When Adam Liaw, an Australian celebrity chef (the only celebrity chef I know, I should add, and I have no idea what he cooks. I came across him because he is consistently funny and sensible on Twitter and perhaps the only person I know on that wretched medium that is both. And do I sound defensive for knowing a ‘celebrity chef’? Well I certainly hope so, because I absolutely feel defensive discussing celebrity chefs on my hardboiled cyberpunk blog).
Anyway, where was I?
Right, Adam Liaw. When he tweeted, in reference to modern action films:
“You see, son, there was a time when violent masculinity was generally aspirational, but over time it’s basically developed into a form of catharsis allowing ageing men to address their insecurities through a kind of fantasy roleplay centred around keeping their family safe.”
I experienced a sudden psychic break with a twitter personality whom I had never met and will probably never meet. Someone who did not know me from a bar of soap had reached out and offended me, personally. I was angry.
(Click the PDF icon, upper right, if you prefer reading a black-on-white script)
How dare he make fun of, or diminish, angry dad cinema? We all need our trash film viewing from time to time, and angry dad cinema is a brand of trash I guiltily and frequently enjoy. So I punched a hole in a wall and resolved to never read another Adam Liaw tweet. We Generation X fathers have to stick together. The jar of angry insecurities we carry around in our chests is the jar that cannot be named!
And yes, while his analysis might have some truth to it – where we disagree is this: that there is something wrong about a fantasy roleplay centred around keeping one’s family safe. As roleplaying goes, this has to one of the better ones, surely? Not as good as Dungeons and Dragons perhaps, but surpassingly better than, say, furries, or QAnon LARPers storming the capitol.
Yes, there is true there is some catharsis in these movies, including for fathers. We are living through a cyberpunk present, under the thumb of surveillance capitalism, as the global system roils with uncertainty during a devastating pandemic. Climate change is a looming catastrophe for our children and democracies are losing faith in themselves. So yeah, sometimes it’d be nice to escape to a reality where we can protect our kids and bring certainty to our lives by punching a Russian in the mouth.
Dad rage cinema is darkly exhilarating for the same reason The Sopranos was so popular. Tony Soprano was the ultimate angry dad, and he did what people would like to do, in our darker fantasy roleplaying moments. The way he reacts to a bully, or to rudeness, or to someone who insults his daughter.
But I’m not here for some high-browed deconstruction of the subgenre of dad rage. I’m here to express my enjoyment of it. We need our escapism, and our trash cinema. What follows is a list of films I happened to have watched recently, with a couple of classics thrown in for good measure.
Run All Night (2015) (4/10)
This film isn’t particularly well known, despite its credible cast (Ed Harris, Liam Neeson, Joel Kinnaman, Vincent D’Onofrio). However, it warrants an inclusion because it has one of the ultimate angry dads in Liam Neeson (I have watched the better-known Taken, but it was a long time ago and let’s face it: a lot of the latter-day Liam Neeson films are interchangeable). Run All Night has the honour of being a double angry dad film, with Ed Harris as the second aggrieved father.
The plot, such as it is: Liam Neeson (Jimmy Conlon) is forced to kill the son of gangster boss Ed Harris (Shawn Maguire), because the latter’s son was trying to kill Jimmy’s son. Shawn Maguire, in turn, vows to kill Jimmy’s son, Mike (Joel Kinnaman).
Unfortunately, double dad-rage does not equate to double the enjoyment. It’s the worst on this list, mainly because of a formulaic plot, tired performances, and predictable dénouement. Worse: the message of this film is a sub-theme that pops up from time to time in the angry dad genre – that of the redeemed delinquent dad. Jimmy Conlon is a former hitman who walked out on his son, Mike when he was a child. The story arc Jimmy’s involves redemption, as he murders a whole bunch of people in order to save his son from being murdered. The son, in turn, goes from despising his father to forgiveness.
This I don’t like. I prefer the everyday sacrifices of the parent, rather the grand gesture after a lifetime of neglect. I prefer the decent men who do the small good things every day, rather than the indecent men who do one good thing once.
Nobody (2021) (5/10)
I like Bob Odenkirk a lot. He is excellent as the titular character in Better Call Saul. He’s fully made the transition from stand-up comedian to serious dramatic actor. He’s a writer and a producer. Bob’s a talented guy. But I think he should draw the line at action hero.
I just couldn’t believe it. At no point could I suspend belief and see his character “Hutch” as a tough-as-nails former government assassin. The script itself is bloodless, and no I’m not trying to be cleverly ironic, given how bloody the film is. What I mean is: I never at any point felt fear for him or his family. I never once believed he wouldn’t get revenge and grow in stature in the eyes of his wife and children. I found it hard to even care if he got revenge. It’s a John Wick movie, but without the physicality of Keanu Reeves (an actual real-life black belt). It’s a dad rage movie, but without the fears and insecurities that gives these films a visceral watchability. 
