Tuesday 4 April 2017

Geriaction: drawing pensions and drawing blood, from Taken to Logan


It’s a bafflingly popular action sub-genre right now, and one made popular by an actor who apparently doesn’t care much for action films.  Insufferable portmanteau term ‘Geriaction’ is now the name given to action films featuring older actors.  For modern action, one would expect to see Chrises Pratt, Evans, or Hemsworth, currently in their prime, jumping off buildings and shooting terrorists. But with the action genre currently dominated by superhero adaptations, the non-lycra action fix can be found in the pension queue.

The 1980s saw a distinctly Reaganite movement in action cinema: the exaggerated figures of Stallone and Schwarzenegger as one man armies, defending America from people who were not American.  Hyper-masculine, no emotion, just the mission; individualism writ large. In bullet holes on a wall.  Fast forward to the mid 1990s and the smaller frames of Keanu Reeves (Speed), Nicholas Cage (Con Air, Face/Off), and Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible) were holding their own alongside their exaggerated contemporaries with increasingly bonkers high concept films.  One of the best examples of 90s action (despite my unreserved dislike of the director) was Michael Bay’s The Rock.  The gimmick? Sean Connery as an old action hero (and possibly still James Bond…) who saves the day for the younger guy.

Cut to years later and Stallone makes another Rocky sequel, and it’s not bad at all, banishing the memory of Rocky V.  He then makes Rambo (2008), and then The Expendables (2010).  A passion project, made with tongue edging towards cheek, he assembled the likes of Dolph Lundgren, Micky Rourke, and eventually Schwarzenegger, Norris and Willis, to feature alongside contemporary stars like Jason Statham and Jet Li. Despite some of the worst character names in living memory, and not actually being very good, it’s a massive hit and yields two sequels (and counting, apparently).

At the subtler end of the scale, Harry Brown saw Michael Caine not even attempt to roll back the years, but take out a gang of vicious charvers. This followed Clint Eastwood fine 2008 fable Gran Torino, in which a jaded old man learns to respect another culture and defeats wrong ‘uns as victim rather than victor.  Both films focused on the character and environment rather than how to apply a chokehold or torture a henchman (although they did that, too).

Aiming for more fun was the Liam Neeson vehicle Taken (2008).  Allowing audiences still drunk on the torture porn subgenre to get their kicks, but confuse savagery with quality, it was another huge hit, spawning two sequels and a TV series.  The premise, more grounded that The Expendables’ OTT army-of-one-man-armies, saw Neeson’s retired CIA spook seek bloody revenge on the gangsters who kidnapped his daughter.  It’s also pretty mediocre, but the gimmick of Neeson’s highly skilled badass tearing through the Albanian mafia was irresistible to many.

Neeson, a better actor than his late career suggests, seemingly couldn’t resist the paycheques and went on to star in guff like Unknown, Non Stop, Run All Night, and A Walk Among The Tombstones (which isn’t as bad as the marketing suggested it would be).  The odd grouping of Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren brought a kind of naff comic book twist with RED and RED 2, which we probably could have done without. Richard Gere (The Double) and Kevin Costner (3 Days To Kill) have also got in on the act, with limited success.  The sub-genre in full swing, then started to get bizarrely more interesting as it went on.  A brief history of sub-genre fads will tell you, these things tend to succumb to the law of diminishing returns (postmodern horror, high school comedy, torture porn, found footage, epic fantasy, manchild comedy, anything Adam Sandler made), but Geriaction has recently started to churn out some quality.

Denzel Washington was perhaps an obvious choice to get his own vehicle (albeit one with a blue badge), but when Antoice Fuqua directed him in The Equalizer (2014) it was quite a surprise when the results were actually pretty good! An adaptation of the Edward Woodward TV series, Washington brings his megawatt charisma and a cool efficiency to his retired black ops man-on-a-mission.  The film looks great, had plenty of intrigue and is pleasingly unpleasant where it needs to be.  It’s nothing, though, without Washington’s stoic, OCD killing machine.

To the surprise of just about everybody, though, Keanu Reeves’ John Wick (2014) managed to blend a great hook (somebody wrongs the titular master assassin, who then leaves a trail of bodies in his wake), an actual mythology (the incredibly cool assassin hideout/market The Continental), and some impressive action chops.  The equally good sequel shows that the idea had and still has mileage.  While Reeves, currently 52, may not exactly fit the pensioner model, the premise of ‘Retired Badass Reluctantly Takes One Last Job’ still feels fresh enough to carry the film.

Referring back to my original premise and opening paragraph, the current spandex-happy action trend has added to the Geriaction canon with this year’s Logan.  A sequel to two terrible Wolverine films, and with a protagonist who has been misused in at least half of the X-Men franchise, James Mangold’s film is brutal but melancholic; a fine antidote to constant superhero excess.  It also finally answers the question of how to pose a challenge to a character whose healing factor makes him almost invulnerable: make him old and stop him from healing.  This vulnerability adds a whole extra layer of interest and drama; he’s gone from wild animal to underdog.

And therein lies the appeal of the geriaction subgenre; the underdog bites back.  While the 80s revelled in indestructible super-men, and the 90s in crazy high concept, we now live in an age of franchises and remakes.  It’s a reversal of the 80s trend and a simplification of the 90s, making new franchises along the way; take a man who’s past it or simply doesn’t want it anymore, fuck with his life, light the fuse and walk away.  Like the characters, this has probably now had its day, but it has been a subgenre that has got steadily better with age.


But officially, The Wild Bunch is still the best of the lot.

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