20 Operatic Action Movies Worth Watching Before John Wick 4
Films from Hong Kong filmmakers have treated action as art for decades, and martial arts films have always been big hits in China, South Korea, and Indonesia, even as filmmakers have begun mixing generous doses of gunfights and maybe even a car chase or two into action. . American action films used to favor fisticuffs over carefully choreographed battles, but that began to change in the 90s when ballet action films such as John Woo’s Hard Boiled were imported, inspiring “groundbreaking” Hollywood films such as The Matrix . . As evidenced by the enthusiastic online response to the release of the John Wick: Chapter 4 trailer, the series has crystallized the market for films that barely stop the violence, yet are so sublime and meticulously staged and choreographed that… operatic.
Like the 20 films collected here, the genre’s best films, affectionately dubbed “gang fu,” often have a lot in common: martial arts (or at least well-staged street fights), firearms, lots of adversaries. , and the plots almost always involve an almost primal need for revenge on the part of the protagonist. These similarities are more of a feature than a bug – the plot is just a canvas on which the filmmakers paint (usually in bright red).