Top 10 Action Movies

What makes a great action movie? Surprisingly, the answer isn't just great action sequences, because what makes a great action sequence? I would say that more than anything, what we need for a great action movie is characters. We have to care what happens to these people. If we don't, what's the point? If we don't care, then it's just things banging into each other and we lose interest. This is the problem with movies like the Transformers movies. They're just special effects created by an expensive bunch of animators. There's not a character there that we care about. So that becomes the trickiest thing in an action movie, because just having action, and lots of it, isn't enough. We have to care. But then there can also be instances where just the visceral nature of the action can be enough to elevate a movie thin on character. Obviously the ideal thing is to have both, but sadly that doesn't always happen.

Honorable Mentions for:
Mad Max Fury Road
Casino Royale
Fellowship of the Ring
Kill Bill
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
10. Dredd
Credited to director Pete Travis, but according to the cast mostly directed by writer/producer Alex Garland, Dredd is very much indebted to video games in its structure as Judge Dredd (a perfect Karl Urban) and his apprentice Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) must methodically make their way up floor after floor of a high rise building to take down drug lord Ma-Ma (Lena Headey). The characterization is thin, I must admit, but our leads really sell it. Headey is just unhinged enough to feel dangerous, but such a tremendous actress that she brings humanity into anything she does (she is so much more than just Cersei Lannister if you’ve only ever seen her in Game of Thrones). Urban is just perfect in what is really a one note character. Dredd is hardcore, the ultimate rule follower, the ultimate enforcer, and so would seem to not have any available growth to him over the course of the movie, no emotion, but Urban makes it work somehow. But the key to the emotional arc of the movie and making it work is Olivia Thirlby. Probably most known as Juno’s best friend, she gives a performance of strength through adversity, inherent decency, and also a bit of wide eyed innocence to this relentless, dark, grimy, violent world. She’s our “in” to this world. She’s the audience surrogate. It’s her story more than it is Dredd’s, because she’s being reviewed on her abilities as a Judge. Thirlby has impressed me in other movies I’ve seen her in as well (most especially David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels) and I really wonder what happened to her. She needs to work more. But still, she’s the one we worry for. She’s the reason the action is tense, from a character perspective. Dredd seems like a perfect machine, it’s Anderson that’s learning her way as a Judge.

9. Predator

Get to da choppah!

Predator has so many stupid lines of uber-macho dialog and male preening of muscles and machismo that it’s comical. It also is an extraordinarily tense jungle set riff on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians with special effects that still work today, and visceral kinetic action scenes that don’t let up until the movie is over. Director John McTiernan made many great action flicks in his time, like Hunt for Red October, The Thomas Crown Affair, and including his Predator follow up, which we will get to later in this list. It’s McTiernan that keeps this movie from teetering over into parody, as we can feel the jungle setting and it’s what really helps this movie succeed. We can see and feel the sweat, the heat, the fact that you can’t see anything beyond the wall of vegetation in front of you. Each element ratchets up the tension beautifully. When the action comes, the Predator is efficient and brutal and all of the sudden we’re down another crew member. Neither McTiernan nor the Predator draws anything out too much, and that’s what works so well. Things can change so quickly that everyone must be on guard at all times. There’s no quiet before the storm, because the storm is quiet and all around you. It’s a wonderfully intense movie, and I wouldn’t really argue with someone who said it’s too low on this list.

8. Jurassic Park

There are, honestly, not a ton of consistently great directors in the action world. There are filmmakers that have a few great ones here and there, but few who deliver time and again. Steven Spielberg might be the king of action directors in my book. From the finale of Jaws to the horror of Saving Private Ryan to the entirety of the Indiana Jones series. In fact, Duel almost made it on this list since it’s one of the most relentlessly thrilling and tense movies ever made. But I decided to go with Jurassic Park, one of the most fun times you can have at the movies. The T-Rex attack, the raptors, the cgi that doesn’t look as seamless today as it once did, but still 100% works in the storytelling of it all, there’s a plethora of action here. But Spielberg also peoples the movie with characters and great actors to play them. Sam Neil gives terrific work especially in the first scenes where they see the dinosaurs. You can see the little kid inside of him bursting out. Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, and Laura Dern are wonderful as our other leads, while little parts like Wayne Knight and Samuel L. Jackson really create a great cast as a whole. I have watched this movie every couple of years since I was that 10 year old dinosaur lover seeing it in the theaters, and never once have I failed to be thrilled by this.

