The 50 Best Action Movies of All Time

“Action!” It’s the go-word that filmmakers say at the start of every take, as the cast springs to life on camera. Action is the very thing that sets motion pictures apart from still photography, and while it took Hollywood a few decades to figure out what an “action movie” actually was, the genre traces its roots to the origins of the medium (go ahead, Google Thomas Edison’s early “Boxing Cats” film, or picture the outlaw firing his pistol directly into the camera at the end of Edwin S. Porter’s “The Great Train Robbery”).

Now, when it comes to the all-time greatest action movies, the bar is set considerably higher. Reading through Variety’s list, you’ll learn a thing or two about how the form has evolved over the years. Arnold, Sly and Bruce (both Lee and Willis) each left their mark. But Chuck Norris and Burt Reynolds have been eclipsed, since every film on this list had to stand the test of time. We love Shaw Brothers classics, for example (“King Blood” and “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin” came close), but martial arts movies have evolved so much that other titles took their place.

You may well be surprised by the things we excluded, including movies with great action scenes (like “Dirty Harry” or Marvel movies) that ultimately fell slightly outside the genre, while others that might not have been marketed as action movies per se (such as Paul Greengrass’ greatest film) made the cut. “Cut,” of course, is the action word that ends each take. So, without further ado, here’s Variety’s list of the 50 greatest action movies of all time.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
James Bond had been in a slump since 1974’s lackluster “The Man With the Golden Gun.” But Roger Moore’s third time as the secret agent ended up being one of 007’s biggest crowd-pleasers, as “You Only Live Twice” director Lewis Gilbert returned to the franchise, pairing the secret agent with Russian counterpart XXX, aka Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach), who was the perfect foil for Moore’s debonair spy. The film is packed with great set-pieces, such as the pre-credits retro-cool ski scene set on treacherous slopes, an outrageously fun car chase in which Bond’s Lotus Esprit turns into a submarine and a massive shootout on a tanker with scores of sailors. Plus, it introduces one of Bond’s greatest enemies, the frightening, metal-mouthed Jaws. — WE
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Tom Cruise had long since established himself as willing guinea pig for any and all death-defying physical stunts when time came to follow up his first blockbuster, “Top Gun” — so why wouldn’t he fly the actual Navy vessels that the characters pilot in “Maverick”? Partnering with director Joe Kosinski, who embeds cameras in every corner of the cockpit for complete authenticity, Cruise puts his costars through the paces of aviation training the generate aerial footage unlike virtually any ever seen on screen, at least practically, taking audiences for a ride that not only made the sequel worth a 36-year wait, but “saved cinema” at a time when the kind of spectacle provided by the film was considered as obsolete as Pete Mitchell, his veteran pilot. — TG
The Fugitive (1993)
This update of the classic ’60s TV series leaps from the original premise into a game of cat-and-mouse between grumpy old men Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. Helmed by Andrew Davis, who took a prestige leap from Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris pics, the film stars Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble, a man falsely accused of killing his wife. After escaping during an explosive train derailment, Kimble is on the run from Jones’ dogged Deputy U.S. Marshal. It’s a blast seeing these two superstars get pulpy, running through great scenes in stairwells, on rooftops and through a parade. The film’s showstopper is a brief tête-à-tête between the leads in a storm drain, with Kimble proclaiming his innocence and Gerard, ever the professional, flatly replying, “I don’t care,” before Kimble takes a huge leap from Cheoah dam into the waterfall below. — WE
Vanishing Point (1971)
This dusty, greasy classic follows the revved-up adventures of Kowalski (Barry Newman), a delivery driver amped on speed, racing the police and everyone else on the road to get a Dodge Challenger from Colorado to San Francisco in record time. Filled with wild stunts, colorful characters, crushed chassis and fearless camerawork, director Richard C. Sarafian and cinematographer John Alonzo’s race across the Southwest has gained a cult reputation as one of the rowdiest rides in American cinema and a meditation on the nature of being, depending on how you digest the wild ending. Either way, the gasoline burns through the screen in this ride through hell and back. — WE
Hero (2002)
Between the bloodshed and explosions, action tends to be such an ugly genre. Not the way Zhang Yimou stages it. In the Chinese director’s lavish, visually ravishing spin on wuxia movies, he treats combat like dance (or is it the other way around?), enlisting some of Asia’s leading martial arts talents — Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi and Donnie Yen — to demonstrate how, with the right choreography and wire work, sparring becomes a creative act. The complicated plot allows Zhang to stage several gravity-defying battles, each themed according to a different color, as the movie’s nameless hero positions himself within 10 deadly paces of a warmongering king. Whether committing double suicide on a red-rock mountaintop or fending off arrows with long silk sleeves, the poetic visuals amount to cinema’s most sumptuous action spectacular. — PD
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
