Arthouse Action: A new subgenre (Spoilers for films ahead!)

Recently, several different sources have begun dubbing certain films "arthouse action films", in that they employ stylized and artistic imagery, as well as short but gruesome scenes of violent action, as well as portraying their narrative and the world of the film as somewhat surreal, or a bit unhinged from reality. These films are considered both a subgenre of arthouse films and a subgenre of action/thriller films. The main films that keep coming up are: the thrillers Hanna and Haywire; the crime/thriller/drama film Drive; the sci-fi thriller Looper, the sci-fi/comic book action film Dredd, and the crime/drama film Killing Them Softly. All of the films with the exception of Hanna are rated R, and all films with the exception of Hanna and Haywire feature male heroes who are pretty similar, not in character arc or background, but character type. We don't know much about them, and they appear cold, distant, and brutal at first, very hard to relate with. In Drive, Ryan Gosling's character isn't very well known by people around him, and we only know him as "The Driver" or "Kid". In Looper, we very briefly dive into our central hero's past, only briefly touching upon some deep-seated mommy issues, but all we know is his occupation, his friends, and his day-to-day life, and we only know that his first name is Joe. In Dredd, we learn far less about our hero than in the comics, and he is very hard to relate to, being very cold, harsh, and brutally violent. All we know is he goes by "Dredd", "Judge", or "Judge Dredd". In Killing Them Softly, we don't really know much about Cogan except he is a cold and empty man with little background info, he is a skilled killer, who kills his victims "softly", as in "from a distance", and we only know him by Cogan. A few of these films are based on relatively unknown novels, such as "Drive" or "Cogan's Trade", or in Dredd's case, a well-known British comic strip/series. With the exception of Killing, all these male-oriented films have their character grow somehow, by the end, they are still somewhat cold (especially in Dredd) but seem more human now, and somewhat more relatable and empathetic. Many of these films the hero has a mentor or older person who influences them. In Killing, Cogan is friends with Dylan, a hired killer who we never see as he is old and sickly now, and he is briefly shown to have a close friendship with James Gandolfini's character, who is at least a decade older. In Looper, Joe is somewhat influenced by Abe (Jeff Daniels), a man from the future sent to monitor the Loopers, who is pretty threatening, but appears friendly and uncle-like to Joe. In Drive, car garage owner Shannon (Bryan Cranston) serves as a friend to Driver, and briefly is shown to be somewhat of a mentor/father figure to him. In all these films except Killing, the character is changed somehow by a woman. In Looper, Joe is changed by a Kansas farm girl and her young son, whom he resides with while hiding from his enemies. In Drive, Driver is changed by his sweet neighbor and her young son when he begins to hang out with them a lot. In Dredd, Dredd's rookie who he's been training for most of the film changes him by showing sometimes being emotional and empathetic trumps the cold, set-in-stone rules and codes of the Judges. Usually in these films, the action is very brief and can either be very gruesome and bloody, or at least have a good deal of bloodshed. The villains in these films is usually taken out in a pretty brutal way. In Drive, Nino is drowned by Driver in the ocean, and Bernie Rose stabs Driver in the gut, but when he goes to stab again, Driver forces his blade into his own throat. In Killing, there is no real villain, but the "loose ends" are shot up pretty bad. In Looper, Old Joe from the future kills everyone in the Looper HQ, including all the young Loopers, Abe, and the street surgeon, with the exception of idiotic assassin Kid Blue, who is shot by Young Joe while on a hover-bike. In Dredd, Dredd grabs the sadistic and psychotic drug queen Ma-Ma and she reveals she has a detonator on her wrist that will detonate a bomb that will kill everyone in the huge apartment complex of Peach Trees if she dies, so Dredd throws her from the top floor of the 200-300 story complex, and she splatters on the ground, and she is so far from the bomb (which is on the top floor) that her detonator can't give a good signal, rendering it useless. In the female-oriented films Hanna and Haywire, the protagonists are highly-trained, extremely deadly female assassins who are out for vengeance. Both Drive and Looper were released via FilmDistrict, and Looper proved the most successful in the entire subgenre, getting a 93% approval rating from critics and audiences of Rotten Tomatoes (a site I'll give my opinion on later) and grossing $176 million worldwide. All these films also are released in odd months for action movies: Dredd and Looper were released in mid-to-late September 2012, Haywire was released in January 2012 (January is a terrible months for movies in general), Drive came out in September 2011, Hanna was released in April 2011, and Killin (the most recent) hit theaters in November 2012. Most of them are all directed by acclaimed filmmakers such as Rian Johnson (Looper- known for his work on hit series Breaking Bad and for his 2005 comedy/mystery Brick, also starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Joe Wright (Hanna- well received for his works Atonement, Anna Karenina, and Pride & Prejudice), Pete Travis (Dredd- mainly known for his films Vantage Point and Endgame and his work on Cold Feet), Steven Soderbergh (Haywire- known for his films like Ocean's Eleven, Traffic, and Erin Brokovich), Andrew Dominik (Killing- an Aussie director known for his criminal biopics Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), and finally Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive- known for his movies Pusher, Bronson, Fear X, Valhalla Rising, and Only God Forgives). Well, those are all the connections between arthouse action films. My personal opinion: they're pretty good. As and overall genre the films range from great to just pretty good, but I really enjoyed a lot of the films listed and a lot of the scenes in the films are written and shot beautifully. But be warned, the films are pretty violent and gruesome in some bits, and also: these movies are pretty slow for "action movies", so just stick with them, no matter how dull, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. So go, check them out!

 (Images: Wikipedia)