Gimme Danger

If I ever get insanely rich for some reason, my first insane spending spree will be on the production of an action movie. I won't direct it, I might write it, we'll see, but what I want is simple, a pure, 100% action movie, something that, at least as far as I know, has not been done (though is anyone can offer suggestions, please do!).

I got to thinking about this after watching Wanted and the longer cut of Tarantino's Death Proof in the last few days. Wanted is paced like a regular movie, lots of cool action sequences interspersed with exposition and characterization that, along with the voiceover, sounds like it was written by a 16-year old who did a pile of blow, watched Fight Club and the Matrix, and then just wrote, wrote, wrote. Death Proof is slightly different: a beginning with a lot of dialogue (the quality of which is a huge problem, but that's really beside the point here), an action scene, a middle part, more or less like the beginning, and then an 18 minute car chase finale.

The insanity of the action in Wanted and the length of the last chase in Death Proof (which, obviously, is not quite unique to Death Proof, but it's an example I've seen earlier today) hint, to me, at something that could be, at worst, and interesting formal exercise, and, at best, a triumph: the actually non-stop action movie: no build-up, all release (or, to look at it another way, a long series of releases).

Crank, approached this, of course, and built it into the plot, as Jason Statham's Chev Chelios could not stop doing insane stunts or his life, and the movie, would grind to a halt. It one upped Speed, but it can still be done better (faster, stronger), I think.

My question is this: if an action film were to wholly reject traditional ideas of pacing and exposition in favor on non-stop action, would most critics recognize that as an avant-garde move, or just dismiss it as trash? Am I just setting up a straw man? Holler.