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160-560: Dhanak ( Hindi pronunciation: [d̪ʰənək] ; transl.   Rainbow ) is a 2015 Indian Hindi-language children's road film written and directed by Nagesh Kukunoor . Produced by Manish Mundra, Nagesh Kukunoor, and Elahe Hiptoola , the film features Hetal Gada and Krrish Chhabria as the two children, playing brother and sister, in the leading roles, with supporting performances from Chet Dixon, Vipin Sharma , Gulfam Khan, Vibha Chibber , Flora Saini , and Vijay Maurya . The film

320-504: A Western movie . As well, the road movie is similar to a Western in that road films are also about a "frontiersmanship" and about the codes of discovery (often self-discovery). Road movies often use the music from the car stereo, which the characters are listening to , as the soundtrack and in 1960s and 1970s road movies, rock music is often used (e.g., Easy Rider from 1969 used a rock soundtrack of songs from Jimi Hendrix , The Byrds and Steppenwolf ). While early road movies from

480-465: A Cause (1955). Timothy Corrigan states that post-WW II, the genre of road films became more codified, with features solidifying such as the use of characters experiencing "amnesia, hallucinations and theatrical crisis". David Laderman states that road movies have a modernist aesthetic approach, as they focus on "rebellion, social criticism, and liberating thrills", which shows "disillusionment" with mainstream political and aesthetic norms. Awareness of

640-505: A Global release status of Chinese-language martial arts films, most notably Zhang Yimou 's Hero (2002) and House of Flying Daggers (2004), Stephen Chow 's Kung Fu Hustle (2004) and Chen Kaige 's The Promise (2005). Most Hong Kong action films in the first quarter of the 21st century, such as those in Cold War (2012), Cold War 2 (2016) and The White Storm film series have their violence toned down, especially compared to

800-452: A Leg (1997) features several sketches from filmmakers and producers' Aldo, Giovanni & Giacomo 's previous comedy productions overlaid with the rest of the movie's road-trip and romantic comedy atmosphere. Other European road films include Chris Petit 's Radio On (1979), a Wim Wenders-influenced film set on the M4 motorway; Aki Kaurismäki 's Leningrad Cowboys Go America ( 1989), about

960-426: A Ride (1947) and The Hitch-Hiker (1953), all of which "establish fear and suspense around hitchhiking", and the outlaw-themed film noirs They Live by Night (1948) and Gun Crazy . Film noir-influenced road films continued in the neo noir era, with The Hitcher (1986), Delusion (1991), Red Rock West (1992), and Joy Ride (2001). Even though road movies are a significant and popular genre, it

1120-407: A bounded journey with a clear start and finish which differs from the open ended wandering of previous films, with characters making chance encounters with other drivers who influence where one travels or ends up. To contrast the intellectual Sal character, Kerouac has the juvenile delinquent Dean, a wild, fast-driving character who represents the idea that the road provides liberation. By depicting

1280-468: A cab driver ferrying strange passengers around the city. Timothy Corrigan has called the postmodern road movie a "borderless refuse bin" of " mise en abyme " reflection, reflecting a modern audience that is not able to think of a "naturalized history". Atkinson calls contemporary road movies an "ideogram of human desire and a last-ditch search for self" designed for an audience that was raised watching TV, particularly open-ended serial programs. Note, that

1440-698: A fictional Russian rock band which travels to the US; and Theo Angelopoulos ' Landscape in the Mist , about a road trip from Greece to Germany. Road movies made in Latin America are similar in feel to European road films. Latin American road movies are usually about a cast of characters, rather than a couple or single person, and the films explore the differences between urban and rural regions and between north and south. Luis Buñuel 's Subida al Cielo ( Mexican Bus Ride , 1951),

1600-436: A fight sequence. In the 1980s, American martial arts films reflected the national move towards conservatism, reflected in films of Chuck Norris and other actors such as Sho Kosugi . The genre would shift from theatrical releases towards the end of the decade with the rise of home video, the lower box-office of American martial arts productions, and a significant portion of direct-to-video action films that first were made in

1760-647: A film noir about a musician travelling from New York City to Hollywood who sees a nation absorbed by greed, or Dennis Hopper ’s Easy Rider , which showed how American society was transformed by the social and cultural trends of the late 1960s. The New Hollywood era films made use of the new film technologies in the road movie genre, such as "fast film stock" and lightweight cameras, as well as incorporating filmmaking approaches from European cinema, such as "elliptical narrative structure and self-reflexive devices, elusive development of alienated characters; bold traveling shots and montage sequences. Road movies have been called

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1920-493: A global audience of these films in the United States and Europe, but was cut short on Lee's death in 1973 leading the phases popularity to decline. Following a period of stagnation, Chang Cheh and Lau Kar-leung revitalized the genre with shaolin kung fu films and Chor Yuen 's series of darker swordplay films based on the novels of Gu Long . Kung Fu comedies appeared featuring Jackie Chan as martial arts films flourished into

2080-566: A hero overcoming enemies or obstacles and physical conflicts or challenge, usually battling other humans or alien opponents. By late 2010s studies of genre analysis, the term "genre" itself is often replaced or supplemented with the words "mode" and "narrative form" with all three terms often being used interchangeably. Johan Höglund and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet said that the difference between these concepts are elusive, but stated that genre could be defined as belonging to specific historical and cultural moments while "mode" and "form" can refer to

2240-454: A larger pattern that operates across a wider historical and cultural field. In their book Action Cinema Since 2000 (2024), Tasker, Lisa Purse, and Chris Holmlund stated that thinking of action as a mode is more helpful than thinking of it as a genre. The three authors suggested that action frames a certain manner of filmmaking and viewing exceed genre without eclipsing it stating that websites such as IMDb and Misplaced Pages rarely label films by

2400-589: A movie character who was marginalized and who could not be incorporated into mainstream American culture, Kerouac opened the way for road movies to depict a more diverse range of characters, rather than just heterosexual couples (e.g., It Happened One Night ), groups on the move (e.g., The Grapes of Wrath ), notably the pair of male buddies. On the Road and another novel published in the same era, Vladimir Nabokov 's novel Lolita (1955), have been called "two monumental road novels that rip back and forth across American with

2560-426: A post-WW II genre, as they track key post-war cultural trends, such as the breakup of the traditional family structure, in which male roles were destabilized; there is focus on menacing events which impact the characters who are on the move; there is an association between the character and the mode of transportation being used (e.g., a car or motorcycle), with the car symbolizing the self in the modern culture; and there

2720-543: A propensity for violent action, identified with the films of Chang Cheh . Violent female characters have been part of cinema since its early inception, with characters such as Kate Kelly brandishing a shotgun in The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). Women traditionally appear in action films as romantic interests, tomboys , or sidekicks to male protagonists. Violent white women would appear in other genres as well such as

2880-468: A road movie tradition than stretches from Bertrand Blier 's Les Valseuses (1973) and Agnès Varda 's Sans toit ni loi (about a homeless woman) to 1990s films such as Merci la vie (1991) and Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi 's Baise-moi (a controversial film about two women revenging a rape), to 2000s films such as Laurent Cantet 's L'emploi du temps (2001) and Cédric Kahn 's Feux rouges (2004). While French road movies share

3040-443: A rupture point in the narrative which erases and forgets the history of this violence. Canada also has huge expanses of territory, which make the road movie also common in that country, where the genre is used to examine "themes of alienation and isolation in relation to an expansive, almost foreboding landscape of seemingly endless space", and explore how Canadian identity differs from the "less humble and self-conscious neighbours to

3200-501: A series of action sequences, stating that that the difference between Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Die Hard (1988), that while both were mainstream Hollywood blockbusters with hero asserting masculinity and overcoming obstacles to a personal and social solution, John McClane in Die Hard repeatedly firing his automatic pistol while swinging from a high rise was not congruent with

