I find myself often spending late nights watching TV. And recently, I caught another replay of the movie ULTRAVIOLET. Although I’m generally not a fan of this film, its action scenes always fascinate me. I simply love how the protagonist (played by Milla Jovovich) gets to effortlessly just fling her guns around and manage to put down all the bad guys and at the same time look so graceful while avoiding getting hit.

I’ve already seen this particularly entertaining style of fighting used or at least mentioned in a number of graphic novels and movies. But violet’s rhythmic movements reminded me so much of how Christian Bale stylishly did the same in his earlier movie EQUILIBRIUM.

Only after doing some research (with my friend Google) did I find out the reason for the similarity was that both films were directed by the same guy.

Kurt Wimmer is an American writer/director who has worked in films like…

• The Thomas Crown Affair – Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo
• Street Kings – Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker
• The Recruit – Al Pacino, Colin Farrell
• Equilibrium – Christian Bale
• Ultraviolet – Milla Jovovich

Wimmer is credited to be the inventor of the fictional martial arts system called Gun Kata. The general principle behind the supposed lethal technique is that a person memorizes a series of choreographed movements by repeated practice (also known as kata in martial arts). The movements for this system had supposedly been developed by analyzing thousands of gunfights; which apparently developed into the idea that it is statistically possible to determine where any individual is located and where all shots will be delivered from in any particular gunfight.

A totally outrageous but yet seemingly plausible concept! I guess that’s why it looks really good in the movies.

But honestly, I really think anyone who would actually practice this in real life would fast end up looking really good… as a bullet-ridden corpse.  

Related posts:

1. Total Recall… Again!

Tags: equilibrium, films, gun kata, kurt wimmer, ultraviolet

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 18th, 2009 at 8:34 PM and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.