A massive shift from the 1982 film that kicked off the “Rambo” franchise — a more psychological portrait in which Sylvester Stallone’s traumatized Vietnam War vet uses his skills to evade a relatively small-scale manhunt — “Part II” sends the soldier back to Vietnam to save prisoners of war. Hugely muscled and blasting ammo like he had a limitless supply (a style that came to define ’80s popcorn action flicks), he anchors a sequel that turns off part of its brain to bring big kills and explosions to the forefront. The set pieces are indelible, from Rambo using explosive arrows which cause mass chaos to a nail-biting helicopter fight scene, cementing the “Rocky” star’s place alongside the burly movie stars of the time. — WE
The Day of the Jackal (1973)
Who said an action film had to consist of fast-moving fireworks? In Fred Zinnemann’s brilliantly executed thriller, the central character is a professional assassin, played with suave amorality by Edward Fox, who is hired by a crew of far-right French underground militants to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle. The bold excitement of the movie is the way that it allies the audience with the hitman’s point-of-view. We’re staring at his targets right along with him, resulting in a queasy sociopathic vision that makes the movie feel like the missing link between the Zapruder film and first-person-shooter video games. — OG
The Bourne Identity (2002)
Surprised to see Doug Liman’s franchise-launching original on the list instead of Paul Greengrass’ sequels? We went back and watched them all, and to our surprise, the first movie is better than we typically give it credit for. From that classic moment on the park bench when Matt Damon’s amnesiac assassin discovers he’s a lethal weapon, the film finds Jason Bourne running on instinct through fights and chases that are carefully choreographed so as not to look choreographed (consider the punchy apartment brawl where a killer smashes in through the window). Granted, Greengrass pushed the form by bringing a flash-cut, docu-authentic edge to the material, but that first movie set the template, from its tight, slightly disorienting camerawork to shooting on actual European locations. In fact, “Identity” established one of the few American spies to rival Bond. — PD
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
Cleavage kingpin Russ Meyer may have built his reputation on the exploitation movie circuit, making lusty films about busty vixens, but this quotable cheapie from 1965 has stood the test of time, empowering the very characters that audiences ostensibly came to ogle. The action-packed first reel finds three go-go dancers speeding out to the California salt flats, rassling and drag-racing in the dust. After challenging a clean-cut boyo to a race, group leader Tura Satana snaps his back, steals his girlfriend and hatches a plan to rob a crazy old coot in the desert. Meyer somehow manages to have it both ways, putting the gals through gratuitous shower scenes, while suggesting that the on-screen guys are the real predators. Naturally, the women have no trouble showing them who’s boss. — PD
The Warriors (1979)
Walter Hill’s one-of-a-kind movie is a New York gang-war thriller made as if it were a psychedelic comic book. Framed for a murder they didn’t commit, the Warriors, a Brooklyn street gang, must travel 30 miles from the north end of the Bronx to their home turf of Coney Island, fighting off different colorful gangs along the way. The battles are stylized enough to be balletic in their brutality; you could almost say the film has the form of a musical. Yet its heightened vision of New York tribal aggression tapped into something at once exhilarating and incendiary (it was one of the first contemporary movies where violence was reported at theater showings), and for anyone who’s seen it there are moments that remain indelible, from the gang in baseball uniforms and painted faces to the lethal taunt (“Warriors! Come out to play-ay!”) of David Patrick Kelly’s baby-voiced psycho. — OG
The Raid (2011)
Gareth Evans’ 2011 thriller takes a “Die Hard”-like premise and adds several of the most electrifying martial artists audiences will ever see: Iko Uwais plays Rama, a rookie cop forced to fight his way out of a 30-story apartment building after his squad gets trapped inside by the crime lord they are trying to apprehend. Along with fellow performers Yayan Ruhian and Joe Taslim, Uwais exudes a speed and level of physical dexterity that seems impossible, but it’s the previously lesser-known Indonesian martial art, pencak silat, that proves to be the true star of the film, showcasing a complexity, and relentless brutality, that few other forms can keep up with — much less defeat. — TG
Duel (1971)
The first full-on expression of Steven Spielberg’s genius. He essentially launched his career by directing this legendary ABC Movie of the Week, building it around a premise that, in other hands, could have been pure disposable made-for-TV ’70s-horror-film cheese. A salesman (Dennis Weaver in a geek mustache and wire-framed aviator specs), going on a solo business trip, drives his red Plymouth Valiant down a two-lane highway through the Mojave Desert, where he’s menaced by a dilapidated tanker truck whose driver we never see. There is almost no dialogue, but Spielberg staged the film as if he were Hitchcock doing a metal-machine showdown. His framing and editing are so ingenious that the flow of images never lets go. “Duel” becomes a darkly funny poetic nightmare of suspense, like a more leisurely “Mad Max” film made with just two vehicles. The truck, belching exhaust, remains an inscrutable force, but it’s really the first of Spielberg’s great monsters, a precursor to the shark in “Jaws.” — OG
Inception (2010)
