Good old fashioned action

I decided to take a break from my fantasy reading, after finishing two fantasy ebooks in pretty quick succession, and picked up Chuck Dixon's Levon's Trade, which I had bought some months ago. I read it so quickly and enjoyed it enough, that I went and looked for the sequel. What I found is that while I'd bought the first ebook for $2.99, I could buy a Kindle omnibus of the first six books for $4.99, which I quickly did. I've now read five of the six. I also watched Chris Hemsworth's Extraction last night. I'd had that on my Netflix queue for months too, but I hardly ever go to Netflix. Because of weird personal issues (my son broke his ankle out in the mountains out west, and my wife left with little warning to go help him. He can't drive, he can't walk; he can't do much of anything for a few weeks) so I'm here at home all alone for two weeks. That gives me the opportunity to catch up on some reading and watching of stuff that I otherwise haven't been doing much of because I've been busy enough to make it difficult. 

I'm struck by the similarity between the two concepts; both are essentially old-fashioned violent vigilante thrillers. Both have a Western man warrior, who's become somewhat psychologically broken, or at least damaged, by family grief that has nothing to do with his career as a former special forces expert killer, who get caught up in seeking redemption of sorts by combating Third World organized crime. In the case of Levon Cade, it starts with seeking to find the missing daughter of a friend and have enough money to fend off the petty lawfare of the father of his dead wife (cancer) and have custody over his young daughter. As the series goes on, the enemies become more varied, but in most of them there's a corrupt Third World organized crime element; Zetas dealing meth in backwoods Alabama, Ukrainians with traditional protection rackets and other organized crime staples (although in this case, a rogue element within their own organization is the catalyst of the problem), Middle Eastern smugglers doing a bit of everything in Middle America, etc. Cade is just a normal guy living a normal life who happens to be a highly effective killer with a special forces background, in most cases finding trouble that he wasn't looking for but couldn't seem to avoid.

Tyler Rake of Extraction is an Australian special forces who's young son died of cancer, and because he couldn't deal with it, he essentially abandoned his family for a tour of duty in Afghanistan. He does, however, have a crew that he does merc work with, and was hired to rescue the teenaged son of an Indian drug lord (who's in prison) and has been captured by a rival Bangladeshi drug lord. This poor, surprisingly gentle and kind of shy and retiring kid becomes a surrogate second son of sorts as he attempts to get him out of the city in Bangladesh; the drug lord is such a power that the police and military are completely coopted in his corruption.

So there's some significant differences, but also some very marked similarities. The special forces background, the character being defined in part by past family tragedy—cancer in both cases—and the full throttle violent vigilantism being perpetrated against both Third World organized crime organizations but also corrupted official law enforcement when needed, etc. Both are kind of a callback to a simpler, almost old-fashioned vigilante thriller that was popular in the 70s and 80s and a bit beyond, while also having their own modern spins on the genre at the same time. Levon Cade in particular is part Jack Reacher, part Die Hard, part The Fugitive, and part Punisher. Extraction is more like a classic Rambo movie in an urban setting. It's the characters themselves and their personal journey, as well as all of the non-stop vigilante action, that unite the two.

I heartily recommend them both; the Levon Cade series of novels (which I'm admittedly only halfway done with; there are eleven in total) and the Extraction movies. I've heard the second one is just as good, if not better, and I will almost certainly watch it this week too.

But it's nice to see that there are actually some good movies and books being made today that hearken back to this old-fashioned aesthetic. I've read before that vigilante fiction like the Dirty Harry and Death Wish movies thrive in a time when trust in social institutions like the government is at a low, and violent crime (which in the West, quite often has a Third World element to it, especially if you consider African-"Americans" to be essentially slightly differentiated Africans, which is both fair and accurate) is at an all time high, and corruption and incompetence are the stories of the day with regards to the government. If so, it makes sense that these kinds of plotlines and stories feel fresh and relevant still (or again) today in spite of the age and vintage of their earlier peak.

UPDATE: As an aside, although not focusing on the violent action nearly as much, the movie coming out called Sound of Freedom with Jim Cavaziel is a similarly-themed story too. And it amuses me that Sound of Freedom was the #1 movie in America over the 4th of July, coming as it is from an indie Christian studio.