The most overlooked stunts in action cinema
Stunt work is an aspect of film that is simultaneously embraced and underappreciated. While action fans have their favorite stunts and casual moviegoers will mostly show up for the impressive spectacle, it is still a department that has struggled to gain recognition in the major awards circles.
Typically, the casual viewers will take many of the stunts for granted unless they’re flashy and over-the-top, like flying real fighter jets or parachuting a motorcycle off of a mountain. Those are undeniably impressive feats that deserve all the praise in the world, but they can’t help but overshadow some of the more ground-level set pieces that the action world has to offer. The following five stunts aren’t only among the best in film, but they also happen to, unfortunately, slip by unnoticed in conversations regarding cinema’s most impressive stuntwork.
Car Fight – “The Raid 2”
Among the most intricate and visceral fight scenes in a duology, the car scene in the Indonesian martial arts crime epic “The Raid 2” stands tall among every other vehicle-set hand-to-hand bout. On top of simply coming across as a giddily vicious and violent escape attempt for Iko Uwais’ character, the behind-the-scenes execution is even more thrilling and innovative.
For one shot, director Gareth Evans passed the camera from outside the car through a window to the cinematographer who was dressed up as a car seat, who then passed it on to an assistant outside the opposite window. It’s a multi-person magic trick that is pulled off flawlessly in-camera, and easily puts to shame the often digitally-enhanced vehicle fights set in most modern-day films.
Opening – “The Villainess”
Hailing from South Korea, Jung Byung-gil’s kinetic story about a vengeful assassin starts off with more than a bang. Viewers are immediately immersed in a dizzying one-take shot that stays in first-person point of view for four minutes before cleverly using a mirror to transition into third person point of view. It’s a breathlessly exciting trek littered with stabbing, kicking, shooting and body trauma by gym equipment, and Byung-gil and star Kim Ok-vin are more than up to the task of showing it off to the audience’s eyes.
Hospital One-Take – “Hard Boiled”
This bullet-riddled and gorgeously stylized cop thriller was Hong Kong legend John Woo’s last film before making U.S. productions, and though it is packed with glorious shootouts, one has blasted its way into the hearts of action junkies everywhere. This would be the hospital sequence, which is a five-minute one-take that was ironically conceived to save time for the arduous shoot. It was a difficult and dangerous process, with issues such as switching all of the set decorations and effects (including pyrotechnics) within 20 seconds and glass being flung into star Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s eyes. Though the behind-the-scenes drama might induce a headache, the action itself provides nothing but euphoria for fans of lengthy, well-staged shootouts in film.
Underwater Heist – “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation”
“Mission: Impossible” is a franchise notorious for delivering increasingly complex and death-defying stunts with each installment, so it’s understandable if some sequences are less memorable than others. One such scene takes place in the fifth installment (the same film where Tom Cruise hangs off the side of a plane) and features Ethan Hunt (Cruise) replacing and retrieving a computer chip in an underwater cooling system. The system sees Cruise take a real 120-foot jump into the water and hold his breath for six minutes as opposed to the originally-planned three. This was done several times and features a CG mechanical arm, and when all is said and done one of the most underappreciated stunts in the Mission: Impossible series is one of its most accomplished.
