I am thinking about my favourite action movies because Midnight Run is on TV, clashing with No Man’s Land a Bosnian favourite from a few years back. But I will watch Midnight Run, because it is more fun than the BBC2 satire, and it has a very special place in my heart. This along with Die Hard, are probably the films for me that Tom is referring to here. These are my teenage favourites, they both come from 1988, when I was fifteen. I saw them on video with my family when I was sixteen I suppose. So are these films any good or is it just that they came out when I was 15 and was starting to make personal taste based decisions on what I considered to be grown up films?
I refuse to believe this purely is an age-based thing. Watching Midnight Run as I type, I cannot imagine a pulpy piece of schlock like this being made now. Well I can but it would be massively different. For one they would have much larger female roles, making the mistake that a large female role means an important one. But there is something late eighties about the male bonding, the contempt for authority (The FBI and police get big kickings in both) and both have really rather slow and detailed build ups.
Perhaps these themes make it work for me, these were plot touchstones that resonated with me. Are they eighties themes? I was a kid of the eighties after all. But I think my closest connection is that these were films that I saw with my Dad, and they are terrific male bonding films. We both enjoyed them, and all of a sudden, during hateful teenage years, we had something in common. So what would the fifteen year old me watch in 2004 with my Dad? The Day After Tomorrow would have amused, but he does not like disaster movies. My Dad doesn’t do superheroes, so no Spidey. Thing is these sensitive tough guy movie don’t seem to exist any more. So I’ll watch Die Hard and Midnight Run when they come on television and be damned. Is it because of me, or is it because of the films. I would like to think the latter.