Kick the Bucket
Now that was one serious game of kick the can.
In the climactic gun battle of Johnnie To’s 2006 gangster flick Exiled, a can of Red Bull is kicked high up into the air while about a dozen characters pull out guns and start shooting each other.
That bit of product placement hasn’t inspired me to buy this particular energy drink, but the film, which I rented from Netflix, has changed my attitude toward movie gun fights.
I’m fed up with them.
This may sound strange coming from me, since I’ve always enjoyed good action movies. Put on an exciting, intelligent crime film, western, or adventure movie and I’ll gladly pull up a seat.
Obviously, I’m concerned about the epidemic of mass shootings that’s drowning this country in blood. But, to mangle a phrase from my dear friends at the NRA, movies don’t kill people, guns kill people.
I’ve had a particular fondness for spaghetti westerns and Hong Kong actions films like John Woo’s The Killer. The gun battles are brilliantly choreographed and the action in these movies is so over the top, I reasoned, you really couldn’t connect them to the real world.
However, this week, after watching Exiled, I’m having a change of heart.
First of all, the film just wasn’t that good. The story was convoluted and tedious, while the wafer-thin characters are barely distinguishable from each other.
But what made matters worse was a series of blistering gun fights that make the experience of being shot to death look a night at the ballet.
Everyone except a newborn baby packs a gun in this movie and we’re treated to a slew of loving closeups of these weapons as the characters slam in ammunition clips, click off the safeties, and start blasting away.
Reloaded
It’s impossible for me to watch this film and others like it without thinking of all the very real killings going on outside my door.
In the last week, five women were shot to death by a deranged killer at a bank in Florida; three people, including an 83-year-old man, were gunned down near Penn State University; four people were shot to death in Georgia, and five more people were killed in Louisiana.
There was nothing “balletic” about these murders, there were no slow-motion gymnastics, and the blood spilled was all too real—as opposed to the gallons of red dye we see in the movies.
My father, a World War II veteran, would rage at movie gunfights where the hero is shot repeatedly but still takes out the bad guy.
I usually did an eyeroll and dismissed his complaints from my mind, but now I see that he was talking as someone who had actually seen people shot to death, so naturally ludicrous movie gun battles angered him.
Of course, Hong Kong movies aren’t the only one guilty of this. I recently re-watched Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. I’ve enjoyed the movie in the past, but I was feeling uneasy during this last viewing.
The film is marked by at least three major shootouts, with much of the action taking place in super, syrupy slow motion where it takes forever for the victims to fall to earth. I can only guess how many people die in the climax, but you could probably fill a cruise ship with all the corpses.
Okay, we get it, the characters have no place to go in this new, mechanized world. But I feel the filmmakers could’ve told the same story with half the body count and still have made their point.
Perhaps age plays is a factor in this as well. I've moved on from the days when I was entertained by nonstop violence. And I still enjoy old Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Cagney films where people were killed in much smaller numbers by pistols and the occasional tommy gun.
By the time that can of Red Bull hits the deck in Exiled, it has a lot of company, as bullet-riddled hoodlums litter the floor. But unlike the victims of last week’s shootings, all those people in the movie got back up and went on with their lives.
In the climactic gun battle of Johnnie To’s 2006 gangster flick Exiled, a can of Red Bull is kicked high up into the air while about a dozen characters pull out guns and start shooting each other.
That bit of product placement hasn’t inspired me to buy this particular energy drink, but the film, which I rented from Netflix, has changed my attitude toward movie gun fights.
I’m fed up with them.
This may sound strange coming from me, since I’ve always enjoyed good action movies. Put on an exciting, intelligent crime film, western, or adventure movie and I’ll gladly pull up a seat.
Obviously, I’m concerned about the epidemic of mass shootings that’s drowning this country in blood. But, to mangle a phrase from my dear friends at the NRA, movies don’t kill people, guns kill people.
I’ve had a particular fondness for spaghetti westerns and Hong Kong actions films like John Woo’s The Killer. The gun battles are brilliantly choreographed and the action in these movies is so over the top, I reasoned, you really couldn’t connect them to the real world.
However, this week, after watching Exiled, I’m having a change of heart.
First of all, the film just wasn’t that good. The story was convoluted and tedious, while the wafer-thin characters are barely distinguishable from each other.
But what made matters worse was a series of blistering gun fights that make the experience of being shot to death look a night at the ballet.
Everyone except a newborn baby packs a gun in this movie and we’re treated to a slew of loving closeups of these weapons as the characters slam in ammunition clips, click off the safeties, and start blasting away.
Reloaded
It’s impossible for me to watch this film and others like it without thinking of all the very real killings going on outside my door.
In the last week, five women were shot to death by a deranged killer at a bank in Florida; three people, including an 83-year-old man, were gunned down near Penn State University; four people were shot to death in Georgia, and five more people were killed in Louisiana.
There was nothing “balletic” about these murders, there were no slow-motion gymnastics, and the blood spilled was all too real—as opposed to the gallons of red dye we see in the movies.
My father, a World War II veteran, would rage at movie gunfights where the hero is shot repeatedly but still takes out the bad guy.
I usually did an eyeroll and dismissed his complaints from my mind, but now I see that he was talking as someone who had actually seen people shot to death, so naturally ludicrous movie gun battles angered him.
Of course, Hong Kong movies aren’t the only one guilty of this. I recently re-watched Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. I’ve enjoyed the movie in the past, but I was feeling uneasy during this last viewing.
The film is marked by at least three major shootouts, with much of the action taking place in super, syrupy slow motion where it takes forever for the victims to fall to earth. I can only guess how many people die in the climax, but you could probably fill a cruise ship with all the corpses.
Okay, we get it, the characters have no place to go in this new, mechanized world. But I feel the filmmakers could’ve told the same story with half the body count and still have made their point.
Perhaps age plays is a factor in this as well. I've moved on from the days when I was entertained by nonstop violence. And I still enjoy old Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Cagney films where people were killed in much smaller numbers by pistols and the occasional tommy gun.
By the time that can of Red Bull hits the deck in Exiled, it has a lot of company, as bullet-riddled hoodlums litter the floor. But unlike the victims of last week’s shootings, all those people in the movie got back up and went on with their lives.
Comments
Thanks for sharing your feelings on this. My sister and auntie both refuse to watch Law & Order: SVU because it's always about women being sexually assaulted.
Take care.
Hope you're having a FAB week, buddy!
I appreciate your thoughts on this. People really are getting numb to violence in films. So many movies just rack up the body count without creating believable characters or intelligent story lines. Enough already!
Have a great week, buddy!