Some comedian I once saw had a bit about the phrase “adult language”, bemoaning the death of it. He said that the words we consider “adult” aren’t really adult at all, because kids understand words like shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits perfectly well. Adult language should really be the type of language adults use to talk about serious and complicated things; that’s what kids usually really don’t understand.
“Action movie” is a bit like that. Action movies are considered to be movies with lots of fighting, driving and exploding – but that’s really a rather small subset of the action that goes on in the world. I recently saw There Will Be Blood, and it was an action movie in the more literal sense: not much dialogue (or: big long sequences without any dialogue) and almost everything described by showing people doing things, ie. by action. Probably a quarter of the footage was of men doing some sort of physical labour, albeit most of it in the first half. Everything of value on the screen suggested the absurd amount of work people have had to do to produce it, not to mention the work historically needed to technologically get to the point where it’s possible to produce. It was the action that gave meaning to everything else, including the dialogue.
Also: There Will Be Blood has one of the most interesting and appropriate scores I’ve heard, ever. Great film.
