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1) The Hero is either ends of the spectrum, a trigger-happy lawman who is guided by his own rugged sense of righteousness or a man forced to a life of crime and vigilantism due to revenge. Either way, the Pinoy action hero is a man.

2) The Villain is either a leader of a drug syndicate or a corrupt politician, often a congressman with his own private army of armed goons. usually there is a psychotic bastard of a right-hand man who is a nemesis to the Hero.

3) If the Hero is a policeman, he is often a family man with a devoted wife but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t has other women. If the Hero is a Criminal out for revenge, he has a bad girlfriend but soon will fall in love with a girl that could change his ways.

4) The leading lady is often younger than the Hero, like 20 years younger.

5) The Hero aside from his sidearm has his ever trusty sidekick who serves as driver, houseboy, confident, comic relief and distraction if ever Missis Hero comes when the Hero and a lady friend are together.

6) The Hero never misses. He’s an expert gunshot who knows a 100 ways of using a gun well, even seemingly never running out of bullets.

7) The typical guns you see is .45mm revolver, the 9mm Beretta handgun and the M-16 Armalite complete with grenade launcher.

8 ) The Hero is quite a fighter with his fists too. The basic technique is evade, parry then punch. Evade, parry,then punch. Repeat that until all the goons are down.

9) The typical plot for the action film is as follows: The hero is on a vendetta against the villain. So he starts picking off the small fish, then moves after the Big boss in the end for the major showdown. Many casualities fall along the way, be it a close friend, a family member, or a lover. Near the end, the Hero takes a Devil may cry attitude and takes the law of the gun.

10) The fight scenes are basically the following: A streetfight scene, a barfight scene, a carchase scene in a out of the way empty lot/suburbs, a warehouse shoot-out scene, a hacienda shoot-out scene.

11) In the middle of movie, there would definitely be a trip to the country. A calm before the storm, before the killing begins.

12) The bad guy is always killed. Miserably. Never brought to justice. Just sent directly to hell.

13) At the end, if the Hero is a policeman, he escapes unscathed, just another day at work. If the Hero is a criminal, he often gets killed.

14) Somethings I missed: the title is often either the challenging tagline. You’d hear it said when the Hero encounters the Bad guy for the 1st time, or the name of the Hero if the film is based on an actual person with exaggerated events of his life.

Anybody care to add more?

There are rare exceptions to the generalities mentioned. One jewel is FPJ’s Panday and another is a Lito Lapid Film called KAMAGONG which relies solely on showcasing Arnis/ Eskrima. Cool film, wonder where we could find a copy.