last time we spent five slots covering
the major action sub-genres and this
time we're back rounding out our list
with some of the more important
aesthetic trends these are the rest of
our picks for the top 10 action films of
all time
part two
it's pretty much impossible to talk
about action movie style especially as
far as hollywood is concerned
without a serious look at its golden age
the 80s and 90s saw the newly formed
hollywood tentpole machine pour
a never-before-seen energy into the
creation of ever bigger
ever crazier testosterone-fueled
shoot-em-ups that launch the
increasingly muscular action star
careers of mel gibson bruce willis chuck
norris sly stallone and arnold
schwarzenegger these decades and their
seemingly insatiable taste for sweat
beaded biceps carrying absurdly sized
machine guns brought us the ridiculous
likes of robocop
true lies total recall tango and cash
con air point break big trouble in
little china predator
first blood they live top gun running
man demolition man
the freaking rock and on and on and on
but if there's one best of the bunch one
crowning achievement of the entire
20-year period where hollywood's ammo
budget rivaled the armies
god help us if it isn't [ __ ]
die hard
next time you have a chance to kill
someone don't hesitate
thanks for the advice so much energy has
been spent singing the praises of what
may be
the most iconic film in the hollywood
action canon and for good reason the
film is structurally perfect
it balances its heaviness with its
levity with grace and manages all its
ballistic chaos without ever seeming
excessive
john mclean is built with bottomless
competence and an endearing
vulnerability a rare combination amongst
his cohorts in the era
and then there's the villain every
single detail of the film fits
perfectly amidst the others advances the
action precisely and is also
communicated with perfection which if
you saw our last installment is an
important piece of subtle praise that is
rarer than gold
awesomeness fills seats awesomeness is
easy maintaining sense and coherence
while blowing our minds with the newest
coolest set piece
over and over that's enough to get you
in the history books and if you've got
some of the genre's best
characters at the same time well you
might just be die hard
hollywood wasn't the only national
cinema going through its heyday in the
80s and 90s just as important and
influential and maybe even a little bit
more insane was the appetite for action
in hong kong coming on the heels of the
70s kung fu new wave that saw the shaw
brothers and bruce lee launched the
regional cinema into the international
spotlight the 80s and 90s brought us
jackie chan and jet li
and donnie yen and sue hark and yoon wu
ping
and johnny toe and so much more here we
find police story
and super cop and city on fire and tiger
cage
and a hero never dies but nobody's work
exemplified and
emblemized the egregiously violent
excesses of the era like the step
print dove flying bullet ballistics of
john wu
his entire pre-hollywood career is a
catalog of ever
improving balls to the wall ballistics
and saxophone from a better tomorrow
to just heroes the killer and bullet in
the head but he
really topped himself and everyone else
in the entire world with his career high
watermark
hard-boiled
hardboiled starts in the tea house and
ends in the hospital bookending itself
with two of the best
most hong kongiest most john lewis
sequences this side of the killer's
church finale and it's no tea party in
between the media the film is chock full
of wu's signature tropes
hard drinking jazz listening brooding
cops who dual wield pistols as birds
flap in slow-mo
jumping from cover to unleash
never-ending clips before engaging in
gun food and in the two cops team up to
take down bad guys plot we just want to
make sure you all either
learn or remember that chao young fat's
saks playing hero character is named
tequila we think that says quite a lot
in the aftermath of two decades that saw
action production numbers crash back
down to earth as the various bubbles pop
it seems to us that from the ashes three
distinct aesthetic trends in the genre
have
emerged the first seems like the
simplest outgrowth of last millennium's
excess a style that leans into the humor
and insanity permitted by the
increasingly bonkers conflicts that
audiences had learned to enjoy
this is the over-the-top action trend
increasingly invincible heroes take on
increasingly impossible obstacles in
increasingly suicidal ways the set
pieces are ever bigger
focuses on the novel and new in stunt
and vehicle and cgi work and there's a
progressive sense of oh no
they won't oh yes they did movies like
total recall and desperado gave way to
modern action insanity like those in the
later fast and furious franchise
and in crank and the john wicks john woo
comes to america and makes face
robert rodriguez gives us sin city we
find more explicit parodies of the
decades past in films like the
expendables and shoot em up but as far
as contemporary access in action is
concerned
our favorite belongs to a loving send up
slash homage
rip-off evolution that seems to operate
on a
never-enough ethos from our very own
quentin tarantino
the kill bills
kill bill sits at the excess nexus of
all things both awesome and
extra as an exploitation kung fu samurai
spaghetti western animation revenge
extravaganza
where else but in this action epic in
two parts can you find
one on 80 bloodbaths chainmaceduals
insanely campy training sequences
multiple eye plucks
and one of the most badass action heroes
this side of the pacific
