Conventions of a medis text

Action films tend to have a fairly straight forward storyline the good guys vs the bad guys. Action films are mostly "High Concept" where the whole movie can be summerised in one simple sentance. Who actually are the good guys changed from film to film, in Hollywood films the good guy is always patriotic. On the other hand the bad guys are normally criminals or people of high foreign power.

Martial Arts in Action Films:

The popular, Hong Kong kung fu genre was catapulted to world-wide prominence in the 1970s with Bruce Lee's four martial-arts films, with spectacular fight scenes. Unfortunately, many of them were dubbed and had poorly-contrived plots containing copy-cat James Bond elements. Lee's best films were his last two - they were released post-humously after he died at the young age of 32.

A variant on the martial-arts films has been the films of Jackie Chan (nicknamed the "Buster Keaton of Kung-Fu") and his numerous 80s and 90s Hong-Kong and US-produced action comedies. Success finally arrived for Chan with Rumble in the Bronx (1996), Rush Hour (1998), Shanghai Noon (2000), Rush Hour 2 (2001), The Tuxedo (2002), and Shanghai Nights (2003).

Belgian Movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme starred in a variant of the Asian martial-arts films - the action-filled kickboxer film, as in Bloodsport (1988), Black Eagle (1988), Kickboxer (1989), Death Warrant (1990), Double Impact (1991), Nowhere to Run (1993), and Hard Target (1993).

Violent and graphic action films (as well as gangster flicks) also owe a debt to Hong Kong's legendary John Woo, who helped to shape the genre with scenes of stylish choreography in The Killer (1989) and Hard-Boiled (1992), both with Chow Yun-Fat in the lead role. John Woo's intense and intelligent action film Face/Off (1997) featured a stolen-identity plot with Nicolas Cage and John Travolta in the good/evil roles. Woo's sequel film Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) to the inferior 1996 Brian De Palma version Mission: Impossible (1996) was filled with exciting, no-holds-barred action sequences. And Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), the winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar and three others (Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Score), was a spectacular and entertaining martial arts entry.

US films influenced by the martial arts craze included The Karate Kid (1984) and The Karate Kid, Part II (1986), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991), Blade (1998) and Blade II (2002), and the video-game adaptation Mortal Kombat (1995