The classic action film features a small group of world-weary assassins or Green Berets or Navy Seals or mercenaries who assemble to pull off one last suicidal mission, after which they will retire. In the contemporary action film, the villains are either heavily accented Russians, Serbs, or unidentified, all purpose eastern European sociopaths. The women in action films tend to be promiscuous femmes fatales or crusading journalists or medical support staff or hapless rebels or victims or miscast. The action film, Angelina Jolie and Zoe Saldana notwithstanding, has little use for women.
A good action film will usually include some impromptu emergency surgery, a fall from a great height, a reasonable amount of torture and a lot a rappelling. Men in action films rappel down high-rises, mountains, and into the holds of ships. The principals should have lots of scars, and each scar should come with a story.
In addition to this, nobody drives a car in action films: off-road vehichles only.
Many cliches in action films are too obvious to mention: the pas de deux past a stream of deadly machine-gun fire, the leap away from expolsions, the slide down the sloped exterior of an all-glass skyscraper, the massive tractor trailer's attempt to destroy the vehicle from behind by ramming it over the guard rail, the inability of the bad guys to hit anything with their weapons.
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