Hutch and his family are the victims of a home invasion, but it is not a harrowing ordeal in the manner of an actual home invasion, depicted with startling brutality in films such as Death Wish. The home invaders are, instead, struggling parents with hearts of gold (not a characteristic I’d normally associate with home invaders, but hey). The bad guys are Russians (bad guys pretty much all have to be Russian these days, as they are one of the few ethnic minorities in cinema that it is still fine to vilify). Doc Brown from Back to the Future turns up at the end with shotguns, and let’s face it, now we’re just being silly. I finished watching the film only because it was too late in the evening to start a new one.
The central thematic claim for Nobody is that an aging middle-class man in a tedious office job can regain his virility and sense of being by killing Russians. I mean: I have no objections to this theme, as such, but at least let’s execute it with some true fear and palpable vulnerability.
Blood Father (2016) (6/10)
Mel is a crazy motherfucker but don’t blame me – he was born in the States and only came over to Australia when he was 12. I blame all his later life problems for his formative years.
So Mel was mad in Mad Max, and a vengeful dad, as well. But that film doesn’t really hold up all these years later (unlike its sequel, The Road Warrior, which remains a classic), and the angry dad part of the film comes quite late, rather than being the central motif. So instead I went for Blood Father, which has all you need to know in the title (Digression: as I was writing this article it occurred to me that I should include some Australian films, but here’s the thing: we really don’t do the vigilante dad thing (Mad Max aside). In fact, the vigilante film is by and large an American phenomenon, which I assume ties into the American fantasy of the rugged individual establishing law and order where an incompetent or corrupt bureaucracy may not. Australians are a lot more comfortable with big government than our US cousins).
Anyway, Mel does a credible – all too credible – job as an angry dad protecting his estranged daughter. He shoots some Mexicans and some bikies, saves the day, all that. Blood Father falls into the same category of Run All Night, in the sense that he is a delinquent dad who comes good. But it does it better, with a stronger lead actor, and retains awareness that such sacrifices don’t make up for all the neglect. As Mel’s character says: “You can’t be a prick all life your life and then say: never mind.”
Wrath of Man (2021) (8/10)
The title is so stupidly overblown I just knew I had to see this film. Before I watched it, I walked around the house for several days bellowing ‘The wrath of man!’ while my wife laughed at me. I expected this movie to be trash: high-octane, predictable, by-the-numbers action fare. But it turned out to be genuinely good quality, trashy, high octane action fare.
It’s well put together: the flash back sequences work, and the mystery surrounding the wrathful man kinda works, as well. Jason Statham – not known for giving competent performances – gives a competent performance. Sure, Statham has the acting range of Steven Segal, but what he does – brooding stoic father extracting revenge – he does exceedingly well. It’s a satisfying dad rage action movie, overall.
Unlike Run All Night, which features both a bad person and a bad father, Wrath of Man features a bad man who happens to be a loving father.
Commando (1986) (10/10)
The ultimate angry dad. You don’t mess with Arnold’s daughter. You just don’t, man. The masculinity in Commando is so completely over the top. We have the apex of alpha males, Schwarzenegger, cosplaying a commando called “Colonel John Matrix”. God, my testosterone surged just writing that line.
I don’t like shopping and I hate guns, so why do I love scenes where men shop for guns? Arnold has at least two of the classics. The gun store scene in the original Terminator movie: “Phased plasma rifle in the forty watt range,” “hey – just what you see pal.”
And then there is the weapon shopping scene in Commando. He drives a bulldozer through the front door of some sort of military disposal store, and goes round with a shopping cart collecting
what he wants. Machine guns, big knives, freaking claymores. Amazingly, when he is caught by the police and thrown into a police car, his female companion rescues him by: shooting the police car with a missile launcher. Of course!
We also have one of the classic gear up scenes, wherein painting on of war makeup, the loading of guns and the sheathing of knives is done, manfully (watch here, if you’re after another testosterone surge)
Plus Commando is chock full of the greatest kitsch kill lines in movie history, such as:
Matrix: “Don’t disturb my friend…he’s dead tired.”
Matrix: “Remember Sully when I promised I’d killed you last?”
Sully: “That’s right Matrix, you did!”
Matrix: “I Lied.”
Matrix: “Let off some steam, Bennett.”
Anyway, I haven’t spoken much about the father-daughter relationship in Commando. Mainly because that’s just a pretext to blow things up. But I will say this: before the bloodletting begins, John Matrix depicted as a good and present father.
The day after I vowed to never look at another Adam Liaw tweet, I was looking through his Twitter stream when I saw he’d written a follow-up to the one I referenced earlier: “I am also a keen consumer of many films in the Dad Rage genre.”
Good. Adam was redeemed my eyes and I could start wholeheartedly following the celebrity chef again. Like I said at the start: there a different forms of escapism in this world, different types of fantasy roleplay. Mostly they are stupid and harmless. For mine, simplistic fantasies of keeping your family safe in an unpredictable and sometimes frightening world are a perfectly legit form of escapism. Especially if it involves Arnold despatching an assailant with a hurled circular saw blade, or Statham sternum-punching a rogue ex-soldier, or Mad Mel popping a vein.
