"Plausible story" is the biggest roadblock here. It's pretty much antithetical to action movies, orthagonal to it being a good action movie by action movie standards. Every single one depends on their being a patently unrealistic antagonist in the mix to drive it forward, be it the Big Bad or Big Good, it needs at least one. I can't really think of any good action movie where this isn't true. I was gonna say Alien until I realized oh yeah, the fucking xenomorph.
No Country has Anton
Die Hard has John McLane
My thesis here is that you could name any good action movie and I'll be able to easily identify at least one better-than-mortal character on which the plot entirely depends.
Every single action movie has that at least that one character that you can name as being some kind of suprahuman plot driver without which the entire thing falls apart and ceases to be an action movie.
Yes "plausible" is the biggest hurdle here. Yes Ellen Ripley is great example of a plausible character in my opinion as well. She's just a space trucker with a small crew hauling minerals not strong, smart but, not a genius, she's scared half to death the minute the thing jumps out of John Hurt. Ellen Ripley is real, even the very last scene she's obviously struggling to keep it together mentally, singing a song just to keep from breaking into a full bore panic. I actually had a long conversation with one of the men who wrote the screenplay years ago, we chatted one on face to face for about 30-45 minutes. The shit he told me I won't even post openly here, I don't think anyone would believe me anwyay. In the original screenplay Ripley was a man and there were some slight homosexual undertones between Ripley and Dallas.
You want a realistic action film? Here, I'll write one for this thread. Every week a nigger goes into the same local liquor store for malt liquor and newports, one day he gets the idea to rob the place, he puts a covid mask on parks his car where the tags are fully visible from at least 3 cameras, wears a shirt that clearly reveals the black gorilla family tattoo he got last time in prison. He walks into the liquor store with sunglasses and a covid mask points a loaded firearm at the clerk orders the cash. Clerk complies and then he panics forgets firearms safety rule #1 and shoots the clerk in the face out of nervousness and poor trigger discipline. He grabs the cash and runs out. About 6 hours later local Detectives have run the plates latest registered owner, then reviewed previous mugshots ,recognize that tattoo and find last known address based on his cell phone bill, they assemble a tactical response team bang on the door to his apartment before breaching and they find him hiding in the closet.
BORING. AS. SHIT. I just basically mentally copied a typical episode of "The First 48". If you want something that plausible you are not watching an action film.
The point I'm trying to make are the characters in films like "Heat" are relatively realistic, Al Pachino is bit over the top, someone mentioned his characters backstory originally him having a cocaine habit which would make more sense. The biggest issue I take with Heat is the 3 men walking into a bank with fully automatic carbines and 4 extra mags. On the other hand would it be a great action film without the all the gun porn? You see the dilemma here.
You want to see what happens when you take an action film and make it too realistic? Watch "killing them Softly" 2012. It's even based on a true story, it's good but, it's not an action film anymore.
Killing Them Softly, 2012 . It's a good movie but if you forced an action movie into more realistic terms it's what you get and even though it was a good movie the general audiences didn't like it and it did not do financially well despite the quality put into it.