3360-725: A significant portion. These films include Taxi 2 (2000), Kiss of the Dragon (2001), District 13 (2004) and Unleashed (2005). Whan asked about the Americanization of these French films, Christophe Gans , director of Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) stated that "Hollywood ownership of certain elements [...] must be challenged, in order to show that these elements have also long been present in European culture." The most significant producers of French action films with international ambitions

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3520-653: A similar level of popularity to that of the Western in the United States. The most internationally known films of this era were the films Kurosawa with Seven Samurai (1954), The Hidden Fortress (1958), and Yojimbo (1961). By at least the 1950s, Japanese films were looked upon as a model to be emulated by Hong Kong film production, and Hong Kong film companies began actively enlisting professionals from Japan, such as cinematographer Tadashi Nishimoto to contribute to color and widescreen cinematography. New literary sources also developed in martial arts films of this period, with

3680-406: A single genre and that streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix similarly dilutes what is marketed and received as action. In transnational cinema, there are two major trends in action films: Hollywood action films and their style being imitated around the globe and the other being Chinese-language martial arts films. The roots of action films extend into the beginning of film but it

3840-570: A small town where the inhabitants cause road accidents to salvage the vehicles; the biker film Stone (1974) by Sandy Harbutt , about a biker gang who witness a political cover-up murder; The (1981) thriller Roadgames by Richard Franklin , about a truck driver who tracks down a serial killer in the Australian outback; Dead-end Drive-in (1986) by Brian Trenchard-Smith , about a dystopian future where drive-in theatres are turned into detention centres; Metal Skin (1994) by Geoffrey Wright about

4000-567: A story about a journey down the Mississippi River that is full of social commentary; Heart of Darkness (1902), about a journey down a river in the Belgian Congo to search for a rogue colonial trader; and Women in Love (1920), which describes "travel and mobility" while also providing social commentary about the woes of industrialization. Laderman states that Women in Love particularly lays

4160-586: A street racer; and Kiss or Kill (1997) by Bill Bennett , a film noir-style road movie. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) has been called a "watershed gay road movie that addresses diversity in Australia". Walkabout (1971), Backroads (1977), and Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) use a depiction of travelling through the Australian outback to address the issue of relations between white and Indigenous people. In 2005, Fiona Probyn described

4320-548: A strong American influence, with the films incorporating the road movie-comedy genre hybrid made popular in US films such as Peter Farrelly 's Dumb and Dumber (1994). Spanish films including Los años bárbaros , Carretera y manta , Trileros , Al final del Camino , and Airbag , which has been called the "most successful Spanish road movie of all time". Airbag , along with Slam (2003), El mundo alrededor (2006) and Los managers , are examples of Spanish road films that, like US movies such as Road Trip , uses

4480-410: A subgenre of road movies about Indigenous Australians that she called "No Road" movies, in that they typically do not show a vehicle travelling on an asphalt road; instead, these films depict travel on a trail, often with Indigenous trackers being shown using their tracking abilities to discern hard-to-detect clues on the trail. With the increasing depiction of racial minorities in Australian road movies,

4640-510: A subversive erotic charge." In the 1950s, there were "wholesome" road comedies such as Bob Hope and Bing Crosby 's Road to Bali (1952), Vincente Minnelli 's The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis film Hollywood or Bust (1956). There were not many 1950s road films, but "postwar youth culture" was depicted in The Wild One (1953) and Rebel Without

4800-669: A surge of motion-pictures such as Road, Movie , nominated for the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix Award , the Tribeca Film Festival , and the Generation 14plus at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival in 2010. Liars Dice explores the story of a young mother from a remote village who, going in search of her missing husband, goes missing, the film examines the human cost of migration to cities and

4960-548: A taxi driver trying to find about the Hollywood detective character Charlie Chan , and Abraham Lim 's Roads and Bridges (2001), about an Asian-American prisoner who is sentenced to clean up garbage along a Midwestern highway. Australia's vast open spaces and concentrated population have made the road movie a key genre in that country, with films such as George Miller 's Mad Max films, which were rooted in an Australian tradition for films with " dystopian and noir themes with

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5120-451: A three-act structure centered on survival, resistance and revenge with narratives where the physical body of the hero is tested, traumatized and ultimately triumphant. The third shift in action cinema, the postclassical, was defined by the predominance of Eastern cinema and its aesthetics, primarily the wire-work of Hong Kong action cinema from the classical era, through the convention of the increasingly computer generated effects. This saw

5280-594: A tough police officer protects society by upholding the law against systematic corruption. This extended into films which O'Brien described as "knee-jerk responses" to perceived threats with rogue cop and vigilante films such as Dirty Harry (1971) and Death Wish (1974) where the restoration of order is only possible by force and antisocial characters prepared to act when society does not. The vigilantism reappears in other films that were exploitative of southern society such as Billy Jack (1971) and White Lightning (1973) and "good ol' boy" comedies like Smokey and

5440-414: A wealthy woman who goes on the road is liberated from her elite background and marriage to an immoral husband when she meets and experiences hospitality from regular, good-hearted Americans who she never would have met in her previous life, with middle America depicted as a utopia of "real community". The scenes in road movies tend to elicit longing for a mythic past. American road movies have tended to be

5600-558: A white genre, with Spike Lee 's Get on the Bus (1996) being a notable exception, as its main characters are African-American men on a bus travelling to the Million Man March (the film depicts the historic role of buses in the US civil rights movement). Asian-American filmmakers have used the road movie to examine the role and treatment of Asian-Americans in the United States; examples include Wayne Wang 's Chan Is Missing (1982), about

5760-456: Is Luc Besson 's France-based EuropaCorp , who released films like Taxi (1998) and From Paris with Love (2010). EuropaCorp produced Transporter franchise starred British actor Jason Statham and made him an action film star, which led him to feature in The Expendables series by the end of the 2010s. The action film genre has been a staple of Bollywood cinema . In the 1970s,

5920-569: Is a generic term to refer to several types of films containing martial arts. The wuxia film is the oldest genre in Chinese cinema. Stephen Teo wrote in his book on Wuxia that there is no satisfactory English translation of the term, with it often being identified as "the swordplay film" in critical studies. It is derived from the Chinese words wu denoting militarist or martial qualities and xia denoting chivalry, gallantry, and qualities of knighthood. The term wuxia entered into popular culture in

6080-709: Is about a poor rural person's trip into a big city to help his mother, who is dying. The road trip on this film is shown as a "carnivalesque pilgrimage" or "travelling circus", an approach also used in Bye Bye Brazil (1979, Brazil), Guantanamera (1995, Cuba), and Central do Brasil ( Central Station , 1998, Brazil). Some Latin American road movies are also set in the era of conquest, such as Cabeza de Vaca (1991, Mexico). Movies about outlaws escaping from justice include Profundo Carmesí ( Deep Crimson , 1996, Mexico) and El Camino ( The Road , 2000, Argentina). Y tu mamá también ( And Your Mother Too , 2001, Mexico)

6240-536: Is about two Indigenous men. While rare, there are some road movies about large groups on the road ( Get on the Bus from 1996) and lone drivers ( Vanishing Point from 1971). The road movie has been called an elusive and ambiguous film genre. Timothy Corrigan states that road movies are a "knowingly impure" genre as they have "overdetermined and built-in genre-blending tendencies". Devin Orgeron states that road movies, despite their literal focus on car trips, are "about

6400-471: Is about two young male buddies who have sexual adventures on the road. Movies involving road movie genre while being rejected by mainstream media, gained huge popularity in Russian art cinema and surrounding post-Soviet cultures, slowly building their way into international film festivals. Well-known examples are My Joy (2010), Bimmer (2003), Major (2013), and How Vitka Chesnok Took Lyokha Shtyr to