7. First Blood

I think people sometimes forget that Sylvester Stallone can be a terrific actor. I think First Blood might actually be his best work. It's a gritty, dirty, kinetic movie. It also subtly deals with the hassle that many Vietnam veterans dealt with after they came back. They had to go through a lot of shit in war, only to come back home and not be hailed as heroes like their father's generation when coming home from WWII. Back then the bad guys were more clear cut. Nazis = bad. Vietnam wasn't so black and white. It was all gray and these soldiers were the ones who really dealt with the gray of it all in a real way. We watch as Stallone's John Rambo just wants to live his life but gets hassled by some asshole cops and you could say Rambo overreacts to the situation, but we get it. The grimy, dirty, kinetic action focuses on a mostly wordless performance from Stallone, but it's great work from him as an actor.

6. The Bourne Identity

That's right, The Bourne Identity, the first one. Not the Paul Greengrass directed sequels which did everything this movie started to do, but with shaky cam. In Identity, Doug Liman knows how to actually show us what's happening so that we can care. We watch one of Matt Damon's best performances as the man of few words, Jason Bourne, as he tries to put his life together. Little details are what sets this apart for me, like before the car chase, as Bourne asks his companion, the great Franke Potente, if there's anything wrong with the car, does it pull a little to one side or anything like that. She has no idea what's about to happen, but he's trying to figure out what tools he has to work with. It's that kind of detail that really adds to the suspense, and the humor in the movie. We know why Bourne is asking, but she doesn't.

5. Die Hard

One that I'm sure most people would expect to be higher, Die Hard is a frustrating movie to me in some respects. Everything with Alan Rickman is brilliant. Everything with Bruce Willis is tremendous. Everything with Reginald VelJohnson is great and funny and adds to the tapestry of characters. However, Paul Gleason's idiotic police chief is only there to be wrong about everything. He's a buffoon in a movie with very few buffoons. The same can be said of the two FBI agents in the movie. They're superfluous and instead of just being part of the tapestry of characters, because they're so annoying they take away from the experience of the movie. They're 1/10 characters in a 10/10 movie. So I can't watch Die Hard without taking it down a peg because of them. Other than them, what more is there to say about how fun Rickman is, and how relatable and just leading man cool Bruce Willis is? Get rid of those other guys and this movie might top the list. As is? I can't have it higher than this.

4. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

James Cameron, at his best, has always been one of our best action filmmakers. His crowning achievement, though, in my mind, is T2. From the first time I saw it, at the probably too young age of 9 or so, I loved it. I was thrilled by it. I was excited by it. Again, the characters are what makes this piece truly sing. Linda Hamilton as the seemingly unhinged, but really apocalyptically prepared and determined Sarah Connor. A long way from playing in Beauty and the Beast on TV just a couple years before this. I know a lot of people find Edward Furlong annoying in his part as John Connor, but I think Furlong perfectly captures a kid who hasn't been parented in his life. He's young, he's arrogant, confused, not as smart as he thinks he is, and yeah he gets whiny. That's a kid. Contrasted against Arnold's Terminator and his silence and strength, it's a great dichotomy from a storytelling standpoint. And on top of all of that, one of the great villains in Robert Patrick's T-1000, and just one amazing action set piece after another throughout the whole runtime. You can't even really pick a favorite, because Cameron seemingly tells the story through the action, so the action is constant, and beautifully choreographed, shot, and just expertly put together. It's just an awesome movie.

