The MacGuffin

Another Top 5 segment from The MacGuffin. This time Allen and Brandi share their top 5 anti-heroes.

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Another Top 5 segment from The MacGuffin. This time Ben and Ed share their top 5 westerns.

This segment is also available on Stitcher, iTunes, and Zune. The audio version can be downloaded directly from here.

If we are to look at the history of the action film, then the progression of the genre is one that began with the classic American Westerns directed by the likes of John Ford and Howard Hawkes. Films like The Searchers, Stagecoach, and Rio Bravo were then the inspiration for foreign film markets, especially in Italy, where in 1964 they were revitalized with the box office success of A Fistful of Dollars. This led to a whole new genre of Western, one that for the first time ever incorporated shootouts framing the victim and the shooter together on screen at the same time. It featured heroes that were more criminal or morally ambiguous than the ones played by John Wayne; they were anti-heroes, men and women willing to, as Nietzsche warned, become monsters to fight monsters. The amped-up, over-the-top violence, the themes of hired killers, revengers, and lawmen struggling to forge a civilized future, are all vital aspects to the birth of the genre of the action film.