6560-472: Is an "overlooked strain of film history". Major genre studies often do not examine road movies, and there has been little analysis of what qualifies as a road movie. The road movie is mostly associated with the United States, as it focuses on "peculiarly American dreams, tensions and anxieties". US road movies examine the tension between the two foundational myths of American culture, which are individualism and populism, which leads to some road films depicting

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6720-651: Is based on Twin Dragons (1992). Other films such as the martial arts film Bhadrachlam (2001), borrows from American cinema with the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Kickboxer (1989). SS Rajamouli 's RRR (2022) was among the highest budgeted films made in India, and became a rare hit film outside of Indian diaspora, where it broke box office records in Japan and performed exceptionally well in American box office. Japan

6880-442: Is itself empowering and, if not, whether a hypersexualized female character can still represent strength and autonomy. Hypersexualized female action leads had tight fitting or revealing costumes that Tasker identified as "exaggerated statements of sexuality" and in the tradition of "fetishistic figure of fantasy" derives from comic books and soft pornography . This originated in television with characters like Buffy Summers ( Buffy

7040-580: Is not in Mumbai but in a village in Rajasthan for a film shoot portraying a Rajput prince. Convinced that a meeting with SRK is all it would take to get Chotu his eyes back, the children set off alone on a 300 km journey traversing testing terrain. Dhanak was entirely shot in Jodhpur , and Jaisalmer , Rajasthan , India. The film was premiered at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale). Dhanak

7200-565: Is stuck between the father-daughter duo, as they embark on a journey from Delhi to Kolkata . In Nagesh Kukunoor 's children's film Dhanak a blind kid and his sister set off alone on a 300 km journey traversing testing Indian terrain from Jaislamer to Jodhpur , the film won the Crystal Bear Grand Prix for Best Children's Film, and Special Mention for the Best Feature Film by The Children's Jury for Generation Kplus at

7360-546: Is usually a focus on men, with women typically being excluded, creating a "male escapist fantasy linking masculinity to technology". Despite these examples of the post-WW II aspects of road movies, Cohan and Hark argue that road movies go back to the 1930s. In the 2000s, a new crop of road movies was produced, including Vincent Gallo 's Brown Bunny (2003), Alexander Payne 's Sideways (2004), Jim Jarmusch 's Broken Flowers (2005) and Kelly Reichardt 's Old Joy (2006) and scholars are taking more interest in examining

7520-570: The Odyssey and the Aeneid . The road film is a standard plot employed by screenwriters . It is a type of bildungsroman , a story in which the hero changes, grows or improves over the course of the story. It focuses more on the journey rather than the goal. David Laderman lists other literary influences on the road movie, such as Don Quixote (1615), which uses a description of a journey to create social satire; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884),

7680-568: The femme fatales in film noir and horror films of the 1970s. Violent women were common in action films since the 1960s. These films featured working-class women exacting revenge. Films of the 1970s featured black women such as Pam Grier in films like Foxy Brown (1974). In the 1980s, a new symbolically transgressive character emerged in the form of Ellen Ripley in Aliens (1986) and Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and

7840-960: The 65th Berlin International Film Festival Finding Fanny is based on a road trip set in Goa and follows the journey of five dysfunctional friends who set out on a road trip in search of Fanny. The Good Road is told in a hyperlink format , where several stories are intertwined, with the center of the action being a highway in the rural lands of Gujarat near a town in Kutch . Several road movies have been produced in Africa , including Cocorico! Monsieur Poulet (1977, Niger ); The Train of Salt and Sugar (2016, Mozambique ); Hayat (2016, Morocco ); Touki Bouki (1973, Senegal) and Borders (2017, Burkina Faso ). The genre has its roots in spoken and written tales of epic journeys, such as

8000-540: The Bollywood action film consolidated with two films starring Amitabh Bachchan : Prakash Mehra 's Zanjeer (1973) and Yash Chopra 's Deewaar (1975). The box office success of these films made Bachchan a star and spawned the "angry young man" film in Bollywood cinema. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the action genre film declined considerably with new films predominantly featuring former bodybuilders failing to reach

8160-508: The Hong Kong action cinema , such melodramatic male bonding and marginalized women characters, while the Korean films also have greater elements of tragedy and romance emphasized. Most martial arts films made before the mid-1960s were Cantonese-language productions. In comparison, Mandarin-language films were an integral part of Hong Kong cinema due to the influx of Shanghai film talent in

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8320-757: The Russo-Ukrainian War . Indian screens saw a series of road movies with experimental filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma 's works such as Kshana Kshanam . Rachel Dwyer , a reader in world cinema at the University of London -Department of South Asia, marked Varma's contribution into the new-age film noir . The film received critical reception at the Ann Arbor Film Festival , which led to a series of genre-benders like Mani Ratnam 's Thiruda Thiruda , and Varma's Daud , Anaganaga Oka Roju and Road . Subsequently 21st century bollywood movies witnessed

8480-554: The September 11 attacks in 2001, which suggested an end to fantastical elements that defined the action hero and genre. Following the release of Quentin Tarantino 's Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) revisited the tropes of 1970s action films leading a renaissance of vengeance narratives in films like The Brave One (2007) and Taken (2008). O'Brien found that Tarantino's films were post-modern takes on

8640-501: The xinpai wuxia xiaoshuo (or "new school martial arts fiction") coming into prominence with the success of Liang Yusheng 's Longhu Dou Jinghua (1954) and Jin Yong 's Shujian enchou lu (1956) which showed influence of the Shanghai martial arts films but also circulated from Hong Kong to Taiwan and Chinese communities overseas. This led to a growing demand in both local and regional markets in

8800-450: The "No Road" subgenre has also been associated with Asian-Australian films that depict travel using routes other than roads (e.g., the 2010 film Mother Fish , which depicts travel over water as it tells the story of the boat people refugees). The iconography of car crashes in many Australian road movies (particularly the Mad Max series) has been called a symbol of white-Indigenous violence,

8960-517: The "disintegration of the family and the community" and the "journey of transformation", as it depicts two fugitives on the run, whose distrust fades as the two women learn to trust each other from their adventures on the road. The images in the film are blend of homage to US road movie conventions (gas stations, billboards) and "recognizable Spanish types", such as the "embittered drunkard". Other European road films include Ingmar Bergman 's Wild Strawberries (1957), about an old professor travelling

9120-440: The "first mumblecore road movie"; Broken Flowers (2005); Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris ' Little Miss Sunshine (2006), about a family's trip in a VW camper van; Old Joy (2006); Alexander Payne 's Nebraska (2013), which depicts a father and son on a road trip; Steven Knight 's Locke (2013), about a construction executive taking stressful calls on a road trip; and Jafar Panahi 's Taxi Tehran (2015), about

9280-474: The "road movie genre as a narrative framework for...gross-out sex comedy". The director of Airbag , Juanma Bajo Ulloa , states that he aimed to make fun of the road movie genre as established in North America, while still using the metamorphosis through road trip narrative that is popular in the genre (in this case, the main male character rejects his upper class girlfriend in favour of a prostitute he meets on

9440-462: The "road picture" as a separate genre came only in the 1960s with Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider . Road movies were an important genre in the late 1960s and 1970s era of the New Hollywood , with films such as Terrence Malick 's Badlands and Richard Sarafian 's Vanishing Point (1971) showing an influence from Bonnie and Clyde . There may have been influences from French cinema in

