Genre Mini-reviews – How films measure up to the Action Kickback Model

I’ll be posting short reviews for the sake of search-ability, focusing on genre and how they live up the Action Kickback Model. I’ll review genre films in general; action, horror, sci-fi, etc. The main points I want to address with the reviews are:

Story – Do we care what’s happening?

Genre Promise – Does the film deliver on the genre promise? Does the sci-fi film use science as a device? Does the action film have action that serves the narrative? Etc.

Marketability – How well did it sell?

My hypothesis is that films that excel in story and genre promise tend to do the best on the market. There are exceptions, like the great films that failed due to poor advertising campaigns or being released on the same weekend as other major films, or good films that were saved by one-off advertising gimmicks that (probably) couldn’t be repeated, but my hypothesis is a general, high-level one that I hope will serve as a guide for anyone looking to make genre films, action or not.