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Action films featuring a female lead character are a relatively new phenomenon in the movie scene. Analyzing these films as genre films may not seem like the most natural thing to do because they subvert the more established genre of the male-lead action film – they initially seem to be more anti-genre than anything else. But what makes a genre film a genre film? Barry K. Grant, in his book Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology, provides an apt conceptualization of genre films as “mythic narratives (that) embody and express a society’s rituals, institutions and values” (29). Hence a female-lead action film to qualify as a genre film would imply an evolution in society’s values – from male-centric, as represented by male-lead action films – to feministic. The word “feministic” is used in this paper to describe any attempt to demonstrate the female’s equal ability to the male’s – applicable to whatever situation a movie is premised on. Hence the very fact of the lead character being a female, taking on the same tasks as a male of the typical action film, could be argued as a feminist statement.

As Yvonne Tasker writes in her book, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Cinema, “the action heroine represents a response of some kind to feminism in which images of gendered identity have been increasingly called into question” (15). The “action heroine” in a significant number of these films are actually based on comic book or video game characters. Films like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001/2003), Resident Evil (2002/2004/2007), Underworld (2003/2006), and Elektra (2005) are undoubtedly films in which the female character takes center stage and displays an overall superiority to the supporting male characters. However, given the fact that they are merely adaptations of comic books or video games, these movies are not purely representative of a particular movement within the film medium.

In contrast, films like Thelma and Louise (1991), A Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), the Kill Bill movies (2003/4), and more recently, The Brave One (2007), see their first creation in film. As independent, creative projects of directors, they are more accurately representative of a purely film genre phenomenon. They are also driven by themes more essentially feminist than their comic book adaptation counterparts, which are not really making a serious statement about society but are more commercial attempts at delivering the kind of entertainment a post-modern audience wants – the fetishistic pleasure of watching beautiful, powerful women clash in bloody fights.

In emulating its predecessors, there are certain conventions that genre films adhere to. Ironically, the most obvious convention of the female-lead action film is its overturning of another convention – the casting of a male lead in regular action films. The films may vary in numerous ways, but this is the one universal, governing characteristic of female-lead action films. This essential nature of the genre inextricably ties it to both anti-patriarchal (briefly put, “anti-patriarchal” here does not merely imply the feminist effort to bring the female figure up to par with the male, but it has deeper connotations of an adverse relationship with the dominant masculinity) and feminist themes, and these themes manifest themselves in many other secondary elements, as will be discussed later. Just as the genre itself defies the movie convention of the male lead in action films, so also do the other elements of the movie defy larger conventions outside the sphere of the movie industry.

Take the recent release, The Brave One (2007), which adheres to many of the conventions of the (not-so-typical) female-lead action film. It stars Jodie Foster as Erica Bain, who, while out on a walk with her fiancé, runs into hoodlums. They beat up the couple, leaving Erica brutally wounded, in a coma for three weeks, and her fiance, dead. This triggers a transformation in Erica, from assimilated New Yorker to vengeful seeker of justice. The movie can be described as a study of the dynamics of city life; of fear as a basic condition of existence in modern societies, and as a host of other things – but most significantly, it is a statement against the patriarchal system of society today. This is the ideological foundation of almost all the female-lead action films of the genre.

Just as the movie itself defies the authority of pre-established genres, so also does Erica defy society’s legal system. She kills initially in self-defense, but fails to report this to the police. However, these killings are carried out with increasing intent, and she eventually establishes herself as a renegade operating outside of the law. Her rampage for justice is a mask, a disguise for her weakness and inability to overcome personal tragedy. In her own words, “you don’t” move on - you “become someone else,” a “stranger.” This “stranger” is a vigilante seeking revenge for her dead fiancé.

This revenge/renegade theme is extremely prominent in movies of the female-lead action genre. It almost seems like the necessary justification for the fact that she is a female in a lead role – that a woman able to take center stage in a male-dominated genre is necessarily an outlaw in one way or another. In A Long Kiss Goodnight, amnesiac Samantha Caine regains her original identity – CIA agent Charly Baltimore – and turns renegade when she is captured and tortured by former enemies, and finds out that they are part of a false flag plot to frame Islamic terrorists. There is a deeply personal twist in the storyline when her daughter is kidnapped by the mastermind of the plot – Charly’s ex-boss and father of the daughter he is holding captive (of which he is unaware). The storyline clearly turns into a revenge plot, with Charly fighting against the governmental CIA not only to foil their mission but to also get even with those who caused her and her daughter such trauma. Similarly, what drives the entire plot of the Kill Bill movies is revenge. Uma Thurman as The Bride has to kill off a slew of assassins to get at the ultimate adversary – Bill – who orchestrated the brutal massacre at her wedding. Pregnant at the time, she wakes from a coma thinking that she has lost her unborn child – and embarks on a mission of revenge to kill every single person responsible for causing her such pain. Arguably, few movies play up the theme of revenge as much as Kill Bill does.

