The Art of Making Do: Ageing Recent-to-Action Stars in Hollywood-Style French Action Cinema

Abstract

Since the mid-2000s, there has been a marked resurgence in Hollywood action films featuring older male heroes, predominantly showcasing stars ranging from their mid-fifties into their seventies. This ‘geri-action’ cycle – a less-than-kind label that combines geriatric and action – has revitalised the careers of aged action stars such as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A core element of the cycle, beyond action franchise revivals and all-star ensembles featuring stars from the 1980s and 1990s, has been the emergence of late-career action turns by ageing Hollywood actors in globally successful French-produced, Hollywood-style action films. Part of a larger trend in French cinema towards the production of films in a distinctly commercial register, the ‘globalised’ aesthetic of French action film cannily mimics Hollywood action film style and aesthetics. These French-produced geri-action films are the roots of the cycle, represent some of its biggest box office successes and have transformed the career of several acclaimed recent-to-action Hollywood stars, exemplified by the prolific late action career of Oscar-nominated actor, Liam Neeson, most notably across three Taken films (2008–2014, EuropaCorp). Despite this, these French-produced geri-action films have predominantly been examined as a Hollywood and American phenomenon.

Geri-action quickly became synonymous with 1980s Hollywood action cinema's white male ‘hard bodies’, who are still widely understood to diagnose national anxieties and social ills – and violently embody their so-called “cures”. These French geri-action films similarly feature protagonists who forcefully struggle against perceived threats to the cultural position of traditional (white) masculinities and professional and paternal redundancy. Yet they also showcase deep-seated European anxieties about the threat of porous borders, immigration and social change, presaging a later shift in the cycle in Hollywood. Focusing on films that have received comparatively less scholarly attention, Taken 2 (2012), 3 Days to Kill (2014) and The Commuter (2018), this chapter examines the productive confluence of lower budget French-produced geri-action films and their ageing recent-to-action stars. These films depend on their stars to fortify their globalised Hollywood aesthetic and the stars' personae permit efficiencies such as clipped pacing. At the same time, budget constraints enhance the action performance of recent-to-action stars as unadorned, visceral and authentic-feeling. The films often stage fight sequences in confined, everyday spaces of work and tourism with ageing heroes who must creatively ‘make do’ with objects available to them. Equally, stunt coordination and choreography, editing and sound design make ageing and less experienced action performers appear to move faster and hit harder. Taken together, French-produced geri-action and its recent-to-action stars have transformed not only who stars in ‘Hollywood’ action cinema but who produces it.

Citation

Donnar, G. (2022), "The Art of Making Do: Ageing Recent-to-Action Stars in Hollywood-Style French Action Cinema", Gerrard, S. and Middlemost, R. (Ed.) Gender and Action Films 2000 and Beyond (Emerald Studies in Popular Culture and Gender), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 21-33. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-518-020221004