When a person who has lived through a great number of hardships in life shows the appropriate amount of baseline empathy, but the empathetic expression is couched in a level of practicality, survival and utilitarianism.
Jean-Claude Van Damme did a great job at conveying post-apocalyptic empathy in the 1989 movie Cyborg. There are small moments where he conveys great emotional responses in only split second intervals because he's mostly having to continue kicking ass.
by milesgilesniles May 18, 2020