I will throw in the same sentiment towards the sword fights so far mentioned. Just because people “get tired” and “get hurt” in a sword fight, does not make it realistic.
And braveheart? The tactics were wrong, the armor and weapons were wrong, the depiction of the locations of battles were wrong…
Proof of Life had one of the more realistic gunfights I’ve ever seen.
Does Children of Men count? How does that rate, experts?
I came in to say Way of the Gun; Highly realistic gunhandling, courtesy of an ex-Navy SEAL consultant, who is the director Chris McQuarrie’s brother (please note; possible BS in the previous statement; I could IMDB it for facts, but… meh. I’m beat).
Also a great scene near the end where one of the characters falls on some glass bottles and is pretty much taken out of the rest of the movie by his injuries; movies had taught me that glass is a minor inconvienince, whereby one could be struck by bottles, hurled through plate glass windows and have their heads pushed through car windows and suffer only mild discomfort. Not so here.
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
Hmmm…I was going to nominate “Rob Roy”, if only because during the climactic sword duel Liam Neeson seemed to actually get tired after swinging his claymore around for a few minutes. I have no idea how closely the movie is to the actual life of Robert Roy MacGregor.
[/QUOTE]
Most of the characters’ names are taken from real people, but that’s about it. Though fictional versions of his life began to obscure the facts even while he was still alive and the film is an extension of the standard legendary tradition via Walter Scott, etc. I recommend David Stevenson’s recentish biography The Hunt for Rob Roy as the definitive scholarly dismantling of that tradition.
[QUOTE=Cuckoorex]
Does Children of Men count? How does that rate, experts?
[/QUOTE]
Seemed realistic to me. The especially long steady-cam shots helped add realism.
[QUOTE=xtisme]
I’m highly skeptical you can surpress that level of pain and continuing to be functional afterward, but even assuming thats so you can’t supress the damage being done to you. Fighting even in pain is certainly more than possible (I’ve done it myself)…but fighting after your head has been bashed against the wall, for instance, regardless of how mentally strong you are, is unrealistic. Look at the type of damage the people are inflicting on each other…really look at it. Aint no way, unless these are super-human monks from hell. Real fights between people who know what they are doing don’t come close to resembling what you see in the Bourne movies.
-XT
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I’ve only seen the first one, but it seemed to imply that the “training” Bourne and the other assassins had undergone was a bit on the science fictiony side of things. It didn’t detail just what the training was, or what it specifically allowed them to do, so I don’t know how well it works under the OP’s “magic is okay if it’s consistent and otherwise realistic” clause.
[QUOTE=indyvet]
**Gross Pointe Blank. **
I won’t suggest that the entire movie was realistic - because I don’t actually know any killers for hire in real life. I will say that the fight scene (high school reunion, in the hallway outside the gymnasium) was an incredible scene showing two fighters who actually know what they’re doing. The depiction of complete exhaustion, shakiness, and borderline nausea after the fight is spot-on.
Cheers,
Indyvet
[/QUOTE]
I came in to mention this exact scene in Grosse Pointe Blank, that amazingly-choreographed fight between John Cusack and kickboxing legend Benny “The Jet” Urquidez. That’s how a real fight between two trained fighters would go down. No showboating, no fancy moves, just two guys trying like hell to incapacitate their opponent and getting exhausted along the way.
I rather liked the gunfight at the end of Open Range. With one* exception there aren’t any hero shots at a hundred yards after the opening fusillade, just a lot of ducking and weaving by people who wish they were somewhere else. They even had a wounded horse – proof that not every bullet was going where intended.
*Costner fans nine shots from one pistol as he advances on the baddies. In the commentary he apologized for it, saying they had lost count when doing the editing.
Midway. I realize they screwed the pooch by sticking in whatever real combat film they had inappropriatly (divebomer starts run, Corsair finishs it :rolleyes: ), but that stuff actually happend.
They coulda lost the love story, however.
And, it was in SensorRound!!!
Although I absolutely agree with Das Boot and United 93, cited above, I came here to mention my two favorite realistic action films: The Day of the Jackal and Three Days of the Condor.
