This list is bookended by two films that deal with the action hero's place in a siege. Whereas my number one film deals with an impossible personality genetically incapable of being dominated, The Raid's Rama has character beats built on stressing vulnerability. His wife is expecting, he's a rookie, and he has a personal connection to one of the enemy's major players. Everything in this film is designed to injure and stress Rama until he finds his way into a meat locker containing an unbeatable enemy and a potential ally. The Raid then transforms from a rough-house Die Hard recalibration into a 1980s Jackie Chan joint. Project A in a locked room.
4. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
John Hyams didn't have to try this hard building a follow-up to 2010's wonderfully taut Universal Soldier: Regeneration, he could have just created a round two. Instead he's charted an intersection between Lost Highway identity headaches and white-line nightmare movies. I've held off talking about Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning mainly because the exact moment it changes from an efficient muscle mash into something akin to Blade Runner is a spoiler planted deep in the third act. It's not just surface twists and turns, it's a choice that means something / everything to the weary lead. He rejects the plot as it develops. He declines reality and fights like an animal to protect the idea of who he thought he was.
3. Looper
In Looper two versions of the same man stare their opposite down over coffee. They hate each other. The younger identity is revolted by the walking fuck-up seated before him, all his potential mistakes made flesh. The older man loathes the idea that he was ever this unevolved; that he was once this preening, drug-addled nihilist. Of course in this instant they are both exactly the same. For all his sneering disgust, Future Joe's ideas are all focused on his past skill-set. His reasoning is selfish and reptilian. He is a self-loathing personality locked by decades of wrong choices. He's incapable of conceiving any new ideas. Real growth must come from the younger, more impressionable man as he experiences a similar epiphany to that which drives the older man.
2. Moonrise Kingdom
Pierrot le Fou with Playmobil playsets. Two misfit children abscond to live on a beach. Moonrise Kingdom charms because there's an emotional reality in the children's relationship. They're not just in love because the film keeps telling us they are. Instead they are in love because they act as one cohesive unit. They consider each other's feelings and both really listen when the other talks. They aren't trying to manipulate each other or coerce an expectation, they're just enjoying being with the only other person who truly understands them.
1. Dredd
When I originally wrote about Dredd I focused on the ways it absolutely did not let me down. It wasn't just a faithful adaptation of a beloved British comic character, it was also a rolling meta-text breakdown of the character's enduring appeal. That's not the only reason Dredd is number one though. Dredd is also exactly as good as you remember your favourite 1980s action movie being. Dredd is the epitome of that decade's identity fascism - the idea that all weaker personalities are fair game for extermination. If they don't meet your standards, then crush them under your boot heel. Karl Urban's Dredd takes cues from all the late twentieth century American action heroes, from Clint Eastwood's stoicism to Arnold Schwarzenegger's psychotic indifference. Dredd is a rugged, unchanging ubermensch locked into a dilemma that barely stresses him.
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