The film is otherwise a strictly formulaic action picture that suggests some of Mr. Schwarzenegger's early, low-budget vehicles, like "Commando" (1985) and "Raw Deal" (1986).
Eastwood went on to make The Gauntlet (1977), a kinetic but formulaic action film in which he played a police detective trying to transport a witness (Sondra Locke) to an Arizona courthouse where she can testify.
Opening nationally today, "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life" emerges as just one more formulaic action film as the title character bounces around the globe in a deadly treasure hunt.
Especially common are noun and epithet combinations such as "the dark earth," "the broad sky," "the bronze-corsleted Achaeans," "swift-footed Achilles," or "white-armed Hera". Besides epithets, other formulaic expressions include "answered and addressed him" or "pondered in his heart and mind". There is formulaic action, too: repeated scenes and motifs.
Taking a vacation from the formulaic action movies in which he specialises, Michael Bay turns his attention to a based-on-fact real-life crime story in which three ex-convicts, brought together at a Miami gym by their passion for bodybuilding, revert to crime to grab their slice of the American Dream.
Grandiose and bursting with macho energy, Kwak Kyung-taek's fierce yet formulaic action film, shot in Korea, Russia and Thailand, features elaborate set pieces aboard ships and on land, persistent machine-gun fire and a booming score that conveys villainy or heroism, depending on what the scene calls for.
Next". Stallone's associates say his two coming films will have plenty of action, but not completely formulaic action.
Paltrow said in an interview, "I thought that this is the time to do a movie like this where it's kind of breaking into new territory and it's not your basic formulaic action-adventure movie".
But "Knight and Day," which David Denby reviews in the magazine this week, plays schematically: the formula-mashup comes off as formulaic, the action is spectacular but offers few surprises and leaves little suspense, and — here's where I'm going — the romantic suaveness depends on a chemistry that never jells.
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is as generic and formulaic an action picture as we've seen in quite awhile.
Directed by the gifted African-American Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day"), "Tears of the Sun" is visually alive, and the movie tries, within the severely formulaic limits of action-adventure films, to be morally alive, too.
