New year, new blog category!
Who doesn’t like movies? We certainly do! Quite often, we are asked about our opinion on a certain action movie or the choreography of a certain fighting or shooting scene. We decided to start a new blog section. Behold…
ACTION MOVIE REVIEWS!! (Imagine that said in a loud booming echoing voice…)
#UTKMmovies
Under this blog category, we will review movies that portray real life hand-to-hand combat and tactical action from the perspective of our experts. If you’d like to request a movie, let us know in the comments below, email us, or post on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #UTKMmovies.
First, let’s define our ranking scales!
The Categories:
- Realism (of hand-to-hand combat)
- Strategy (of the characters)
- Firearms and Weapons (use and portrayal)
- Enjoyment (did we like the film)
- Final rating (an average total)
Each category is scored out of 5 stars, and the average total will be given for the final rating.
Realism
Obviously, a movie can have a variety of hand-to-hand combat styles. Some directors go for a more flashy, unrealistic style of fighting, while some go for more practical and realistic styles. While great, epic action scenes like that in Kill Bill (2003, 2004) are fun to watch, they aren’t exactly the most realistic at times. Not to pick on the Kill Bill series, we love that movie, but movies with scenes we find more realistic will score higher on the star scale and B Movies with “hacky” and unrealistic fight scenes will score low on the point scale.
Strategy
Both the main goodies and baddies have to have some strategy in their action, and obviously we must assess whether they were good whether or not it’s realistic. Running around shooting everything and blowing everything up may look cool, but is it a good strategy? A movie that is just filled with explosions and non-stop action will score low on the star scale. However, if there is an attempt to show a realistic and feasible strategy that is believable, it will score high.
Firearms and Weapons
What would an action movie be with out a little bit of firearms and/or weapons use? Thus, of course in modern action movies, we will also be looking at whether the firearms handling meets our approval or if it’s clearly actor/director improvisation that looks good but is actually total garbage. If other weapons are involved, we will also make a judgement call on whether it is more realistic or simply flashy.
Enjoyment
This is where we rate the movie on all the other factors, including script, character development, and whether we, well… enjoyed it or not. This is a bit more subjective and totally up to the individual blog authors’ likes and tastes. Even if a move is terrible on all other aspects, it may still have some hope.
Final Score
This is the average of all the previous categories, and thus its final score.
Would you like us to review a specific action movie? You can always request via email, or post on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #UTKMmovies.