Top 10 Action Movies
By Cinema Sugar
Come with us if you want to live vicariously through the stunts, shootouts, chases, fights, and other heart-pounding moments of our Top 10 Action Movies. Yippie-ki-yay, movie lovers!
10. Last Action Hero
A trio of Arnolds—Schwarzenegger portraying himself, a movie character rooted in his celluloid identity, and also that cinematic role itself—costar together in an action movie that encompasses an additional action movie as well as a real-world adventure that annotates the framework of action movies as a genre. Amidst all this, Tom Noonan also plays himself and a cinematic axe assassin dubbed the Ripper. Meanwhile, the cosmic schism intermingling real life with the action movie universe releases the character of Death from The Seventh Seal (here portrayed by Sir Ian McKellan) to meander through Times Square, converted back to its sleazy grindhouse splendor of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Critics initiated an anti-Arnold crusade and the greatest action hero was promptly delivered his very first box office bomb, but the backlash of Last Action Hero is one of the worst misfires in mythically enthusiastic action movie filmmaking. —Natalie Bauer
9. Prey
In the early 1700s Great Plains, a teen Comanche girl who’s skilled as a tracker but aspires to be a hunter encounters a mysterious Predator and tries to survive its high-tech homicidal hunting spree. Though the fifth film in the Predator franchise, Prey diverges from its predecessors in so many ways it should really be considered sublimely sui generis. Even the title is a clever reversal, forcing us to watch helplessly as the tables constantly turn between predator and prey. This is a riveting on-the-run thriller with the gnarly violence of a modern western like The Revenant and the relentless, propulsive peril of Gravity, with writer-director Dan Trachtenberg ratcheting the tension throughout as he did brilliantly in 10 Cloverfield Lane. It’s a shame this was a streaming exclusive and didn’t get the big theatrical release it deserved. —Chad Comello
8. The Bourne Ultimatum
Though each entry in the Bourne trilogy can stand on its own, The Bourne Ultimatum serves as its epic finale, picking up right where Supremacy left off. Bourne wants answers after being on the run for three years, so he’s turning the tables and coming after the CIA and anyone that had anything to do with what was done to him. The action? Relentless. The cinematography? Sublime. The stunts? Perfection. I still hold my breath during the rooftop chase scene. Joan Allen and David Strathairn play their good cop/bad cop roles impeccably, injecting emotion and even dry humor into the mix. Watching Bourne best the baddies in the CIA, reconnect with old allies, and undergo character development in the final stages of his deprogramming is everything you look for in an action movie. —Natalie Pohorski
7. Foxy Brown
Action movies in the ‘70s weren’t exactly built around female leads. A few come to mind, of course—Alien, Lady Snowblood, various Russ Meyer-directed B-movies. But kicking down the door for generations of female action heroes and black women to come was the 1974 blaxploitation classic Foxy Brown starring Pam Grier. Smart, strong, sexy, cool—Grier commanded the screen with a power and presence equivalent to (if not greater than) her male peers at the time, including Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, and Bruce Lee. Featuring shootouts, bar fights, car chases, and red hot one-liners (“I’ve got my black belt in barstools!”) all beating to the drum of revenge—Foxy Brown is everything you’ve come to love and expect from an action movie in its grittiest form. Loud and proud in its revolution at the time, and sturdy in its towering influence on movies today, this is one gem worth seeing again and again. —Kevin Prchal
6. Point Break
Point Break is action movie artistry, and it never even reads as though it’s trying to be. It’s amazing not just within its categorization but within the medium itself. What makes an action movie celebrated anyway? When it’s about something substantial? When it’s skillfully produced? When it outshines genre? Point Break is all of these things. Its intricate landscape of machismo profits immensely from a woman’s approach with Kathryn Bigelow at the helm; it’s almost as though more action movies from the glory days of the ‘80s and ‘90s would have been the gold standard if more/any women had been proffered the opportunity to handle them. Bigelow at her best displays her unique legacy of knowing how to make the most dynamic popcorn movie and give it texture, a thrilling poignance, and archetypal characters: all trademarks of a true action movie classic. —Natalie Bauer
5. Raiders of the Lost Ark
