The series' match of bleak gunplay to everyday domesticity resurfaces in the crisp, clattering arthouse thriller Blue Ruin (Channel 4 DVD, 15), its slow-smouldering story of a Virginia vagrant on a complicated revenge trail calling to mind the Coen brothers in its ruthless structural efficiency and tar-dark humour.
But if the government gets its way, then gunplay could soon be encouraged there.
It was the second movie by director Sam Peckinpah, and its embittered characters and realistic gunplay began to establish the formulas for which he became famous.
Ride the High Country and Major Dundee were particularly notable for setting the formulas for which Peckinpah became famous: magnificent landscapes, embittered characters drifting in a West that has lost its code of honour, and most notably gruesome, realistically choreographed gunplay.
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, a prequel that leads directly into The New Order, is an equally generous standalone expansion that carries over the satisfying gunplay and solid stealth mechanics from its parent title, while also ratcheting up the dumbness-dial by throwing Nazi zombies into the mix.
When The New Order reaches its stride the non-intrusive cover system, unexpectedly enjoyable stealth mechanics and satisfying gunplay coalesce with smart level design that eschews the restrictive corridor shootouts and scripted set-pieces of its peers in favour of connected, open-plan battle zones in a variety of extraordinary environments.
It's in examining the relationship between the two and revealing the machinations of Colombia that Infinite is at its strongest; though, this being a shooter at heart, there's plenty of time for such contemplative moments to be broken up by bloody gunplay as Booker uses both bullets and Vigours – elemental magic ranging from fire to lightening – to wage war.
Lakeside Terrace allows the antagonism to simmer just so, and then, regrettably, lets it boil over in a climax of gunplay and a swathe of Californian brush fires, perhaps the most crashingly symbolic conflagration since Apocalypse Now.
With gun in hand The Evil Within closely resembles Resident Evil 4's third person shooting, where the aiming reticule is slow to focus unless stationary, adding nervous intensity and strategy to gunplay.
Both sequences involve spurts of multiple gunplay, which, as we know from an average week at the movies, or in front of the TV, is liable to trigger all manner of stylistic folly; but Maclean holds his nerve, and somehow finds order in the uproar.
"It's the gunplay I'm concerned about".
