A supercut of all the moments the director pauses to let us catch our breath.
Every action director has his or her trademark: Tony Scott likes color, Michael Bay likes explosions, James Cameron pushes the effects envelope, John Woo loves a good Mexican standoff gone haywire (and doves, many many doves), Kathryn Bigelow likes to use slow-motion in action sequences, and Guy Ritchie likes to freeze the action entirely in what video essayist Semih Okmen refers to as “locked shots.”
The purpose of such shots, besides a flourish of style, is to accentuate the action by pausing it, giving us in the audience an opportunity to catch our breath and process, even for just a moment, the hyperactivity we’ve witnessed before being flung right back into it.
In the following short supercut, Okmen has gathered these instances into the calmest (but still effective) action sequence ever.