Heroic Bloodshed Guns, explosions, and a strong male lead, these are the things one most commonly associates with an action film. Although action in film has been around since the beginning of film, the genre itself did not really start developing until the 1970s. The 1970s gave way to the golden age of action cinema that was the 1980s. The 1980s saw the rise of the action star and the blockbuster summer movie, well into today, but during the late 1980s the genre saw the rise of Heroic Bloodshed. To know the conventions and style of Heroic Bloodshed one must first know the conventions of an action film. An action film generally follows a male lead and his triumph over evil, usually a resourceful character who overcomes insurmountable odds,…show more content… The villain is more often than not the head of a criminal organization or a terrorist group, like in True Lies. The villain very rarely ever works alone, employing henchmen to do his dirty work; the hero usually dispatches these henchmen with relative ease. The villain also always seems to have a second in command or lieutenant, a higher up henchman that tells the other henchmen what to do. This lieutenant is typically much harder for the hero to dispatch and is normally killed halfway through the film or towards the end. The main villain of the film is either killed or captured in the final action set-piece if the film, where the villain and the hero face-off, like in Face/Off. Action films usually end on a high note as good triumphs over…show more content… The sub-genre plays upon all of the conventions of an action film and amplifies them. One of these amplified characteristics is gunplay. Heroic Bloodshed features many iconic action sequences due mainly to creative gunplay, or gun fu. Gun fu is a sort of stylized combat with guns and in most cases, pistols. Gun fu sees participates dive and dodge bullets almost like a dance, using guns in an impractical way, but in a way that is visually appealing. Gun fu usually has the hero of the film sliding, flipping, and rolling over obstacles as he dual-wields pistols repeatedly riddling his foes with bullets. Another convention of gun fu is the simultaneous reloading of the two pistols the main character has depleted. Characters very really ever use heavy weaponry and tend to stick more to pistols and light machine guns like Uzis because of their light weight, which allows them to be agile for their flips and rolls. Gun fu can also be seen as a contrast to the American action film of the 1980s which concentrated more on brute-force and heavy weaponry in firearm-based combat. The emergence of this type of style of combat is best described