THE HIGH TABLE

Just finished watching the Jotunheim sequence from the new Suicide Squad. Fantastic piece of physical cinema. It immediately took me back to Thailand in '94, shooting Men of War and mapping out that final, muddy jungle brawl with Trevor Goddard. Trevor was a massive, powerful guy—a real powerhouse like John Cena—and when you have two men of that size locked in close quarters, the mechanics change completely. You aren't doing flashy high-kicks; you are fighting for inches of dirt, utilizing raw leverage and body weight.

Joel Kinnaman’s positioning in that top mount is incredibly accurate. He anchors his lower half, using his heavy combat boots to pin Cena’s hips flat to the concrete. That’s exactly how Trevor and I choreographed our grapple in the rain—if you don't anchor your base, you lose all power. You can see Cena’s massive armored boots frantically splaying and twitching across the debris, desperate for traction. When you show the boots fighting the floor like that, it grounds the struggle in real physics. It makes the audience feel the absolute mass of these guys.

The upper-body work is where the true intensity lies. Cena’s flexed, vascular arms and rigid gauntlets are strained to their absolute limit just to hold off that heavy iron pipe. It’s a pure battle of attrition under harsh, sweat-slicked lighting, faces completely locked together, veins bulging across their necks as they blow out their engines. It mirrors the raw, hyper-masculine grit we wanted in Men of War—two deeply conditioned, uniformed soldiers reduced to an animalistic wrestling match where every micro-movement requires maximum physical output.

And the tragic ending is brilliantly paced. Flag pours every remaining ounce of his power into completing the execution, completely focused on the downward choke. But just like a dirty mercenary fight, a split second of overconfidence leaves a blind spot. Cena reaches out, grabs that broken porcelain shard, and drives it home. A sudden, violent shift in momentum that leaves the victor trapped under dead weight in total silence. A masterclass in old-school, visceral action.

Published: 2026-08-16, viewed 19 times.