In the missions of both Charly and The Bride, they are not one-woman shows, but are significantly helped by secondary characters. What is significant is about the relationships formed between the female leads and these minor characters is that they demonstrate a breaching of racial boundaries. There is a profound sequence in Kill Bill Vol. 2 – a flash back to The Bride’s early training in China under the tutelage of martial arts master Pai Mei. Despite his brutal techniques and his apparent contempt for her, she eventually gains his silent respect. The extent of this respect is demonstrated by the fact that he teaches her the Five-Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique – a move he has never taught anyone else. What is significant is not just that The Bride over crosses racial boundaries, but that there is a total inversion of White supremacy in her relationship with Pai Mei – the dominant White race is subject to the traditionally inferior non-White race. In Charly Baltimore’s case, she forms a relationship with a Black man, private investigator Mitch Hennessey – but they are more or less equals in the relationship. It is even suggested that the relationship may have evolved into something more sexual. In their different ways, we see how the characters defy racial boundaries through their relationships with other characters, and how the films can be correspondingly read as protests against the racial conventions of society.

The Brave One tackles the race issue in a similar way. The film focuses on the friendship Erica forms with a Black/half-Black detective, based on their mutual understanding and respect for each other. Even before this, she was romantically involved with an Indian doctor, whom she loved passionately. As Theresa Geller observes in “Queering Hollywood’s Tough Chick,” such films “challenge spectator comfort levels with the taboo of miscegenation” (17). Another inconspicuous but significant character Erica is linked to is her neighbor, a Black/Jamaican woman – she is actually the first person Erica confesses to about one of her killings. The woman obviously has a deep understanding and care for Erica, given that Erica trusted her with such information. Almost every major relationship of goodwill Erica has, it is with members of other racial groups.

Another significant element of the genre is the motif of transformation or metamorphosis in the female protagonist. There is always a catalyzing incident/moment in the film that causes the character to lose her former self and take on a new identity/personality. For Erica this catalyzing incident is the death of her fiancé. The incident unleashes in Erica a fear previously unknown to her. In an intriguing discussion about how fear and hope are diametrically opposed, Daniel Bar-Tal offers a definition of fear very applicable to Erica’s situation – that fear is “an automatic emotion, grounded in the perceived present and often based on the memorized past … that leads to freezing of beliefs, conservatism, and sometimes preemptive aggression” (Bar-Tal 601). This fear grows, and fuels the vigilante activities she engages in. However, unlike the Erica who initially killed out of fear/self-defense, the Erica at the end of the movie kills with intent. Hence the loss of the former self and the adoption of a new identity is a gradual process for the female lead in this movie – but whether this transformation is gradual or instant, it is a hallmark of the female-lead action flick.

Charly and The Bride undergo similar metamorphoses. For Charly, it is not so much a transformation into something new, but it is a gaining back of her original identity. The movie starts out with her living with a false identity – that of suburban mom and schoolteacher, Samantha Caine. But later, a catalyzing incident causes her original identity to resurface – this happens when she is attacked by an escaped convict and displays self-defense skills she never knew she had. Although this does not pull her out from her amnesia entirely, it triggers an awakening of the dormant identity of Charly Baltimore, and eventually leads to her full manifestation. For The Bride, it is her miraculous resurrection from the (near) dead and her realization of what had been wrecked on her life that is the crucial turning point – when she turns from an assassin on Bill’s side to becoming his worst enemy.

One may be able to detect a striking similarity in the missions of both Charly in A Long Kiss Goodnight and The Bride in Kill Bill. Both are pitted against adversaries who at some point in the past had actually been their romantic partners. And to put an even more cruelly personal twist on things, both adversaries are fathers to Charly and The Bride’s daughters. With the female leads established as the good characters, the movies work to portray the image of a brutish paternity. Through such a portrayal of the “murderous father figure,” these films “sustain an intense critique of patriarchy” (Geller 28). The fact that they are both husbands and fathers makes them seem even more inhumane; it gives the anti-patriarchal protest much more weight than if they were just male figures. On a larger scale, the films are using these cruel husbands as representatives of the universal masculine figure – of males in general – and portraying it as directly opposed to the female cause.