In Raiders of the Lost Ark, our hero’s assignment is this: find the literal Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do. It’s a wild premise that could have gone any number of ways depending on the filmmaker behind the camera. Thankfully, for everyone’s sake, it landed in the trusted hands, heart, and imagination of Steven Spielberg. A man whose work, unlike so many other action film directors, feels effortless and filled to a fedora’s brim with childlike wonder and joy. And through that lens, we’re given flagship action sequences through caves, deserts, and tombs; skin-crawling imagery sized-to-fit a 10-year-old’s nightmares; face-melting practical effects (literally); a romance for the ages, and most importantly: Harrison “I’m making this up as I go” Ford punching Nazis. Beware of boulders to anyone who tries, because no computer technology or action hero named Chris will ever be able to replace this artifact from its rightful spot in the temple of cinema. —Kevin Prchal
4. The Dark Knight
When my film school friends and I saw The Dark Knight in 2008, we all agreed that we might as well quit filmmaking because we’d never be able to top it. It redefined the superhero movie and our decades-long relationship to the Caped Crusader himself. In Christopher Nolan’s world, Bruce Wayne becomes the alter ego as he gets lost in his alias. The Joker captivates and terrifies as he revels in the chaos he’s wreaked on a broken Gotham City. Rachel, Gordon and Harvey keep us invested in the real things at stake beyond the film’s central rivalry. The story, with its brilliant use of foreshadowing and callbacks, propels forward from one moment to another like falling dominoes. The dialogue shines with brilliant one-liners delivered in a way that’s never corny (“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”). And finally, the heart-pounding score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard locks this film in its spot in movie history. Forget Oppenheimer, this is Nolan’s crowning jewel. —Natalie Pohorski
3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Not only is this an all-time movie sequel, it also has first-ballot Hall of Famers for a villain in the steely-eyed T-1000, a hero in the justly-paranoid (and jacked) Sarah Conner, and a villain-turned-hero in the titular T-800. We’ve survived far beyond the film’s fateful date of nuclear annihilation, but its prescience about the perilous power of artificial intelligence and danger of corporate negligence nevertheless endures as much as its catchphrases and kickass chase sequences. And not for nothing, it was both the highest-grossing film of 1991 and the third-highest ever at the time behind Star Wars and E.T. In other words: par for the course for James Cameron, whose billion-dollar talent for synthesizing sci-fi action, wry comedy, and compelling family drama like he does in T2 gets a thumbs-up from me. —Chad Comello
2. Die Hard
How’s this for a movie recipe: have a bunch of famous leading men pass on the hero role until you resort to a TV actor, find an English thespian who’s never been in a movie to play the villain, sprinkle in several scene-stealing performances with a machine-gun flurry of quotable lines (“Hans, bubby… I’m your white knight”), fold in a slew of satisfying character arcs, drop a dollop of Christmas cheer, and… presto! You’ve made Die Hard, an undeniable classic that created its own era of action movies (“Die Hard but in a [location]”) yet nearly 40 years later still towers over its imitators like Nakatomi Plaza. Coming off Predator, director John McTiernan said he didn’t want to make another action movie unless it had “some joy.” So it’s quite fitting that, amidst the film’s shoot-’em-up thrills, an ebullient rendition of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” 9th Symphony bursts forth during a key moment as if to say: Welcome to the party, pal. —Chad Comello
1. Mad Max: Fury Road
After a recent rewatch of Mad Max: Fury Road, one question was left knocking around my head: Where do action movies go from here? In so many meaningful ways, George Miller’s dystopian masterwork feels like the pinnacle of the form. Equal parts barbaric and emotional; athletic and poetic; surreal and deeply human—it’s a jolt of life to the senses, magnificently charged by the power of art in all its forms. Its production design, like a visual arts gallery come to life, excites with towering Franken-structures, scrappy junkyard costumes, and dreamlike landscapes brushed across the screen. Its music, composed by Junkie XL, imagines a world where mosh pits at the opera are a common occurrence. And its performances by everyone from Theron to Hoult to Hardy fill every scene with Shakespearean passion, wildlife ferocity, and the ineffable, monumental stuff of legends. Where action movies go from here I don’t know, but for now this one leads the pack, flame-throwing guitars blazing. —Kevin Prchal