Image: Lifehacker
Movies from Hong Kong-based filmmakers have been treating action as art for decades, and martial arts movies have always big business in China, South Korea, and Indonesia, even as directors have begun blending liberal doses of gunplay and maybe even a car chase or two into the action. American action movies used to favor fistfights over heavily choreographed battles, but that all started to change in the ‘90s as balletic actioner like John Woo’s Hard Boiled were imported, inspiring “groundbreaking” Hollywood movies like The Matrix.
As evidenced by the enthusiastic internet reception to the release of the trailer for John Wick: Chapter 4, that series crystalized a market for movies that are nearly non-stop violence, but also so elevated and carefully choreographed and directed as to feel...operatic.
John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023 Movie) Official Trailer – Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgård
Like the 20 films collected here, the best of this genre—affectionally labeled “gun-fu”—often have a lot in common: they’ve got martial arts (or at least well-choreographed street fighting), firearms, tons of adversaries, and the plots nearly always involve a nearly primal need for revenge on the part of the protagonist. Those similarities are a feature, rather than a bug—the plot is just the canvass on which the filmmakers paint (usually in bright red).
