Showing a film character walking in slow motion minus sound effects and often accompanied by appropriate music was an effective way to communicate visually that a character is a badass without ever even showing him doing anything to actually qualify as a badass. Why this works is somewhat of a mystery to me, but it works. It is even more effective if used with a group of badasses.
It’s been done to death now and is now horribly cliche. and Pixar’s Monsters, Inc parodied it quite amusingly, btw
I had for some time thought that the opening credits scene of Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs was the first instance of this technique, but I should have known better than that. I have since noticed it was used extensively for the Tall Man in Phantasm (1979) and in the scene along the river bank in A Clockwork Orange (1971) right before Alex teaches his droogs a lesson.
Any other early instances? I know Sam Peckinpah used a lot of slow motion so I wouldn’t be surprised if he invented it, but I’m not familiar enough with his films to know.
John Woo uses slo-mo walking quite a bit, doesn’t he? I can remember at least a few instances in Face/Off involving both Travolta and Cage (not at the same time, though).
Dunno how that’s a spoiler, but I’ll play along.It was a spoof all right, but from The Right Stuff, the slo-mo shot of the astronauts. After all, the Scarers were heroes in Monstropolis. Monster’s, Inc.
Peckinpah tended to use slo-mo in his action scenes, but in The Wild Bunch, the walk to retrieve Angel while martial marching music plays maybe what your thinking of.
Toshiro Mifune’s leisurely pace in Yojimbo might also work although no slo-mo is used.
The characters Don Logan and Teddy Bass at different times in the movie Sexy Beast.
You may not be looking for counterarguments, but I’d like to offer up:
Lee Marvin as Walker in the 1967 thriller Point Blank. There’s a scene early in the film of him walking rapidly through an airport terminal with his footsteps echoing loudly with eerie music building in the background. His fast walk helps to punctuate the determination and menace of the character, who is definitely a badass.
The Face/Off scene where Nic Cage gets out of the car with the guns and the overcoat and the birds (doves?) really struck me as cool when I saw it in the theater. Need to rent that one again.
Francis E Dec, Esq, now I can’t remember. A quick look at IMDB didn’t help me either. I guess I take it back.
Perhaps the best use of this was in The Right Stuff with the Mercury astronauts in their silver spacesuits walking down a long hallway toward the camera with the heroic music swelling in the background.
There’s a great moment that parodies this ‘tactic’ in an episode of Coupling. The gents are doing the slo-mo walk, and the girls yell at them for it, finally showing that it’s not a camera effect- the guys are actually walking really slowly down the street to look cool. I believe the line is “Stop doing ‘Resivoir Dogs’!”
I always find it particularly amusing when people try to imitate it in real life. One case that comes to mind was when an instructor from a local ninja school* did a demonstration on my college campus. He wore mirrored aviator glasses and a leather jacket. And walked in slomo. He, and his students, also sucked on rocks. Big time. A drunken brownie scout could have taken them.
[wildly off-topic]I have no idea if he’s still teaching. I hope not. If there’s any justice in the world, he isn’t. Incompetents teaching self defense really make me angry…particularly since people could get hurt trying to use what they teach.[/wildly off-topic]
Yes, ninjas. I’m not making that up. Ninjas. snicker
I think that psychologically, on some level we tend to interpret things that are photographed in slow motion as somehow being larger-than-life. Sort of the reverse of the way that the real-life movement of really massive objects appears to be much slower than it actually is.
The first time I really noticed it was when Bob Hoskins and his entourage get off the plane and are walking across the tarmac in The Long Good Friday, the English gangster movie. It was really effective, and one of the few things about that movie I remember; the other is that I really liked it, but haven’t seen it since it came to the theatres, in '81 or '82?
