Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: ‘Where are we, and how did we get here?’
- 1 Narrative and the action film
- 2 The action body
- 3 The action sequence
- 4 Action women
- 5 Action men
- 6 Race in the action film
- 7 Homosexuality in the action film
- 8 Action cinema after 9/11
- 9 The ‘European connection’
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Television Series
- Index
2 - The action body
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: ‘Where are we, and how did we get here?’
- 1 Narrative and the action film
- 2 The action body
- 3 The action sequence
- 4 Action women
- 5 Action men
- 6 Race in the action film
- 7 Homosexuality in the action film
- 8 Action cinema after 9/11
- 9 The ‘European connection’
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Television Series
- Index
Summary
A man chases another man through a construction site and onto a steel building frame. The pursued climbs a ladder to reach the top of the frame and jumps to an adjacent batch of industrial tubing that is suspended mid-air by a large tower crane. His pursuer takes a more direct route, using speed and grip to scale a vertical steel girder, but misses his target by seconds, leaping onto the tubing while his quarry is already climbing up to the horizontal crane jib. Seeing the opportunity to make up some distance the pursuer disconnects the tubing from the crane hook (whereupon the load smashes into the steel construction frame below) causing the hydraulic pulley system to pull the hook block on which he is standing up to the horizontal jib. The two men climb through the metal frame of the jib hundreds of feet above the ground, before the pursued man seizes his chance and leaps to another stationary crane's jib and then onto a nearby partially constructed building shell. The other man, still on the first crane, pauses: he almost missed a lesser jump earlier in the chase, and is unsure if he can make it across the distance between the two cranes. But if he breaks off the pursuit he won't reach his quarry. He steels himself, leaps and misses his footing, dangling precariously from the jib of the second crane before regaining his feet.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Contemporary Action Cinema , pp. 37 - 55Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011