an attempt to look smart for her nice guy crush, Anna Faris’ ex-Playboy Bunny hits the books, dresses conservatively and dons Coke bottle glasses that bug her eyes out to Tex Avery proportions. Working off notecards, she dishes on nuclear proliferation before knocking tea onto her date’s lap. A little woozy from her non-prescription specs, she gets up for napkins but then takes a header over the nearest table and smacks her crown again while standing up, unexpectedly finding a thick rope of gum affixed to her head in the process. As she races shamefacedly away after apologizing for “all that gravity,” the gum snaps as the chew flails to the ground. It’s another fearless, hilarious performance from Faris, whose breathy, wide-eyed and aging ingénue provokes pity, fear and admiration, usually at the same time.

5. “Iron Man”
Directed by Jon Favreau
Pratfall: Iron Man Armor Mishaps

Jon Favreau, emerging as an ace director-for-hire, wisely gave Robert Downey Jr. plenty of latitude to riff on his signature snarky motormouth persona in “Iron Man,” providing an oasis of comic invention in this otherwise rote superhero saga. The peak of this improvisation is a well-crafted, slow-burning series of pratfalls as Downey’s Tony Stark is testing his new and improved Iron Man armor. After instructing his robot-arm buddy to watch for a flameout, Stark’s first attempt at flight rockets him into the ceiling and then to the floor — and his robotic fire marshal is quick on the extinguisher trigger. After threatening his mechanical assistant with the prospect of community college, Stark’s second attempt is moderately successful aside from some light charring of his vintage car collection. With the final trial, he speeds outdoors in full regalia, a triumphant moment and a cue to expect an action extravaganza to begin. But upon returning home, he crash-lands in his spacious abode, destroying three floors, a grand piano, and a luxury car in his lab. And in the final humiliation, he’s pathetically blasted with the fire extinguisher by his downtrodden mechanical pal. With a tight structure (the callback of the cars and extinguisher), canny timing, and sneaky misdirection in the final section, the sequence could stand on its own as a slapstick sci-fi comedy short.