9600-462: The 1910s, the contemporary definition usually refers to a film that came with the arrival of New Hollywood and the rise of anti-heroes appearing in American films of the late 1960s and 1970s drawing from war films , crime films and Westerns . These genres were followed by what is referred to as the "classical period" in the 1980s. This was followed by the post-classical era where American action films were influenced by Hong Kong action cinema and

9760-443: The 1930s focused on couples, in post-World War II films, usually the travellers are male buddies, although in some cases, women are depicted on the road, either as temporary companions, or more rarely, as the protagonist couple (e.g., Thelma & Louise from 1991). The genre can also be parodied, or have protagonists that depart from the typical heterosexual couple or buddy paradigm, as with The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of

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9920-516: The 1940s internment of Japanese Canadians by the Canadian government (e.g., Lise Yasui 's Family Gathering (1988), Rea Tajiri 's History and Memory (1991) and Janet Tanaka 's Memories from the Department of Amnesia (1991). European filmmakers of road movies appropriate the conventions established by American directors, while at the same time reformulating these approaches, by de-emphasizing

10080-428: The 1960s with films like The Born Losers (1967) which was predominantly a drama, interspersed with martial arts scenes. American martial arts films predominantly came into production following the release of Enter the Dragon (1973), with the only higher-budgeted American film to follow in its wake being The Yakuza (1974). Lott noted the two films would lead to the two subsequent styles of martial arts films in

10240-593: The 1970s. James Monaco wrote in 1979 in American Film Now: The People, The Power, The Money, the Movies that "the lines that separate on genre from another have continued to disintegrate." Tasker said that most post-classical action films are hybrids, drawing from genres as varied as war films, science fiction , horror , crime, martial arts , and comedy films . In Chinese-language films, both wuxia and kung fu are genre-specific terms, while martial arts

10400-768: The 1980s. Other films again modernized the form with gangster films of John Woo ( A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989)) and the Wong Fei Hung saga returning in Tsui Hark 's Once Upon a Time in China featuring Jet Li which again revitalized the swordplay styled films. By the turn of the century Hollywood action films would look towards Hong Kong cinema and bringing some of their major actors and directors over to apply their style to their films, such as Chan, Woo, Li, Michelle Yeoh and Yuen Woo-Ping . The release of Ang Lee 's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) led to

10560-442: The 1980s. While some scholars such as David Bordwell suggested they were films that favor spectacle to storytelling, others such as Geoff King stated they allow the scenes of spectacle to be attuned to storytelling. Action films are often hybrid with other genres, mixing into various forms such as comedies , science fiction films , and horror films . While the term "action film" or "action adventure film" has been used as early as

10720-702: The 21st century have been comic book adaptations, which commenced with the X-Men and is seen in other series such as Spider-Man , and Iron Man series. Tasker wrote that despite the central characters in superhero cinema being extraordinary, occasionally even God-like, they often followed the traces of the central character becoming powerful of which is fundamental to action films, often dealt with origin stories in superhero films. Action films often interface with other genres. Tasker wrote that films are often labelled action thrillers, action-fantasy and action-adventure films with different nuances. Tasker later discussed that

10880-513: The Bandit (1977). This era also emphasizes the car chase scenes as moments of spectacle in films like Bullitt and The French Connection (1971). O'Brien described these films as emphasizing "the fusion of man and machine" with the drivers and vehicles acting as one, concluding with what he described as "the ultimate in apocalyptic modernity and social erasure" in Mad Max 2 (1981). O'Brien described

11040-746: The Bollywood press who reported on him in the headlines of Bollywood magazines for his public brawls and affairs with leading actresses. In Dabangg (2010), Khan continued with this public persona, which was repeated in several of his later films such as Ready (2011), Bodyguard (2011), Ek Tha Tiger (2012) and Dabangg 2 (2012). From the 1980s, generations of actors in Telugu cinema have invoked Hong Kong action films, such as Srihari who stated he wanted to become an actor after watching his first Bruce Lee film. Several films in Telugu cinema were remakes of Hong Kong films, such as Hello Brother (1994) which

11200-469: The Country column is the country of origin and/or financing, and does not necessarily represent the country or countries depicted in each film. Universal Pictures (International) Action film The action film is a film genre that predominantly features chase sequences, fights, shootouts, explosions, and stunt work. The specifics of what constitutes an action film has been in scholarly debate since

11360-404: The Desert (1994), which depicts a group of drag queens who tour the Australian desert. Other examples of the increasing diversity of the drivers shown in 1990s and subsequent decades' road films are The Living End (1992), about two gay, HIV-positive men on a road trip; To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), which is about drag queens, and Smoke Signals (1998), which

11520-593: The Dragon briefly allowed an influx of Hong Kong films to Japan, but the trend did not last, with 28 Hong Kong films, mostly kung fu films, being released in 1974, and the number decreasing to five in 1975, four in 1977 and only two in 1978. Ryuhei Kitamura , director of Versus (2000), said in 2004 that he grew frustrated with the Japanese film industry as producers felt they couldn't make action films in competition with Hong Kong or American productions. Versus grew to become popular outside of Japan, and Kitamura said he

11680-466: The Home for Invalids (2017). Some other movies incorporate a large portion of road movie style, for example Morphine (2008), Leviathan (2014), Cargo 200 (2007), Donbass (2018). With themes ranging from crime, corruption and power to history, addiction and existence, road movies became an independent part of cinematic landscape. From the strong flow of existentialism, to the black comedy style,

11840-597: The Hong Kong film industry after the handover in 1997. Anglophone action film scholarship has tended to emphasize bigger budget American action films, with academics tending to find films that fall out of Hollywood productions as not quite fitting definitions of the genre. By 2024, many national and regional industries were known for action films. These include international films such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam , South Korean, Japanese, Thai , Brazilian , Chinese , South African , French and Italian action titles. At

12000-802: The Red Lotus (1965) and King Hu 's Come Drink with Me (1966). In the 1970s, the Hong Kong martial arts films began to grow under the format of yanggang ("staunch masculinity") mostly through the films of Chang Cheh which were popular. This transition led to the kung fu film sub-genre at beginning of the decade and moved beyond the swordplay films with contemporary settings of late Qing or early Republican periods and had more hand-to-hand combat over supernatural swordplay and special effects. A new studio, Golden Harvest quickly became one of independent filmmakers to grant creative freedom and pay and attracted new directors and actors, including Bruce Lee . The popularity of kung fu films and Bruce Lee led to attract

12160-651: The Road (1976). All three films were shot by cinematographer Robby Müller and mostly take place in West Germany . Kings of the Road includes stillness, which is unusual for road movies, and quietness (except for the rock soundtrack). Other road movies by Wenders include Paris, Texas and Until the End of the World . Wender's road movies "filter nomadic excursions through a pensive Germanic lens" and depict "somber drifters coming to terms with their internal scars". France has

12320-585: The Side (1995), in that they show a "less traditional" and more "visible, innovative, introspective, and realistic" type of woman onscreen. Spanish road movies about women include Hola, ¿estás sola? , Lisboa , Fugitivas , Retorno a Hansala , and Sin Dejar Huella address social issues about women, such as the "injustice and mistreatment" that women experience under "authoritarian patriarchal order." Fugitivas depicts an American road movie genre convention:

12480-1085: The US road movie's focus on the theme of individual freedom, French movies also balance this value with equality and fraternity, according to the French Republican model of liberty-equality-fraternity. Neil Archer states that French and other Francophone (e.g., Belgium, Switzerland) road films focus on "displacement and identity", notably in regards to maghrebin immigrants and young people (e.g., Yamina Benguigui 's Inch'Allah Dimanche (2001), Ismaël Ferroukhi 's La Fille de Keltoum (2001) and Tony Gatlif 's Exils (2004). More broadly, European films are tending to use imagery of border-crossing and focusing on "marginal identities and economic migration", which can be seen in Lukas Moodysson 's Lilja 4-ever (2002), Michael Winterbottom's In This World (2002) and Ulrich Seidl 's Import/Export (2007). European road movies also examine post-colonialism , "disclocation, memory and identity". Road movies from Spain have

