R Ratings and When They Are Necessary
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Max Gross R Ratings and When They are Necessary Table of Contents John Wick: Crazy, Chaotic Fun 3 The Raid: An Elegant Showcase of Violence and Mayhem 6 Action Movie Wrap Up 9 Blade Runner: An Artificial Tale of Humanity 13 District 9: A Bleak Look at an Unending Problem 16 Sci Fi Movie Wrap Up 18 Deadpool: Brutally Raunchy, Deadly Funny 22 Logan: A Beautiful Character Piece in a Chaotic World 25 Comic Book Movie Wrap Up 28 Superbad: A Surprisingly Funny Raunch-fest 32 Zombieland: One of the Great Zom-Coms 34 Comedy Movie Wrap Up 37 1 2 John Wick: Crazy, Chaotic Fun John Wick (2014), directed by Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, and starring Keanu Reeves in his first truly great role since The Matrix, tells a very simple, very R rated story. John Wick is a former… member of the underground. I say that because it is never stated explicitly what exactly he did (in the movie, Viggo, the main antagonist, says that he is not the boogeyman; “he was the one you sent to kill the fucking Boogeyman”), though it is assumed he was an assassin. The movie starts with a (very) brief expositional montage, showing that John gave up his life as a hitman after falling in love with a girl, who unfortunately dies of cancer. The movie picks up with John mourning the loss of his wife, when suddenly he gets a knock on the door. He opens the door to find a little puppy with a note attached. His wife had arranged that when she died, John would be sent this dog so that he could love and care for something instead of receding back to his old ways of killing. He spends maybe two days with his new dog before a group of Russians break into his house, steal his car, and kill his dog. John then digs up his old arsenal of weapons and goes on a revenge murder spree. This incredibly simple plot is one of the reasons this movie is so great. It knows what it is, and it doesn't try to be anything more. And yet, even with such a simple plot, the audience is very emotionally invested in these characters. Even though the plot can be condensed to “They killed his dog, he kills them back,” when you are watching the movie, you genuinely feel John’s pain about losing his dog. You know that it is less 3 about the dog, and more about how the last connection he had to his wife had just been murdered in front of his own eyes. After that, the movie loses all emotion, and (intentionally) becomes “just another” mindless action movie. It is not that the directors fail at keeping hold of the emotional impact from the beginning; it is quite the opposite actually. They know you are already emotionally invested in John, and they don't want to beat you over the head with emotions while John is running around killing people. This now brings us to the most important part of the movie. The violence. Stahelski and Leitch do not hold back anything, creating some fundamentally different kinds of violence that are either horrifyingly or gleefully explicit. What makes you connect and sympathize so heavily and so immediately with John is the fact that the camera does not cut away when the intruders snap his puppy’s neck. Many people afterwards were very shaken by this, even though they had paid money to see Keanu Reeves kill countless people. Something about killing dogs unnerves people more than killing humans. The rest of the violence in the movie, however, is arguably more graphic, less horrifying, and more fun. This kind of violence is really where this movie shines. It feels wrong to call it choreography, but the choreography, though it was almost exclusively with guns, was exhilarating, and beautifully creative. In one great scene, John is headshotting Russians left and right, and at one point, pistol whips one in the throat. As the poor henchman is clutching at his neck, gasping for air, John tries to shoot him in the head, only to find that his magazine is empty. Stahelski and Leitch give this gag the perfect amount of time without letting it take to long, and for maybe 4 three seconds, John stands there fumbling to reload his gun while his opponent is writhing in pain, before John manages to finish him. And with an R rated gun movie, comes a lot of blood and gore. Usually. While it is clear that Stahelski and Leitch are trying to make an over-the-top action movie, it is also clear that they are not trying to make an over-the-top bloody movie. Of course, there is blood, but a very reasonable amount. With headshots, there are little bursts of blood, but they are almost unnoticeable if you’re not looking for them. No one ever has to clutch their guts as they fall out their bodies, and no one’s head explodes with as much blood as the one John Travolta shoots in Pulp Fiction. In fact, the closest the movie ever gets to even showing an explosion is when John lights Viggo’s money and blackmail stash on fire. Another common R feature that is noticeably scarce in this movie is cursing. Like the blood, it’s definitely there, but so infrequently that it almost seems like they should be cursing more, given that the most notorious assassin in the world is coming for them. All in all, I would say that you couldn't tell this story as easily with a PG-13 rating. Though John Wick has less blood and cursing than most R rated action movies, since the choreography is the real main character of the movie, every action scene would have to be re shot in order to reach the more restrictive PG-13 standard. And in a movie where one of the main points is to showcase creative gun choreography, John Wick would end up being a very different movie if it was made appropriate for kids. 5 The Raid: An Elegant Showcase of Violence and Mayhem The Raid (2011), directed by Gareth Evans, is a cult classic action film that took the world by surprise. Coming out of Indonesia and helmed by an unheard of director, no one expected this movie to be as good as it was. The plot the movie sets you up with in the beginning is a very simple one. We follow Rama, a rookie member of an elite SWAT unit. His team is tasked with infiltrating a run down apartment building that Tama, a vicious crime lord, has taken over and been using as a criminal safe house. Soon after entering the building they are discovered and then must face various enemies on each floor before finally making their way up to the fifteenth floor, where Tama has been hiding out. The only exposition given about any of the characters is that Rama has a wife who is expecting, so that is his motivation for making it out alive. However, Evans expertly surprises us with plot twist after plot twist that explain more and more about the lead up to the team’s current situation. The focus of The Raid is, obviously, the action. It is a martial arts movie, in the same vein as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), but the way it utilizes its modern setting is very creative. Though the protagonists are part of a special operations police unit, there few gun deaths in this movie. The most prominent use of them is in one scene, when the unit is hiding in a hallway, and are suddenly ambushed by a tenement firing squad. Aside from that, guns are, for the most part, neglected. This feels appropriate, however, because it increases the claustrophobic feeling of the movie. You 6 don't shoot someone who is standing five feet away from you; you try and fight them. These fights are the highlights of the movie, and the frantic and perfect choreography shows the realness of these fights. While fights in movies, like the Star Wars prequels, often feel too perfectly choreographed and rehearsed, the fights in The Raid are expertly made so that while you know every movement up to the last detail has been choreographed, the fights still seem spur-of-the-moment. Even more impressive is that, after a while, multiple scenes of hand to hand combat may feel fatiguing to an audience, but Evans never lets you feel like you've seen any given fight before. While, yes, there are plenty of straight martial arts fist fights, he will also constantly have you thinking “hey, I’ve never thought of killing someone with that before!” Weapons used to kill people range from fists to knives to machetes to splintered door posts to LED lightbulbs to refrigerator bombs, and everything in between. And while no one ever cares about all the nameless henchmen who are killed in action movies, there will be a few goons in this movie that you can't help but feel a little bad for, due to their particularly crude deaths. Evans’ up-close-and-personal directing style, means that not only are the deaths creative and gruesome, but also very bloody. Though not quite as bloody as a Tarantino movie, The Raid definitely does not hold back. That is not to say it was excessively bloody, having a lot of blood in a, purposefully, excessively violent movie makes sense, but even so, the blood may turn some viewers off.