European cinemas boast strong national action traditions. These range from Italian westerns and peplum , defined by Richard Dyer as "a cycle of adventure films centered on heroes drawn from classical antiquity played by American bodybuilders" (p. 286), to the British gangster film, such as Brighton Rock (1947) and The Long Good Friday (1980). Frequently European action films are successful primarily within local markets, although there are also notable international successes, such as Nikita (Luc Besson, 1990) and Lola rennt ( Run, Lola Run , Tom Twyker, 1998). That both of these titles focus on female protagonists is not insignificant, since the marketing of a certain image of female action became increasingly central to the genre through the course of the 1990s. Hong Kong action cinema has also accorded female fighters a more central position than has Hollywood cinema. With the success of Hong Kong action cinema in the United States, a series of awkward attempts to incorporate Hong Kong stars within American filmmaking practices occurred, many featuring Jackie Chan (b. 1954) or Jet Li (b. 1963) (the latter moving from villain to hero in his American films). A huge star in Asian markets, Chan finally achieved a measure of consistent commercial success in the United States through variants of the bi-racial buddy formula, for instance, in Rush Hour (1998).
With the migration of many Hong Kong filmmaking personnel at the end of the 1990s, different patterns of influence and exchange become notable. The critical and commercial interest in the Hong Kong director John Woo (b. 1946), who has had some success in Hollywood with such films as Face/Off (1997) and Windtalkers (2002), is one manifestation. Perhaps more indicative is the use of Hong Kong fight choreography, though less often with Asian performers, in Hollywood films such as The Matrix series and Charlie's Angels . Quentin Tarantino's decision to film sections of his hit martial arts pastiche Kill Bill, Vols. 1 and 2 (2003, 2004) in China suggests that both economic and aesthetic interests are at work in the ongoing exchange between Asian and American cinemas. Alongside this American refiguring of martial arts as a more central component of its action cinema, Asian filmmakers have secured global successes, producing an internationalized cinema that drew initially on the commercial success in the West of Ang Lee's art house action movie, Wo hu cang long ( Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , 2000). In this context, the commercial and
A bodybuilder, entrepreneur, and movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger is associated with the box-office prominence of spectacular action cinema through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Schwarzenegger achieved fame first as a bodybuilder, appearing in the documentary Pumping Iron (1977). From his early leading roles in comic book, fantasy muscle movies, notably Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984), Schwarzenegger demonstrated a capacity for physical acting. His key success came with The Terminator (1984), a noirish science-fiction film in which he plays a cyborg sent from the future to kill the unwitting mother of a rebel leader yet to be born. Playing off the performer's machine/body and "robotic" delivery, the film ensured his iconic status. With minimal dialogue, Schwarzenegger's part focused on the formation of an image, one defined by his physical presence.
Schwarzenegger's subsequent 1980s action vehicles, such as Commando (1985) and Predator (1987), turned him from menacing villain to hero, frequently dwelling on his upper body in fetishistic detail. Many found the loving portrayal of strong, white male bodies to be a persistently troubling feature of the Hollywood cinema of this period. The qualities that had made Schwarzenegger so effective as a monstrous threat in The Terminator were harnessed with tongue-in-cheek humor in the films that position him as an action hero, yet the complex potential of such an iconic figure is evident, for instance, in Total Recall (1990), in which Schwarzenegger plays an everyman figure, his extraordinary physique somewhat less central against the futuristic context and various rebel mutants he encounters. The film that marked Schwarzenegger's mega-stardom, Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), rewrote his earlier signature role in these new heroic terms. His Terminator comes back from the future with a mission to protect, facing down an enhanced model (Robert Patrick) whose relatively slim frame and shape-shifting potential contrast sharply with the muscular cyborg "hero."
Ironically, Terminator 2 foregrounded the built-in obsolescence of the muscular persona. The disappointing Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) some twelve years later underlines the difficulty in sustaining such a physically-defined mode of performance. The star's move to comedy built on and fed his action roles, themselves tinged with an almost parodic excess. Generic crossover is most explicit in Kindergarten Cop (1990), in which he plays a tough cop who goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher. In another kind of crossover activity, Schwarzenegger was elected as the Republican governor of California in 2003.
Conan the Barbarian (1982), The Terminator (1984), Predator (1987), Total Recall (1990), Kindergarten Cop (1990), Terminator 2 (1991), True Lies (1994)
Andrew, Nigel. True Myths: The Life and Times of Arnold Schwarzenegger, from Pumping Iron to Governor of California , revised and expanded. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2003.
Gallagher, Mark. "I Married Rambo: Spectacle and Melodrama in the Hollywood Action Film." In Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media , edited by Christopher Sharrett, 199–226. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1999.
Glass, Fred. "Totally Recalling Arnold: Sex and Violence in the New Bad Future." Film Quarterly 44, no.1 (1990): 2–13.
Jeffords, Susan. "Can Masculinity Be Terminated?" In Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema , edited by Steve Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, 245–261. New York: Routledge, 1993.
——. Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994.
Yvonne Tasker
critical success of Chinese director Zhang Yimou's Ying xiong ( Hero , 2002) and Shi mian mai fu ( House of Flying Daggers , 2004) after the failure to secure significant US distribution for the Hong Kong mega-hit Siu lam juk kau ( Shaolin Soccer , 2001) suggests both the significant commercial potential of an emergent transnational action cinema within domestic markets and a conservative approach with respect to the marketing of such titles.
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