3. Lethal Weapon

Again, characters. You could say archetypes, the "nearing retirement cop" and the "loose cannon cop nobody wants to work with", but aren't most characters just archetypes until the writers and actors get ahold of them? Danny Glover grounds the movie so much as a man that loves his family, is good at his job, and is just wanting to survive the craziness that's about to ensue. Mel Gibson embodies the loose cannon as a guy happily on the verge of suicide at any moment. Gibson is the movie's key. He could've been just a rogue, the guy that bucks the system, or whatever. But why is he suicidal? He misses his dead wife and can't move on without her. But he loves his job, and he's good at it. He brings the edge that Glover doesn't have. So they're a balance for each other characteristically. Add into all of that the sheer visceral thrill that director Richard Donner brings. Donner had done The Omen, Superman, and Goonies. He could do so much, but his crowning achievement is the way he calmly lays out these characters before letting shit hit the fan as we watch these guys go up against the bad guy drug dealers. And they too shouldn't be undersold, with their mix of the calm guy (Mitchell Ryan) and the loose cannon (Gary Busey). That Gibson and Busey would later be revealed to be loose cannons in real life only makes this movie work better, I think.

2. The Incredibles

So unlike movies like Mad Max, where we can marvel at the real stunt sequences and stunt performers risking their lives to get us these great shots and moments, The Incredibles was made entirely in a computer. So what makes the action so good? I think it's what I said in the opening paragraph: the characters. We have a whole family of people that we care about. They're all different, we like them for different reasons and their superpowers affect the story and action in different and exciting ways. I am thrilled by the action in the movie because I fear for the safety of these children that are just learning to accept and use their powers. Their parents know this action, they've fought all the bad guys before, so we don't worry as we watch them use their powers in a myriad of ways to defeat the enemy. We worry about the parents because of what all of this adventure means for them and their relationship. He's scared of losing his family, physically, to dangers. She's worried about losing their family to his desire to relive the glory days (and missing what's going on now, being present in the moment). So each character is risking different things, and risking them differently. When you add in the main action set pieces of the movie, they're almost unparalleled. The attack on the plane is my favorite, as Helen thinks she's flying to find her husband Bob, only to find out that the two oldest kids have stowed away on the plane, only to then be attacked by the bad guys forces. To see Helen's journey of fearing for her children, raising the stakes for her personally, and see it in her eyes and hear it in Holly Hunter's voice. It's extraordinary action filmmaking at the highest level. As a parent it brings tears to my eyes. As an action fan it gets me on the edge of my seat.

1. Children of Men

Not only one of the great sci-fi movies ever made, or just plain greatest movies ever made, Children of Men doesn't often get thought of as an action movie, but it definitely is. The two most memorable sequences from the movie (the attack on the car, and the outbreak of violence in the city) are two of the greatest moments in action filmmaking history. The attack on the car is a single shot, one that starts innocuously as the group drives down the road, but when they're met by motorcycle riding terrorists, shit goes down and we never cut away. We're never allowed to take a breath. Director Alfonso Cuaron has always had a fascination with single takes, and didn't always have to have them actually BE a single shot. In his take on Great Expectations there's a phenomenal sequence where Ethan Hawke's character leaves where he is and walks across the city to get Gwyneth Paltrow. It's multiple shots stitched together but plays like a single shot, giving a romantic momentum that a conventionally shot sequence just wouldn't have. The battle in the city near the close of Children of Men is the same thing. Although it's multiple shots stitched together, it plays as a single and is why it's one of the great action scenes of all-time. Just like the attack on the car, we're not allowed to breathe by the camera not cutting away. We hold it in, waiting for the inevitable edit that allows us to subconsciously distance ourselves from the action taking place on screen. Cuaron brilliantly denies us that edit for as long as possible, and does it over and over throughout the movie, not just these two sequences. It's the approach to that action that lets us BE in the action with our characters. It's what makes this my favorite action movie.