The Brave One makes the same statement, but in a different way. In Erica's case, it is a group of males whom she ultimately wants revenge on. Erica gets her revenge at the close of the movie. But every one of the criminals she kills along the way are ruthless men, many of whom subject their women victims to injury, torture, and even enslavement. This is clearly shown in one example – the case of the drug lord stepfather who shoots his wife in the head to keep her from testifying against him. The movie paints a very one-dimensional image of the “bad guys” – ethnic (Black/Hispanic), and most importantly, male. It seems almost undeniable that the war being waged is one against a purported brutal patriarchy of society.

Although it may seem that all three films are equally united in their anti-patriarchal cause, it is actually through the making of such a statement that The Brave One distinguishes itself from the other two films of its genre. Rather surprisingly, it seems that one convention of the female-lead action film is that it makes a concession at the end of the movie with regards to its anti-patriarchal stance. In both the Kill Bill movies and A Long Kiss Goodnight, both The Bride and Charly are somewhat reconciled to the patriarchal society they were initially fighting against. We see this explicitly in Charly’s case – she eventually finds a White boyfriend, in a seeming attempt to reintegrate herself and her daughter into society by becoming a part of the social familial unit. We see this to a lesser extent with The Bride, who, after killing Bill, jumps straight into her newfound maternal role. Though her acceptance of her maternal role may not be a direct undermining of her previous anti-patriarchal stance, it is a compromise. This is due to the image of the single-parent family as somehow lacking something essentially – a father figure. Although the movie does not suggest anything about an attempt to fill this lack, it does end with a strong sense of its possibility, through the essentially incomplete image of mother and daughter.

The Brave One may not be as personally anti-patriarchal as the other two films, in that the ultimate adversary is not an ex-lover or ex-husband – in fact, the ones Erica seeks revenge on are the very killers of her fiancé. The movie may even be described as pro-patriarchal in the beginning – Erica is passionately in love with her fiancé, and although there are no suggestions of inequality in their relationship, there are some sex scenes which do suggest a certain subjection of the female to the male. With the death of her fiancé, Erica’s mission takes on an increasingly anti-patriarchal agenda, with all the male criminals she dispatches along the way. But unlike Charly and Beatrix Kiddo, she follows-through with this turn against patriarchy. The crucial last scene of the movie shows her final rejection of the social institution of romantic partnership – after escaping into the night, leaving her Black detective friend wounded, she walks down the same tunnel she and her fiancé walked down the night of the attack. Besides her dog that runs up behind her, she is clearly established in the scene as a lone figure, utterly independent of everyone and everything. (Based on this last scene alone, one could even be prompted to analyze the film as a Western, based on the indispensable scenic element of a lone figure “riding off into the sunset” after taking care of what needed to be taken care of). As she disappears into shadows, the narration echoes the same mantra, in Erica’s own voice: “There is no going back, to that other person, that other place – this thing – this stranger – she is all you are now.” The movie closes with a sense of resolution – that Erica has fully come to terms with the fact of her fiancé’s death, and shows no desire to return to that old, happy life – and that she is no less complete than anyone else for choosing to go out on her own without a partner. In a subtle way, the movie makes a profound statement about the redundancy of the social institution of marriage, and implicitly, a statement against a patriarchal society. This is what makes The Brave One stand out from the other movies of its genre – its unwillingness to compromise on its feminist stance. The movie does not betray what it is essentially based on – by not allowing another man into the picture, Erica asserts herself as the female lead, from start to finish.

As The Brave One seems to suggest, the genre of the female-lead action film may be on the cusp of evolution. While most of the other conventions of the genre are kept intact – the revenge storyline, the crossing of racial boundaries, and the motif of reincarnation – this movie brings the anti-patriarchal theme of the genre to the next level. In this sense, it is definitely revisionist in nature – although it is unclear as to whether it is merely reflective of yet another surge in feminist thought in society, or if it really is a precursor to this surge. Society has been evolving under the influence of feminism for decades now, and the birth of the female-lead action film genre attests to that. But are we seeing a further intensification of the feminist thought already rampant in society today? More and more, from what we can observe in the media, in politics, and in everyday life, it seems that being on par is no longer good enough – now, women seem to want to outplay men.

And outplay them she does – in the movies at least. On screen, anything is possible, which is why films – especially genre films – are so essential to our understanding of society’s beliefs and values, and the evolution of those beliefs and values. Genre films remain – and will continue to be – valuable artifacts of our civilization and culture.

• 2008 Winter
• Film Analysis