12640-480: The United States, Europe and Japan had during this period. Yip described Japanese cinema as the most advanced in Asia at the time. This was showcased by the international breakthrough of Akira Kurosawa 's films like Rashomon (1950). The film genre known as the chanbara was at its height in Japan. The style was a sub-genre to the jidai-geki , or period drama with an emphasis on sword fighting and action. It had

12800-406: The United States, with films like Enter the Dragon about people who reveled in combat, often in a tournament setting, and The Yakuza which had several genres attached to it, but featured several martial arts sequences. By the end of the 1970s, the style was an established genre in American cinema, often featuring tough heroic characters who would fight and not think about their actions until after

12960-584: The Vampire Slayer (1997–2003)) and Xena ( Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001)). These series popularity demonstrated a growing market for female action film heroes, in films of the 2000s like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Charlie's Angels (2000), Ultraviolet (2006), Salt (2010) and series like Underworld and Resident Evil . These series like their television series earlier, had their leads eroticized as active and physically capable while also being scantily-clad, hyper-feminized similar to

13120-737: The [history of] the cinema, about the culture of the image", with road movies created with a mixture of Classical Hollywood film genres. The road movie genre developed from a "constellation of “solid” modernity, combining locomotion and media-motion" to get "away from the sedentarising forces of modernity and produc[e] contingency". Road movies are blended with other genres to create a number of subgenres, including: road horror (e.g., Near Dark from 1987); road comedies (e.g., Flirting with Disaster from 1996); road racing films (e.g., Death Race 2000 from 1975) and rock concert tour films (e.g., Almost Famous from 2000). Film noir road movies include Detour (1945), Desperate , The Devil Thumbs

13280-553: The action heroine's dual status of an active subject and sexual object was overturning the traditional gender binary because the films "assume that women are powerful" without resorting to justify her physical aggression through narratives involving maternal drive, mental instability or trauma. Purse found that female leads in films like Elektra (2005), Kill Bill , Underworld , Charlie's Angels and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) did showcase women having expensive cars, clothing, travel, homes and often high-paying jobs, but that this

13440-435: The book Australian Genre Film , Amanda Howell suggested that this label was used to help distance Australian cinema from Hollywood films as it would be suggesting commerce over culture and that it would be "quite unacceptable to make Australian movies using conventions established in the U.S.A." Howell stated this to be the case with action films of the 1970s and 1980s with Brian Trenchard-Smith 's Turkey Shoot (1982) being

13600-461: The car crash experience", a subject matter which led to Ted Turner lobbying against the film being shown in US theatres. Asian-Canadian filmmakers have made road films about the experience of Canadians of Asian origin, such as Ann Marie Fleming 's The Magical Life of Long Tak Sam , which is about her search for her "Chinese grandfather, an itinerant magician and acrobat". Other Asian-Canadian road movies look at their relatives experiences during

13760-550: The classical form of action cinema to be the 1980s. The decade continued the trends of formative period with heroes as avengers ( Lethal Weapon (1987)), rogue police officers ( Die Hard (1988)) and mercenary warriors ( Commando (1985)). Following the continuity of the car and man hybrid of the previous decade, the 1980s featured weaponized men with who were either also carrying weapons such as Sudden Impact (1983), trained to be weapons ( American Ninja (1985)) or imbued with technology ( RoboCop (1987)). O'Brien noted that

13920-420: The country's history, current situation, and to anxieties about the future. The Mad Max films, including Mad Max , The Road Warrior and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome , "have become canonical for their dystopic reinvention of the outback as a post-human wasteland where survival depends upon manic driving skills". Other Australian road movies include Peter Weir 's The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), about

14080-480: The creation of Bonnie and Clyde ; David Newman and Robert Benton have stated that they were influenced by Jean-Luc Godard 's A bout de souffle (1960) and François Truffaut 's Tirez sur la pianiste (1960). More generally, Devin Orgeron states that American road movies were based on post-WW II European cinema's own take on the American road film approach, showing a mutual influence between US and European filmmakers in this genre. The addition of violence to

14240-459: The decline of overt masculinity in the action film which corresponded with the end of the Cold War in 1991, while the rise of self-referential and parodies of this era grew in films like Last Action Hero (1993). O'Brien described this era as being soft where the hard bodies of the classical era were replaced with computer generated imagery such as that of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). This

14400-411: The destructive power of cars and the country’s harsh, sparsely populated land mass ". Australian road movies have been described as having a dystopian or gothic tone, as the road the characters travel on is often a "dead end", with the journey being more about "inward-looking" exploration than reaching the intended location. In Australia, road movies have been called a "complex metaphor" which refers to

14560-494: The direct-to-video field, or in similarly low-budget theatrical releases such as Bulletproof Monk (2003). While the American styled-films were predominantly made in the United States, productions were also made in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and South Africa, and were predominantly shot in the English-language. Heroic Bloodshed is a that originates with English-language Hong Kong action and crime film fan communities in

14720-401: The dramatic movement-based sequences that predominate in action films . Road movies do not typically use the standard three-act structure used in mainstream films; instead, an "open-ended, rambling plot structure" is used. The road movie keeps its characters "on the move", and as such the "car, the tracking shot , [and] wide and wild open space" are important iconography elements, similar to

14880-487: The earlier work of directors like Woo and Johnnie To . Antong Chen, in his study on the Hong Kong action film, wrote that the influence of China and the amount of Chinese co-productions made with Hong Kong created a shift in these films, particularly following the release of Infernal Affairs (2002). Harvey O'Brien wrote in 2012 that the contemporary action film emerged through other genres, primarily Westerns , crime and war films and can be separated into four forms:

15040-432: The early 1960s and saw a surge in production of Hong Kong martial arts films that went beyond the stories about Wong Fei-hung which were declining in popularity. These new martial arts films featured magical swordplay and higher production values and more sophisticated special effects than the previous films with Shaw Brothers a campaign of "new school" ( xinpai ) martial arts swordplay films such as Xu Zenghong's Temple of

15200-428: The end of the 1990s. Films such as Chunhang (2000) and Memento Mori (2000) and action films Shiri (1999) and Nowhere to Hide (1999) received commercial releases in North America, Asia, and Europe. The success of the latter two films was unprecedented, and was followed by other South Korean action films in the early 2000s reaching the top of the local box office. These South Korean films mimic some traits of

15360-514: The exploitation of migrant workers. It was India's Official Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 87th Academy Awards . It won special prize at Sofia International Film Festival . In Karwaan , the protagonist is forced to set out on a road trip from Bengaluru to Kochi after he loses his father in an accident, but the body delivered to him is of the mother of a woman in another state. Ryan Gilbey of The Guardian

15520-527: The female leads in implausible elements, such as in Charlie's Angels , Fantastic Four (2005) and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006). The fighting styles of women also tend towards more traditionally feminine fluid movements of martial arts, over using guns or directly punching. Purse wrote that the contemporary female action film lead's sexualized brand had her in close proximity of post-feminism discourse about choice, power and sexuality. Marc O'Day interprets

15680-414: The following films were voted the top ten best action films of all time. In Hong Kong, the "new school" of martial arts films that Shaw Brothers brought in 1965 featured what featured what Yip described as "strong, active female characters as protagonists." These female-centered films were challenged with the rise of a new male heroic prototype marked by a strong sense of youthful energy and defiance and by

