Action Cinema Since 2000 addresses an increasingly lively and evolving field of scholarship, probing the definition and testing the potential of action cinema to reframe the mode for the 21st century.
Contributors examine a broad range of content, from blockbusters to smaller independent films, originating from China, Korea, India, France, the USA, and Mexico. Ranging from JSA: Joint Security Area (Gondonggeonygbi guyeok) (2000) to Polite Society (2023), they consider the changing modes of action cinema, with streaming assuming global importance and an ever-increasing number of generic blends. They consider under-explored areas of action film, particularly how race, ethnicity, gender, and age figure in narratives and through image and soundtracks.
Overall, the book demonstrates how 21st century action cinema engages with and reflects geopolitical, creative, and industrial developments. Contributors argue that it continues to offer fantasies of empowerment and mobility that say much about how power is understood in diverse contexts today.
Action Cinema Since 2000 is a trail-blazing, fist-pumping, butterfly kick of a book that will change the way action is conceptualized in cinema studies. With a dream team of editors, and a stellar list of contributors, this book diversifies understandings of action in its careful attention to film production, industry developments, socio-political issues, and cinema aesthetics in an ever-evolving global mediascape. Making the case for action cinema as a mode, rather than a genre, Action Cinema Since 2000 reveals its complexity and nuance.