The first is a tense, well-acted thriller that (AFAIK) is entirely plausible in virtually every detail. Unlike the POS 1997 remake with Bruce Willis, there are no high-tech remote-controlled superweapons or subway crashes, just a clever and inventive bad guy being chased by a just-as-clever cop. And unlike most action films, you’re kind of rooting for the bad guy.
While the second features some slightly dubious technology, and I doubt that the CIA ever operated upscale brownstones in which agents read every book ever printed searching for foreign codes and plots, given the premises, the basic story is notable for its lack of completely impossible things. This sets it apart from about 99.9% of all action films. And it features Faye Dunaway when she was still pretty hot and Max von Sydow as one of the coolest hit men ever.
[QUOTE=Shamozzle]
That sounds pretty interesting, can you elaborate on that?
[/QUOTE]
Well, for starters, the opening scene had junior officers (JOs) dressing down enlisted guys and making them do push-ups. No way–doesn’t happen. Submarine JOs pick on other JOs, not enlisted guys.
IMDB lists a number of errors. The most egregious for me was the sonar display. Any submarine movie trying to be realistic should be able to do enough research from Tom Clancy books to know that the basic passive sonar display is a “waterfall” display, not a radar-type display, because passive sonar only gives you bearing information, not bearing and range info like radar.
BTW, the IMDB “goof” indicating that actors are required by law to have incorrect insignia so that they cannot be prosecuted for “impersonating an officer” is an urban legend. That being said, there were numerous uniform errors in the movie. For one, the CO is erroneously shown wearing his gold dolphins on his Service Dress Blue white shirt.
But the biggest issue is that the whole premise of the movie is flawed. I’ve posted on this before. Rather than repeat everything, I hope you don’t mind if I quote myself. In this thread, I said:
[QUOTE=robby]
I served on a ballistic missile submarine. No one person, including the CO, can initiate a launch. It’s an intentionally redundant, complicated procedure that requires the cooperation of the whole crew.
That being said, there is little discretion given to the CO, the officers, or the crew. If a launch order validated to be authentic is received, the launch proceeds. Period. It’s very simple and binary. Go or no go. There is no provision for retraction of a launch order. Also, a partial launch order is not a valid launch order.
IIRC, the premise of the movie was that a valid launch order was received, and then a partial launch order retraction was received. This makes no sense at all. If such a system were in place, potential enemies could nullify our strategic deterrent system by following up any encrypted valid launch orders with fake invalid launch order retractions, hoping to confuse our forces.
In short, the whole premise of the movie was a load of crap.
…One other thing. A ballistic missile submarine crew practices launch procedures almost constantly.
Encrypted orders directing such practice launch runs were sent quite often. When decoded, general quarters would be sounded and the whole crew would respond. The sub would proceed to launch depth, practice keys would be distributed, the actual missile guidance systems would be initialized, etc. The launch runs were very elaborate.
We ran through one of these practice runs about 2-3 times a week. They often came on Sundays and holidays.
That’s what was so unrealistic about Crimson Tide, (besides the stupid dog, the underwater radar scopes, and the mutiny). The whole premise that the crew would waste time discussing whether to launch is laughable. After practicing it hundreds of times, an actual launch would proceed like clockwork.
…You have to realize that the submarine is at the end of a long line of decisions, actions, and encrypted communications (with codes to be authenticated) that have to take place to effect a nuclear launch. The place to consider whether or not a mistake has been made is much higher in this chain of command. If a valid launch order makes it though all of these safeguards to the submarine, that’s it. The launch is going to happen.
That being said, launch orders are not given lightly. In fact, it has never happened. Hopefully, they never will.
[/QUOTE]
Let me add that for a strategic deterrent system to work, potential adversaries must be made to believe it will work. Let me assure you that it does. If the orders go out, the missiles will fly. Any officer who attempts to subvert this system (as did Denzel Washington in the movie) would be relieved of duty and court-martialed.
[QUOTE=msmith537]
I always found Full Metal Jacket to be very realistic (not like I really know or anything).
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Bolding mine.
Exactly!
You know, i’m always a bit confused in threads like this about exactly how it is that we are supposed to evaluate the alleged “realism” of events that most of us have absolutely no experience with.
