Video: Action movies are fun to watch but there’s a smart way to do action scenes and an epically dumb way to do it. The smart way focuses in on the details, tells a story within a story and makes sure we know just what the hell is going on amidst all the crazy. The dumb way? Explosions, shaky camera effects, chaos to blur the action and just a general messiness that doesn’t make any sense but looks cool.
CineFix lists five of the most brilliant action scenes in movies, and it’s an illuminating lists that focuses in on what makes a good sequence. For something like The Raid: Redemption, it can be a tense yet totally easy to understand montage of what’s going to happen. For a movie like Mad Max: Fury Road, it can be a perfectly orchestrated linear sequence that gets a bunch of characters involved while still making sense.
The video below is a really enjoyable look at action sequences that include takes on The Lord of The Rings, The Bourne Ultimatum and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (plus the two movies mentioned above).