15840-448: The formative trends at this point had become "identifiably generic" as film industries began to reproduced these films during the decade producers like Joel Silver and production companies like The Cannon Group, Inc. began to formulate production of these films with both high and low budgets. The action films of this era have roots in classical story telling, specifically rooted from martial arts films and Westerns, and are built around

16000-543: The formative, the classical, the post-classical and neoclassical phases. Yvonne Tasker reiterated this in her book on action and adventure films , saying that action films became a distinct genre during the New Hollywood period of the 1970s. The formative films would be from the 1960s to the early 1980s where the Anti-hero appears in cinema, featuring characters who act and transcend the law and social conventions. This appears initially in films like Bullitt (1968) where

16160-540: The former was one of the highest-grossing movies of the year in Japan. Following LoveDeath , Kitamura's next directing work was in the United States. The action cinema of South Korea mostly existed on the margins of the film industry in South Korea. The genre was initially called the Hwalkuk ("living theatre") was a term that indicated plays and films driven by action scenes, while this term has not been used regularly since

16320-494: The genre include chase sequences, fights, shootouts, explosions, and stunt work while other scholars asserted there were more underlying traits that define the genre. David Bordwell in The Way Hollywood Tells It wrote that audiences are "told that spectacle overrides narrative" in action cinema while Wheeler Winston Dixon echoed that these films were typified by "excessive spectacle" as a "desperate attempt to mask

16480-479: The genre is regularly lambasted for favoring spectacle over finely tuned narrative." Bordwell echoed this in his book, The Way Hollywood Tells It , writing that the reception to the genre as being "the emblem of what Hollywood does worst." In the Journal of Film and Video , Lennart Soberson stated that the action film genre has been a subject of scholarly debate since the 1980s. Soberson wrote that repeated traits of

16640-589: The genre. The British Film Institute highlights ten post-2000 road films that show that "[t]here’s still plenty of gas left in the road movie genre". The BFI's top 10 include Andrea Arnold ’s American Honey (2016), which used "mostly non-professional actors"; Alfonso Cuarón 's Y tu mamá también (2001), about Mexican teens on the road; The Brown Bunny (2003), which garnered publicity for its "infamous fellatio scene"; Walter Salles ' The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), about Che Guevera's epic motorcycle trip; Mark Duplass and Jay Duplass ' The Puffy Chair (2005),

16800-430: The ground. While heroes in kung fu films often display chivalry, they generally hail from different fighting schools, namely wudang and shaolin . American martial arts films feature what author M. Ray Lott described as a more realistic style of violence over the Hong Kong wuxia films with more realism and are often low-budget productions. Martial arts began routinely appearing in fight scenes in American films in

16960-468: The groundwork for the future road films, as it showed a couple who rebelled against social norms by leaving their familiar location and going on an aimless, meandering journey. Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) depicts a family that struggles to survive on the road during the Great Depression, a book that has been called "America's best-known proletarian road saga". The movie version of

17120-456: The growing using of computer generated imagery in film. Following the September 11 attacks , a return to the early forms of the genre appeared in the wake of Kill Bill and The Expendables films. Scott Higgins wrote in 2008 in Cinema Journal that action films are both one of the most popular and popularly derided of contemporary cinema genres, stating that "in mainstream discourse,

17280-453: The heterosexual couple are united by their involvement in murder; as well, with jail hanging over their heads, there can be no return to domestic life at the end of the film. There have been three historical eras of the "outlaw-rebel" road movie: the post-WW II film noir era (e.g., Detour ), the late 1960s era which was rocked by the Vietnam War ( Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde ), and

17440-484: The image of Indiana Jones in Raiders swinging his whip to fend off villains in the backstreets of Cairo. British author and academic Yvonne Tasker expanded on this topic, stating that action films have no clear and constant iconography or settings. In her book The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film (2015), she found that the most broadly consistent themes tend to be a characters quest from freedom from oppression such as

17600-573: The journey to school and back. She's not just his friend and sister but, since Chotu is visually impaired, also his guide. With just months to go before Chotu turns nine, Pari feels the pressure to fulfill her promise to her brother - that he will have his eyesight back before his ninth birthday. She finds some hope when she spots a poster of Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) encouraging eye donations. She begins to write him letters addressed to his home, Mannat, in Mumbai , which go unanswered. Eventually, they realize that he

17760-557: The lack of content." Geoff King argued that the spectacle can also be a vehicle for narrative, opposed to interfering with it. Soberson stated that Harvey O'Brien had "perhaps the most convincing understanding of the genre", stating that the action film was "best understood as a fusion of form and content. It represents the idea and ethic of action through a form in which action, agitation and movement are paramount." O'Brien wrote further in his book Action Movies: The Cinema of Striking Back to suggest action films being unique and not just

17920-520: The late 1920s. These films were popular during the period, which comprised almost 60% of the total Chinese films. Man-Fung Yip stated that these film were "rather tame" by contemporary standards. He wrote that they lacked the kind of dazzling action choreography as expected today and had crude and rudimentary special effects. These films came under increasing attack by both government officials and cultural elites for their allegedly superstitious and anarchistic tendencies, leading them to be banned in 1932. It

18080-564: The late 1970s, with "action movie" becoming the more familiar term. The Korean action films came from Japanese cinema, James Bond series , and Hong Kong action cinema. As North Korea borders China, it block access to the continent from a South Korean perspective, the Cold War allowed South Koreans to substitute deferred travel beyond the border through films with locations shot in Hong Kong. While melodrama and comedy were staples in South Korean cinema, most action films were sporadic and tied to

18240-501: The late 1980s and early 1990s. In the Chinese language, the term used for these films is jinghungpin , literally meaning "hero films". Academic Laikwan Pang asserts that these gangster films appeared at a time when Hong Kong citizens felt particularly powerless with the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China set for 1997. The key directors of the genre were John Woo and Ringo Lam , and producer Tsui Hark , with

18400-508: The late 1980s and early 1990s. Author Bey Logan stated that the term was coined by Rick Baker, in the British fanzine Eastern Heroes . The term is used broadly. Baker described the style as Hong Kong action films which feature gangsters and gunplay and martial arts that were more violent than kung fu films and academic Kristof Van Den Troost described it a term used to distinguish Hong Kong gun-heavy action films from period martial arts films from

18560-431: The late 1980s in the United States were martial arts films. Towards the end of the 1990s, production of low-budget martial arts films declined as no new stars in the genre developed and older actors such as Cynthia Rothrock and Steven Seagal started showing up in less and less films. Even internationally popular films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) had negligible effects in American productions in either

18720-597: The main category-Children's Feature Film Competition, Cinema in Sneakers , and the Best Film Award at the Montreal International Children's Film Festival (FIFEM). The film won Best Children's Film at the 64th National Film Awards . All songs were composed and produced by Tapas Relia . The lyrics were by Manoj Yadav, Mir Ali Husain and Tapas Relia . Road movie There are two main narratives:

18880-617: The most notorious. Smith had previously released films like Deathcheaters (1976) and Stunt Rock (1979) when financial incentives were available for overtly commercial projects. She commented that action films did tell identifiably Australian stories such as the Sandy Harbutt 's biker film Stone (1974) and Miller's post-apocalyptic film Mad Max (1979) derived from Australia's social and cultural realities, as well as how George Miller 's later Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) derived from Australia's long-standing cinematic fascination with

19040-604: The notion that traditional marks of masculinity are not exclusive to men and that musculature was not natural, but something to be achieved. Accusations of these muscular women of the era were levelled at that them by 1993 were that they were "men in drag" and that the films generally have to "explain" why their female leads displayed physical aggression and why they were "driven to do it." As the 1990s went on, Hollywood films began having more conventional looking women in their action films such as The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996). A vibrant debate exists about whether hypersexualization

