Mad Max: Fury Road – R. Emmet Sweeney

Where the Action Was: In an Age Decried for both CGI and Festival Pandering, R. Emmet Sweeney Presents the Best in Fight Scenes

July 31, 2025 robertemmetsweeneyLeave a comment

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.

THE TEN BEST ACTION MOVIES OF 2015

February 27, 2020February 27, 2020 robertemmetsweeneyLeave a comment

January 5, 2016

Since their inception the movies have been obsessed with fists hitting faces. In the testing phases of Edison’s Kinetograph in 1891, W.K.L. Dickson shot footage of sparring boxers, cementing the sweet science as one of cinema’s enduring subjects. Though the medium matured, its audience (myself included) did not, and the appetite to watch performers sacrifice their bodies for our amusement has never abated. For a century filmmakers have been trying to capture the perfect punch in action movies, whether it’s in globetrotting blockbusters with CGI blood spurts or no-budget brawlers with practical squibs. There were plenty of worthy efforts in 2015, and since it’s list-making season, below you’ll find my top ten action movies of the last year.

10. (tie) No Escape (directed by John Erick Dowdle) and Survivor (directed by James McTeigue)

Pierce Brosnan has entered his dissolute character actor phase, and it is glorious. The first glimpse of it was in John Boorman’s Tailor of Panama (2001), in which he took the piss out of his James Bond character by playing this secret agent as a lazy, decadent fool. As he transitions out of leading roles and into the background, his characters get more seedy. In the critically reviled No Escape, Brosnan has a small part as a sex tourist in Hawaiian shirt and puka shell necklace (or so it seems) who helps Owen Wilson and Lake Bell spirit their family to safety after there is a violent revolution in an unnamed Asian city. The movie is bluntly effective, as when the parents have to engage in some kid-tossing off of rooftops, or when Wilson has to learn to kill a man with an office lamp. Brosnan is the reason for seeing it though, with his oily, self-destructive swagger and perpetual five o’clock shadow, he is something like James Bond after his fifth stint in rehab. It’s a character going through the motions of heroism because it’s what is expected, but all he really wants to do is embrace the death he’s been courting his whole life.

Survivor is preposterous nonsense, but it’s MY kind of preposterous nonsense. Brosnan is a shadowy mad bomber called “The Watchmaker” who wears those tiny jeweler eyeglass things and occasionally has a mustache. If that wasn’t enough, he’s being chased by U.S. immigration official Milla Jovovich, who spends most of the movie panting in exhaustion. She is framed-up as being an inside woman for a terrorist group, and is in turn chased around London and NYC by Brits and Yanks alike. Cast also includes Dylan McDermott, Angela Bassett (!), Robert Forster (!!) and in his final performance (as a maniacal Romanian “pharmaceutical gases” scientist), Roger Rees.

9. Close Range, directed by Isaac Florentine

The latest collaboration of DTV dynamos Isaac Florentine and Scott Adkins is a simple showcase for Adkins’ ability to kick people very hard. Adkins is an ex-soldier and an ex-con whose niece is kidnapped by a Mexican drug lord. So Adkins does what he must, in a series of fights beautifully choreographed by Jeremy Marinas of 87Eleven Action Design. You can read my full review of the film here.

8. Redeemer, directed by Ernesto Díaz Espinoza

This Chilean revenge drama is straightforward pulp, superbly executed. It stars Marko Zaror as the eponymous avenger, a haunted man in a hoodie trying to expunge his past sins. He focuses his redeeming powers against an American Bro drug lord (a very funny Noah Segan), and a specter from his past known only as “The Scorpion”. Zaror is a physical freak (he is Adkins’ main opponent in Undisputed 3), and the fight sequences are very technical MMA-based grappling that proceeds at a slower speed than most fight films. This deliberate pace really allows you to see the development of the attacks and counter-attacks, making the film a reliable tension and release machine.

7. Wild Card, directed by Simon West

A laid back Jason Statham product that is a remake of Burt Reynolds’ Heat. This one debuted on VOD in January and swiftly disappeared without a trace. But it finds Statham playing around with his persona, trying on different poses that never quite stick: grouchy office worker, shooting-the-shit gladhander, and depressive, melancholy addict. When he snaps back into Statham the cannonball, the fight scenes are choreographed by the great Corey Yuen (The Transporter), and they do inventive, violent things with ashtrays and butter knives. I also wrote about this one at length over here.

6. Blackhat, directed by Michael Mann

An impressionistic smear of our hyper-connected age, with gunfights. Leonine Australian hunk Chris Hemsworth makes for an unconvincing hacker, but this is a movie in which the small details seem absurd but the grand gestures are entirely, overwhelmingly convincing. Hemsworth is an imprisoned hacker who is sprung loose to help the U.S. feds track down a cybercrime network around the world. As Hemsworth moves from city to city, country to country, the borders seem to blur along with Mann’s woozy images.

5. SPL2: A Time for Consequences, directed by Soi Cheang

This won’t be released in the U.S. until later this year (by Well Go USA), but it has been out everywhere in Asia and has screened in festivals throughout 2015. SPL2 is a sequel to SPL (2005, aka Kill Zone), although it bears no relation to the original. The main protagonists Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung are nowhere to be found, here replaced by Tony Jaa and Wu Jing. Wu Jing is an undercover police officer in deep cover inside a Thai prison, while Jaa is a guard at the prison. Both of them get entangled in the illicit organ trafficking operation of Louis Koo. This is an anxious film wracked with paranoia, and director Soi Cheang (of the Milkyway productions Accident and Motorway) sustains a tone of barely contained hysteria. People are profitable bloodbags for Louis Koo, and the movie continually emphasizes the brute limitations of the human body.

4. Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, directed by Christopher McQuarrie

This is the slickest entry on the list, a sinuous series of set-pieces that never bogs down in exposition. Tom Cruise gets stranger and more robotic each year, but the Mission: Impossible series keeps improving. I was particularly impressed with the assassination games during the opera, a complex minuet of overlapping POVs that provides one of the many tense standoffs between Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson, the MI5 agent whose motivations are at cross-purposes with the Impossible Missions Force. Ferguson slinks away with the movie, her lithe athleticism perfect for the film’s clockwork mechanisms.

3. Run All Night, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

A chase film between two old men sapped of energy. Ed Harris and Liam Neeson play two buddies from NYC’s Westie gang who turn against each other because of the sins of their children. That is, Neeson’s son has murdered Harris’ son. Due to the personal codes of conduct buried in their genes, they must hunt the other down. Neither seems to relish it. Let’s call it a reluctant revenge film. So they trudge through the outer boroughs looking for a kill, and on the way pass through all their old haunts, which are also on their way out. It provides everything it’s title implies: speed, exhaustion and darkness. I went longer on this film over here.

2. The Taking of Tiger Mountain, directed by Tsui Hark

This Chinese epic has grandly orchestrated ski fights and tiger battles, while the framing story deftly deals with the slipperiness of historical truths. It’s about a Communist army unit who infiltrates a bandit gang and brings them down from within, an old-school adventure told with wit and feeling. But the framing story does much to question the propagandistic value of the film inside. It’s a complex, hugely entertaining film that was a massive hit in China and deserves a larger audience stateside. I would recommend reading Grady Hendrix’s highly informative article for further context.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road, directed by George Miller

To Godard’s quote that all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun, I would add that you should also include a double-necked flame-throwing guitar.