A few people, for example, have nominated the Bourne movies. Now, let me say at the outset that i love the Bourne movies, and there are certainly many aspects of them that sort of seem realistic to me. But i’d like to know what level of espionage, weapons, and hand-to-hand combat experience these folks have that enables them to opine on the realism of what Bourne does.
[WARNING: spoilers for The Bourne Ultimatum follow]
For example, what exactly was it that makes Bourne’s annihilation of three armed guys in a stairwell “realistic”? Was it the foley of crunching bones, or the lack of a steadycam? Or just the fact that every move Bourne made seemed to disable the guy with the gun just before it could be used to blow his head off?
How realistic was Bourne’s ability to walk into the office of a CIA deputy director in what would probably be one of the most secure buildings in the United States, use a lifted fingerprint and a tape-recorded voice ID to break into his safe, and then leave the building again before it could be completely locked down, despite the fact that people inside knew he was there?
How realistic was Bourne’s ability to ride a motorbike up and down long and steep flights of stairs, or to use a very small angled piece of concrete to jump the bike about 15 vertical feet with a three yard run-up?
I know it might seem like i’m pissing on the parade here, but this question of evaluating how “realistic” an action movie is always seems to presuppose that we know what the hell we’re talking about in the first place, which seems rather unlikely in a world where so many of us have our asses parked in front of a computer and see little action more strenuous than a three-mile jog or a quick trip to the gym.
Of all the action movies I’ve seen, the one that strove hardest for detailed accuracy, AFAIK, was Tora Tora Tora.
What about K19, Robby? I’ve always thought it was a pretty real submarine movie, but, then again, I don’t really know.
I have to veto Bourne, too many computer gimmicks to be taken too seriously.
[QUOTE=Captain Lance Murdoch]
Das Boot and United 93 would be way up there for me.
[/QUOTE]
Now, I like to think I’m not an easily offended person, and I don’t think you meant it this way, but there’s something in me that feels kinda squidgy calling United 93 an “action movie.”
For completely different reasons, I don’t consider Das Boot or anything else where the main action comes from ship-to-ship scenes an “action movie.” Oddly enough, plane-to-plane movies are juuuuust on the border of what I’d allow in the genre, but not any other vehicle besides cars.
But that’s just me.
[QUOTE=T_SQUARE]
What about K19, Robby? I’ve always thought it was a pretty real submarine movie, but, then again, I don’t really know.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know about the sub depiction as a whole, but the portrayal of radiation poisoning was pretty realistic.
[QUOTE=Windwalker]
I’ll throw my hat in the ring with: Crimson Tide. I felt that the premise was quite capable of taking place, the characters’ actions pretty much followed through in believable, consistent ways, and most of the participants acted logically, from their point of view. I’m not sure if this can actually be called an “action movie”, since there is not a lot of actual action on screen, but it definitely tingled with potentially-explosive energy throughout, like a leaking gas stove.
[/QUOTE]
Was that the movie with the dog on the nuclear sub? :dubious:
[QUOTE=Zsofia]
There were a lot of things I liked about Training Day until it got stupid there in the third act. There’s a chase scene with some balcony jumping that was pretty good - would you believe it’s hard to jump around like that and carry a gun at the same time? Also, there was a car crash in that one of the sort that they’re always having in movies - IIRC, Denzel’s car got rear ended somewhat hard but not BLAM! hard, but he was still incapacitated for a bit by it. You know, like you are by a car wreck.
The Bourne movies have already been mentioned, but there’s a car wreck in the second that’s so true to how a wreck really feels - he’s driving along evading pursuit and then BAM somebody T-bones him out of nowhere. No slo-mo, nothing.
[/QUOTE]
:dubious: Yeah and his surfing down the stairway on the dead guy’s body was unbelievable! :o But not in a credible way!!! 
While the movie itself is obviously not a contender for “most realistic,” there’s a scene in Last Action Hero that’s somewhat relevant to the discussion. An action hero from the world of films is magically transported to the real world, following a super-villain from his film world who has also escaped into the real world. The bad guy’s escaping in a car, and the hero confidently shoots at the car… and then is amazed when it doesn’t blow up.