19200-443: The novel, made a year later, depicts the hungry, weary family's travel on Route 66 using "montage sequences, reflected images of the road on windshields and mirrors", and shots taken from the driver's point of view to create a sense of movement and place. Even though Henry Miller's The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1947) is not a fictional work, it captures the mood of frustration, restlessness and aimlessness that became prevalent in

19360-578: The open road as a "utopian fantasy" with a homogenous culture while others show it as a "dystopian nightmare" of extreme cultural differences. US road movies depict the wide open, vast spaces of the highways as symbolizing the "scale and notionally utopian" opportunities to move up upwards and outwards in life. In US road movies, the road is an "alternative space" where the characters, now set apart from conventional society, can experience transformation. For example, in It Happened One Night (1934),

19520-435: The physical effort required to completing a task and the abilities and skills acquired over time. Films from the period reflected on the cultural and social climate from the period, as seen in invoking Japanese or Western imperialist forces as foils. The kung fu film came out of the wuxia films. In comparison to the wuxia , film, the focus on the kung fu film is on the martial arts over chivalry, The martial arts films

19680-567: The popularity Bachan had. These films predominantly earned their revenue through longer runs at B-grade theatres. A cycle of action films came from these films in the 1980s and 1990s called the Avenging Woman film, where female protagonists seek justice for a rape victim, where the protagonist seeks revenge through violence. In 2009, the action genre was re-popularized with the box office success of Wanted (2009) starring Salman Khan . Khan reinvented his screen persona with that of his image in

19840-564: The post-Reagan era of the 1990s, when the "masculinist heroics of the Gulf War gave way to closer scrutiny" ( My Own Private Idaho , Thelma & Louise and Natural Born Killers ). In the 1970s, there were low-budget outlaw films depicting chases, such as Eddie Macon's Run . In the 1980s, there were rural Southern road movies such as Smokey and the Bandit and the Cannonball Run chase films of 1981 and 1984. The outlaw couple movie

20000-543: The postwar period. These films were targeted at the more educated and more refined middle-class audiences who saw themselves as above the contemporary martial arts films. Scott Higgins wrote in 2008 in Cinema Journal that Hollywood action films are both one of the most popular and popularly derided of contemporary cinema genres, stating that "in mainstream discourse, the genre is regularly lambasted for favoring spectacle over finely tuned narrative." Bordwell echoed this in his book, The Way Hollywood Tells It , writing that

20160-414: The pre-WW II era was changed by the publication of Jack Kerouac 's On the Road in 1957, as it sketched out the future for the road movie and provided its "master narrative" of exploration, questing, and journeying. The book includes many descriptions of driving in cars. It also depicted the character Sal Paradise, a middle class college student who goes on the road to seek material for his writing career,

20320-490: The quest and the outlaw chase. In the quest-style film, the story meanders as the characters make discoveries (e.g., Two-Lane Blacktop from 1971). In outlaw road movies, in which the characters are fleeing from law enforcement, there is usually more sex and violence (e.g., Natural Born Killers from 1994). Road films tend to focus more on characters' internal conflicts and transformations, based on their feelings as they experience new realities on their trip, rather than on

20480-402: The reception to the genre as being "the emblem of what Hollywood does worst." Tasker wrote that when action and adventure films secured awards, it is often in categories such as visual effects and sound editing. Time Out magazine conducted a poll with fifty experts in the field of action cinema, including actors, critics, filmmakers and stuntmen. Out of the 101 films ranked in the poll,

20640-441: The road and cars and a history of cultural anxiety towards a bleak and forbidding outback landscape opposed to the optimism of American action films. France is a major European country for film production and has made co-production commitments with 44 countries around the world. Around beginning of the 21st century, France began producing a series of films explicitly intended for international markets, with action films representing

20800-457: The road movie experienced a new revival. Most precious are pieces from Sergei Loznitsa , in his early work My Joy (2010) he used black noir style to tell the story of people falling together with destruction of governments after the fall of the Soviet Union. In his later work Donbass (2018), he takes an opposing style, turning to black comedy and satire to underline actual war tragedies in

20960-436: The road movie. In the book, which describe's Miller's cross-country journey across the United States, he criticizes the nation's descent into materialism. Western films such as John Ford 's Stagecoach (1939) have been called "proto-road movies." In the film, an unusual group of travellers, including a banker, prostitute, escaped prisoner and a military officer's wife, move through the dangerous desert trails. Even though

21120-641: The road). Airbag also uses Spanish equivalents to the stock road movie setting and iconography, depicting "deserts, casinos and road clubs" and use the road movie action sequences (chases, car explosions, and crashes) that remind the viewer of similar work by Tony Scott and Oliver Stone . A second subtype of Spanish road movies is more influenced by the female road movies from the US, such as Martin Scorsese 's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Jonathan Demme 's Crazy Mama (1975), Ridley Scott 's Thelma & Louise (1991), and Herbert Ross ' Boys on

21280-459: The roads of Sweden and picking up hitchhikers and Jean-Luc Godard 's Pierrot le fou (1965) about law-breaking lovers escaping on the road. Both of these films, as well as Roberto Rossellini 's Voyage in Italy (1953) and Godard's Weekend (1967) have more "existential sensibility" or pauses for "philosophical digressions of a European bent", as compared with American road films. Three Men and

21440-516: The serialization of Jinaghu qixia zhuan (1922) ( transl.  Legend of the Strange Swordsmen ). In wuxia , the emphasis is on chivalry and righteousness and allows for phantasmagoric actions over the kung fu film 's more ground-based combat. The Kung fu film emerged in the 1970s from the swordplay films. Its name is derived from the Cantonese term gong fu which has two meanings:

21600-575: The sexual tension of road movies in the late 1960s and in subsequent decades can be seen as a way to create more excitement and "frisson". From the 1930s to 1960s, merely showing a man and woman on a road trip was exciting for audience, as all the motel stays and closeness had implied, yet deferred, consummation of the sexual attraction between the characters (sex could not be depicted due to the Motion Picture Production Code ). With Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Natural Born Killers (1994),

21760-456: The south", in United States. Canadian road films include Donald Shebib 's Goin' Down the Road (1970), three Bruce McDonald films ( Roadkill (1989), Highway 61 (1991), and Hard Core Logo (1996), a mockumentary about a punk rock band's road tour), Malcolm Ingram 's Tail Lights Fade (1999) and Gary Burns ' The Suburbanators (1995). David Cronenberg 's Crash (1996) depicted drivers who get "perverse sexual arousal through

21920-493: The speed of the driver on the road, increasing the amount of introspection (often on themes such as national identity), and depicting the road trip as a search on the part of the characters. The German filmmaker Wim Wenders explored the American themes of road movies through his European reference point in his Road Movie trilogy in the mid-1970s. They include Alice in the Cities (1974), The Wrong Move (1975), and Kings of

22080-479: The starting point of the genre being traced to Woo's A Better Tomorrow (1986) make a record-breaking HK$ 34.7 million at the Hong Kong box office. The style of these films would influence American productions, such as Michael Bay 's Bad Boys II (2003) and the Wachowskis ' The Matrix (1999). Korean media recognized the more fatalistic and pessimistic tone of these films, leading to Korean journalists to label

22240-410: The story that will be told on the way to school that day will be one about a Shah Rukh Khan film or a Salman Khan film. The siblings are rivals in their love for the two stars. Pari is devoted to Shah Rukh and Chotu worships Salman Khan (down to wearing a replica of the star's trademark silver bracelet with a blue stone). Ten-year-old Pari holds her precocious eight-year-old brother's hand throughout

