Bullet-Time

The Matrix’s use of bullet time, the extreme slowing down of the cinematic image, instantly became iconic for action cinema and has almost become as recognizable as Hitchcock’s famous dolly zoom in Vertigo. Circulated so much as to almost render the effect meaningless, this paper proposes the question of what purpose, in a time of incessant acceleration, could the slowing down of time mean and why has it become so iconic? This paper argues that bullet time in action films is, paradoxically, an intensification of speed, a different but related way of making movement felt. Although difficult to delimit, speed and its felt sensations are central concerns for contemporary culture. These intensifications of moments are ways not only to express narrative momentum but also to provide distinct pay-offs, durations of pure sensation and astonishment. Time is tamed in bullet time. Rather than the transcendent desire of slow cinema, we find a kinesthetic desire in cultural acceleration, a desire which is attenuated in contemporary action films and their use of bullet time.