Customer Reviews

The Action Hero's Handbook: How to Catch a Great White Shark, Perform the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, Track a Fugitive, and Dozens of Other TV and Movie Skills

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great "coffee table" book. Something anyone would find interesting and amusing.

The book is broken down into 5 sections:
1. Good Guy Skills
2. Love Skills
3. Paranormal Skills
4. Fighting Skills
5. Escape Skills

With each skill, the author introduces when and why an action hero will need to have the skill to follow. This portion of each section is humorous. The author then goes on to actually describe the skill, in step-by-step fashion. The instruction in this book actually comes from individuals who have great experience with the given skills. Upon seeing this book, you may not exactly expect to get official information, as it is filed in the "homor" section at most booksellers, but you are in fact getting solid, real information, which I feel makes the whole book even funnier. It's as if this is the handbook for the training of the modern real-life action hero.

It's a very amusing read - or just something to thumb through while you're waiting for your wife/girlfriend to get ready to go out.

Highly recommended.

What can one say, but get this book. Yeah, at first people look at you like you're a weirdo, but soon they are reading over your shoulder and can't stop especially, on the how to establish communication with extraterrestrials (man, now I totally understand Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

Be aware that there are some copies of this book that were bound incorrectly so it seems that there are a chunk of pages missing but you find them later on out of sequence. This could be annoying since you may need some of the misplaced techniques pronto such as, the aforementioned establishing contact with extraterrestrials.

It's a cool gift for anyone and it is very informative. How many books really educuate you on how to do cool things in a simple, straight-forward manner? At first you may resist but soon you are drawn to it's hypnotic, educating charm.

As with the WORST-CASE SCENARIO series that Borgenicht has coauthored, this provides you with the tactics necessary to deal with assorted stereotypical movie situations that could occur in real life from experts who sat down and thought out how to do it. Some are just really farfetched but good for a laugh, like dodging MiGs and how to do Maverick's inverted taunting stunt from TOP GUN (keep about four feet of separation and make sure your vertical stabilizers don't hit), but some are useful, like how to Dirty Dance, how to train for a boxing match, how to survive being hit by a car in the middle of the street, and even how to perform the Jedi Mind Trick (a hypnosis method called "pacing and leading"). It's a good read even if you don't want to be an action hero.

The Action Hero's Handbook is a fascinating little book. While I was a little disappointed in the Vulcan Nerve Pinch and the Jedi Mind Trick, the rest of the book had very interesting and potentially useful information like, how to get out of handcuffs and how to escape a sinking cruise ship.

This is a great book to give to people who live unusual lives or a book to buy for yourself if you're the kind of person who travels or just find adventure wherever you go. You might not have a great need to catch a white shark, but it's always possible these days to encounter someone with a gun that you may need to disarm or deal with an intoxicated driver who seems bent on running you over, and the Action Hero's Handbook tells you what to do in both circumstances.

As great as the book is, I gave it four stars only because a few minor things are missing: for example, while the book tells you how to avoid getting hit by a car or a truck, it doesn't cover SUVs, which to me is an important little detail. But overall, it's a great book to have.

When my brother loaned me his copy of this book I was definitely intrigued. Then when I started reading it, I just could not put it down. I loved it so much I just had to get my own copy. It has all sorts of useful information including: how to disarm a thug with a gun, how to save someone from falling off a cliff, how to pick up someone in a bar, how to secure and read a crime scene, how to fight off a ghost, and how to make a clean getaway. So, if you're thinking of becoming an action hero or you just want a good book that is both entertaining and helpful, then this one is a definite must have.

I can't believe this book! I saw it at my school's co-op and I couldn't pass it up. I mean, how many books actually show you how to do a Jedi Mind Trick or take a bullet? For those who like the Worst-Case Scenario books or TV show, this is another great one to add to your collection!!!

When one picks up a book like this, they may worry that it's loaded with a bunch of bunk, pointless, yet somehow humorous information. Oddly enough, this isn't the case with this book.

Each skill described in this book is told with the advice of experts in the field in question. At the same time, though, it's pretty hilarious, and doesn't overuse pop-culture references.

If you're into the "Worst Case Scenario" series, pick this one up. You won't be disappointed.

-Matt

The Action Hero's Handbook continues the great tradition of the 'Worst Case Scenario' series, using experts to teach - in just a few short pages - how to perform a number of skills, techniques and moves that you've seen (and perhaps envied) in countless movies.

Unfortunately the skills presented are a bit of a mixed bag. Some are not clearly connected with the theme of the book (How to Contact the Dead) or, worse, good in theory but not the clearest, or most interesting, in practice (How to Escape a Sinking Cruise Ship). Others are clearly more complex than outlined here (How to Secure and Read a Crime Scene) and suffer from trying to break down an intricate concept into short bullet points.

Still, plenty of clever allusions (How to Stop a Wedding (presumably at the most dramatic moment)) and really 'useful' info (How to Win a Foot Chase; How to Disarm a Thug With a Gun; How to Turn Sexual Tension Into Mad, Passionate Sex) make this a book worth picking up for the movie aficionado in your life - or you, if you've always secretly thought 'man, it would be cool if I could do *that*!'

I gave this to my husband as an anniversary gift, enscribing it "to my hero," and he really likes it. The style isn't so much outright corny as matter-of-fact like the Worst Case Scenario Survival Guide. The silly items, like How to Perform the Jedi Mind Trick, are described as if they were in the universe of Star Wars or from whereever they were derived, but at the end of the item the author adds the closest match in our world, such as how to get people to go along with your suggestions, using body language and voice modulation. Very fun.

This brilliant book expands on the previous Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook series and adds humour to what was previously a rather boring instructions you'd find in a box of something you were going to put together type series. In The Action Hero's Handbook the authors pretend you the reader want to be an action hero and guide you step by step through how to spy proof your hotel room, survive being run over by a truck, save someone hanging off the side of a cliff and other stuff your not likely to do in real life but would if you were an action hero like James Bond, Rambo and other action characters.

This book is not afraid to make fun of its advice which previously wasn't done in the Worst-Case Scenario series by the authors although certainly was by readers. There's a lot more advice in here as well. Even if you don't want to be an action hero you'll still laugh you head off from cover to cover. Highly recommended!