22400-433: The style as "Hong Kong noir ". The influence of these films was evident in early Korean films such as Im Kwon-taek 's General's Son (1990) and later films such Song Hae-sung 's A Better Tomorrow (2010), Cold Eyes (2013) and New World (2013). Postcolonial Hong Kong cinema has struggled to maintain its international identity as a provider of these types action films because the talents involved had abandoned

22560-450: The term action film genre and adventure are often used in hybrid, and are even used interchangeably. Along with Holmund and Purse, Tasker wrote that the action films expansiveness complicates easy categorization and though the genre is often spoken of as singular genre, it is rarely discussed as singular style. Screenwriter and academic Jule Selbo expanded on this, describing a film as " crime /action" or an "action/crime" or other hybrids

22720-445: The themes that rescinded irony to restore " cinephile re-actualization of the genre's conventions." The genre went into full circle resurrecting films from the classical period with Live Free or Die Hard (2007) and Rambo (2008) finding the characters navigating a contemporary world while also acknowledging their age, culminating into The Expendables (2010) film. The most commercially successful action films and franchise of

22880-525: The title character in China O'Brien (1990) who were physically muscular and or enacted more extreme violence that was usually reserve for male action leads. In her book Contemporary Action Cinema (2011), Lisa Purse described the media response to female leads in action films reveal a discomfort about their presence and are often described with hesitant terms of women moving into territories that are perceived as masculine. Revealing woman in this form deconstructs

23040-465: The travellers are so unlike each other, the mutual danger they must face in travelling through Geronimo 's Apache territory requires them to work together to create a "utopia of...community". The difference between older stories about wandering characters and the road movie is technological: with road movies, the hero travels by car, motorcycle, bus or train, making road movies a representation of modernity's advantages and social ills. The on-the-road plot

23200-480: The turn of the millennium, Australian genre films have gained increasing acceptance in the Australian feature film industry, while the action genre represented a small percentage of its output in the 21st century. Scholars of Australian genre film generally used the term "action-adventure" which allows them to apply it to various forms of narratives such as tongue in cheek heroic posturing stories like Crocodile Dundee (1986), road movies or bush/outback films. In

23360-422: The use of locations such as Hong Kong. These films often featured one-legged or otherwise handicapped action characters similar to those of Japanese films ( Zatoichi ) and Hong Kong films ( The One-Armed Swordsmen ). These included Im Kwon-taek's Returned Left-Handed Man (1968), Aekkunun Bak's One-Eyd Park (1970) and Lee Doo-yong's Returned One-Legged Man (1974). In the 1990s, the country's national cinema

23520-468: The woman of exploitation films of the 1970s such as Caged Heat (1974) and Big Bad Mama (1974). While characters like Frank in The Transporter series are permitted to visibly sweat, strain and be bloodied, Purse found a reluctance for filmmakers to have their female leads have any appearance warping injuries to ensure a perfectly made-up face. Comedy is often used in films of this period to place

23680-448: Was "only a semantic exercise" as both genres are important in the construction phase of the narrative. Mark Bould in A Companion to Film Noir (2013) said that categorization of multiple generic genre labels was common in film reviews who are rarely concerned with succinct descriptions that evoke elements of the film's form, content and make no claims beyond on how these elements combine. Film Studies began to engage generic hybridity in

23840-408: Was a difficult market for Hong Kong action cinema to break into. Prompted by the success of Enter the Dragon and the popularity of Bruce Lee, Toei made their own Bruce Lee-style martial arts films, with The Street Fighter and its two sequels starring Sonny Chiba as well as a spin-off with a female lead similar to Hong Kong's Angela Mao called Sister Street Fighter . The success of Enter

24000-466: Was aiming for the foreign audience, as he was disappointed with the current state of Japanese films. Kitamura's characters have been described as "a careful combination of the maverick independence of 1980s Hollywood action heroes and the calmness and acceptance of Japanese samurai, a consistent criticism of Japanese people today." Kitamura followed up Versus with two manga-inspired big-budget action films, Azumi and Sky High . Both released in 2003,

24160-649: Was also screened at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles , and the Toronto International Film Festival . It was released nationwide in India on 17 June 2016. The film won the Crystal Bear for Best Children's Film, and Special Mention for the Best Feature Film by the Children's Jury for Generation Kplus at 65th Berlin International Film Festival . The film has garnered the Best Film Award in

24320-547: Was broadly positive about Zoya Akhtar 's Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara ; he wrote, "It's still playing to full houses, and you can see why. Slick it may be. But tourist board employees representing the various Spanish cities flattered in the movie are not the only ones who will come out grinning", and that he found the movie "stubbornly un-macho" for a buddy film. Piku tells the story of the short-tempered Piku Banerjee ( Deepika Padukone ), her grumpy, aging father Bhashkor ( Amitabh Bachchan ) and Rana Chaudhary ( Irrfan Khan ), who

24480-417: Was displayed in corresponding with corresponded with millennial angst and apocalypticism showcased in films like Independence Day (1996) and Armageddon (1998). Action films of mass destruction began requiring more overtly super heroic characters with further comic book adaptations being made with increased non-realistic settings with films like The Matrix (1999). The fourth phase arrived following

24640-464: Was in decline by the mid-1970s in Hong Kong in relation to the stock market crash which went from over 150 films in 1972 to just over 80 in 1975, which led to a downfall in martial arts films produced. When the economy became to rebound, a new trend of martial arts films, the Shaolin kung fu films emerged and sparked a revival of the genre. Unlike the wuxia , the kung fu film primarily focuses on fighting on

24800-509: Was in decline leading to Hong Kong gangster films filled in this void leading to large commercial success at the national box office. Early Korean heirs to Hong Kong action films include Rules of The Game (1994), Beat (1997), and Green Fish (1997) involving men who gain confidence and achieve personal growth as they embark on journeys to protect national state and meet devastating ends. South Korean cinema only received international attention in both art film and blockbuster formats towards

24960-599: Was not until the base of Chinese commercial filmmaking was relocated from Shanghai to Hong Kong in the late 1940s that martial arts cinema was revived. These films contained much of the characteristics of the previous era. During this period, over 100 films were based on the adventures of real life Cantonese folk hero Wong Fei-hung who first appeared in film in 1949. These films primarily on circuited within Hong Kong and Cantonese-speaking areas with Chinese diaspora . Yip continued that these Hong Kong films were still lagging behind in aesthetic and technical standards that films from

25120-504: Was only in the mid-20th century when action films developed into their own recognizable genre instead of being a collection of other types of films such as Westerns, swashbucklers or adventure films. Films have been described "action films" or "action-adventure film" as early as the 1910s. Only by the 1980s was the term action as its own unique genre used routinely in terms of promotion and reviewing practices. The first Chinese-language martial arts films can be traced to Shanghai cinema of

25280-434: Was reinvented in the 1990s with a postmodernist take in films such as Wild at Heart , Kalifornia and True Romance . While the first road movies described the discovery of new territories or pushing the boundaries of a nation, which was a core message of early Western films in the United States, road movies were later used to show how national identities were changing, such as which Edgar G. Ulmer ’s Detour (1945),

25440-573: Was released India wide to widely positive reviews on 17 June 2016. Dhanak received the Best Children's Film trophy at the 64th National Film Awards . Dhanak won the Special Mention Crystal Bear for the Best Feature Film by The Children's Jury for Generation Kplus at the 65th Berlinale . Every morning Pari (Hetal Gada) and Chotu's (Krrish Chhabria) long walk to school begins with a coin toss outside their hut. The winner will decide if

25600-403: Was used at the birth of American cinema but blossomed in the years after World War II , reflecting a boom in automobile production and the growth of youth culture. Early road movies have been criticized by some progressives for their "casual misogyny", "fear of otherness", and for not examining issues such as power, privilege, and gender and for mostly showing white people. The road movie of

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