Once upon a time, fashioning an action epic movie took more than just a big budget — it required some real imagination, not just to come up with the ideas for the storylines, but to figure out how to bring larger-than-life situations to life onscreen. The results were often laughable, but just as often, they introduced some real visual thrills and filmmaking innovations — stuff that really made you wonder how it was made. These days, all the world’s a digital playground, and although filmgoers can still be dazzled by CGI-fueled stuff like Roland Emmerich’s upcoming 2012 or James Cameron’s Avatar, we’re a lot more jaded now; as incredible as things can look, we know, in the back of our minds, that it was produced with more mouse-clicking than elbow grease. Action movies, in particular, seem to have devolved; technology definitely helped to a point, but they’re often built from such simple materials that anything that speeds up their journey to the screen feels like a net loss.

That’s how I felt, anyway, as I watched the new Blu-ray transfers of Logan’s Run (1976), Heat (1995), and Tony Scott’s remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009). (more…)