tarantino managed to funnel all of the
best parts of his signature
reference everything steal everything
mock everything else style into a loving
elevation of
all the extremes of decades past nearly
every fight sequence contains a new form
of craziness the choreography comes from
the very best there's hardly a
top it doesn't go over and that's
exactly how something like this
should be
[Music]
seemingly reacting against the absurdity
of the over-the-top trend a
perpendicular aesthetic has also
developed probably most familiarly
described as gritty and realistic this
kind of action film was best typified
and popularized by the bourne trilogy
here the focus moves from bigger is
better to finding the intensity in the
intimate
camera work is more likely handheld than
swooping on a crane heroes are more
likely flawed or past their prime or
at least a little fallible wounds and
consequences seem more dire
and knives become a renewed threat
whereas before bazookas and fighter
planes had almost lost their danger
here we find modern greats like drive
eastern promises
taken hannah the elite squad films
collateral atomic blonde and man from
nowhere even the bond films forever
dedicated to the sillier side of things
took a detour more towards this sort of
action with the introduction of the
daniel craigbon
however we think the best film inside
this category
actually predates pretty much all of
these prescient in so very many ways
here we gotta pick
michael mann's heat
heat is just barely enough action
sequences to even deserve consideration
as an action film which should tell you
something about their quality that we
are picking it there's perhaps
never been an action movie that felt as
much like a documentary once the guns
came out only zero dark 30 and sicario
come close
planned choreographed and trained
intensively by special forces soldiers
never has the sound blocking photography
and intensity of an action sequence been
so
deeply felt but we also think a lot of
credit is due to the exceptional acting
of kilmer de niro pacino and sizemore
bringing in performances that really
exemplify the terror
adrenaline mania and stakes that finding
yourself in a real life
not a movie honest to god firefight
would actually bring they are
professional but not
superhuman disciplined under pressure
but not calm you get to see them
battling within themselves to keep their
emotions under control in order to
function creating this multi-layered
nuance of a jaw-clenched spring-coiled
internal tension compare that to the
typical action hero who is either
uber cool roaring loudly or indicating
their fear and you see why the attention
to detail
really pays off
[Music]
lastly we want to look at a newer trend
that's starting to be commonplace enough
to be worth putting a finger on
reductively we'd call this the
hyperviolent action film fitting in
complicatedly alongside our last two
slots
sometimes seeming to delight in the
sadism of extra gratuitous violence
sometimes seeming to condemn it with how
uncomfortable it makes us feel
it is realistic in the sense that it
looks unflinchingly at the worst
consequences of violence even though its
frequency is seriously heightened it is
over the top in the quantity and
gratuity of the gore we see on screen
but the results aren't diffused with
humor
and moral victory like you'd expect in
your typical blockbuster it's excess is
in blood
and guts not explosions and bullets you
hear every bone
crack and that's relatively new some of
the best films in this last niche
are those like old boy brawl and cell
block 99 a prayer before dawn
bone tomahawk green room ichi the killer
13 assassins and super we can trace
these film's roots back to two separate
but important influences the
transgressive sadism of dark japanese
action that began
way back with sword of doom and then
resurfaced bigger and badder on the
global stage in battle royale
and the extra-lethal martial arts dynamo
of newer southeast asian styles first
breaking out in angbok continuing to
this day
in the night comes for us and reaching
its apex in our last pick
the raid redemption
the raid hit action cinema like a dump
truck exploding onto the global scene
with the rampage ferocity of a rabid
bulldog serving up blood-curdlingly
vicious action nearly from go
it trades in mostly all its plot
character backstory and theme for one
thing and one thing only
action and here gareth evans and his
indonesian stunt team are
absolutely first-rate but when all
you're doing is fighting for two hours
straight you have to be more than good
at it you have to be
constantly innovating so the raid sets
about exploring
all the different ways to hurt hardly
shying away from the blood-drenched
corporeality of it all but to
turn to the next murder and come climax
time when it's time to turn things up
yet another notch the pain and maiming
these ruthless men inflict upon each
other surpasses
all normal decorum and that's what's so
special and to some
a little concerned about this new style
it reaches beyond the polite
sanitized violence we seem to have all
agreed is acceptable into a realm
usually reserved for horror but this is
action these are modern
gladiators and we're not here to judge
the moral consequences of it
all we just pick the ones that do what
they do best and the raid is certainly
among them which is why we think
it's one of the best action films of all
time
so what do you think disagree with any
of our picks do we leave out any of your
favorite action flicks
let us know in the comments below and be
sure to subscribe for more
cinefix movie lists
you