A line of Tom Hardy’s dialogue in “Inception” — “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling” — has long seemed to be director Christopher Nolan’s guiding light. Arriving between 2008’s “The Dark Knight” and 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises,” expectations were outrageously high for this mysterious, machismo-fueled action thriller that takes place in an intricate nesting doll of dreams within dreams. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a thief who mines information from unsuspecting brains, and the high concept was elevated with some of the most innovative visuals since “The Matrix.” Walls shift and bodies fly during gunfights; time is used as a weapon as well-dressed criminals go deeper into dreams; and a rain-soaked chase scene ranks against Nolan’s most exciting scenes. — WE
Once Upon a Time in China Part II (1992)
The second film marks the high point of director Tsui Hark’s epic film and TV series, starring Jet Li as heroic martial artist Wong Fei-Hung, who, along with Siu-kwan (Rosamund Kwan) and Leung Foon (Max Mok), must defeat the cultish White Lotus Sect and the evil Nap-lan Yun-seut (Donnie Yen). Predictably, the film’s biggest scenes feature Li and Yen in combat, with “Part II” featuring series-best sparring, high-flying wirework and fantastical movement that adds depth and fantasy to the story. The face-off between these two legends makes for a gorgeous, unforgettable film filled with class and tough punches. — WE
Casino Royale (2006)
It’s the greatest James Bond film apart from the Sean Connery classics — there are days we think it’s better than they are — because it’s the most dramatically vibrant and complex. But even as Daniel Craig’s surly, granite-jawed 007, in his very first outing, works his way through a fantastically tricky espionage spider web, one that encompasses a haunting romance and the greatest poker-table showdown ever filmed, the action in “Casino Royale” becomes a pure expression of that high-stakes drama, from the shockingly brutal opening murder that earns Bond his license to kill to the ecstatic parkour fanfare that kicks the movie into high gear to the near-poisoning of Bond during the card game to the film’s awesome climax, with an entire Venice palazzo shivering and collapsing before your eyes. — OG
The Black Pirate (1926)
With all due respect to Johnny Depp’s Capt. Jack Sparrow, no one wielded a cutlass better than Hollywood’s original action hero, Douglas Fairbanks. In this silent classic from 1926 (a rare color film of its era), the “Mark of Zorro” star plays a sailor who seeks revenge for his dad’s death at the hands of a greedy band of pirates by swashbuckling his way into their ranks. Once aboard their ship, he falls for a kidnapped princess and shifts his plans to rescuing her. The swordplay still impresses all these years later, though it’s Fairbanks’ signature move — swooping dramatically up to the mast and then riding his blade down the ship’s sails, which he does not once but three times — that remains most iconic. — PD
Fast Five (2011)
Like a muscle car that’s been incrementally upgraded after each street race, the “Fast & Furious” franchise has gone through several distinct phases over its two-decade run, from the lean, mean street-race action of “Tokyo Drift” to the “Looney Tunes”-esque outer-space shenanigans of later sequels. That said, pretty much everyone agrees that the most fun is the fifth movie, which shifts the backdrop to Rio de Janeiro. Introducing Dwayne Johnson as a match for Vin Diesel’s machismo (and setting up the even wilder adversary Jason Momoa played in “Fast X”), this installment reunited the gang to steal $100 million from a Brazilian crime boss. The climactic set-piece sees them ripping the vault out of a police station and dragging it across town. — PD
Run Lola Run (1998)
German director Tom Tykwer delivers 80 minutes of pure adrenaline in this ingenious perpetual motion machine, engineered around the simplest of hooks: A quick-witted woman with fire-hydrant-red hair (Franka Potente) has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks, or her boyfriend’s toast. The clock’s ticking as her mind races through three reckless scenarios, which play out in rapid succession. At times, it feels as if the movie can barely keep up with its techno-powered punk heroine, playing all kinds of wild stylistic tricks with the camera — even switching to animation at one point — while splintering off in tangents to suggest the fates of the strangers whose paths she crosses. — PD
Commando (1985)
Action movies, in case you’re wondering, weren’t always luridly outrageous in their body-count depravity. That in-your-face, over-the-top definition of action crept in gradually, emerging from different genres (lone justice, martial arts, road-chase mayhem), which ultimately fused into the new normal. And “Commando” marked the moment that happened — when contemporary action hit a tingly critical mass of bombastic insanity. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a retired Special Ops officer (name: John Matrix!) whose daughter (a 12-year-old Alyssa Milano) is kidnapped by Central American mercenaries, who are trying to force him to commit a political assassination. Instead, he slithers off a plane during its liftoff ride and commandeers cars and rocket launchers and gobs of combat greasepaint, splattering the screen with his vengeful fury (for the record, he kills 81 people.) There are a few lines worthy of the Arnold pantheon (“Remember when I promised to kill you last? I lied”), and they reinforce the then-novel notion that the whole delirious kamikaze blood-squib pageant was on some level a joke. — OG
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
Probably the preeminent influence on Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” Robert Aldridge’s down-and-dirty World War II thriller is most famous for its juicy pulp premise: A dozen of the scuzziest, most irredeemable military convicts imaginable are plucked from prison and trained as commandos for a suicide mission. The first half of the movie is like the basic-training sequence of “Full Metal Jacket” as staged by a foul-mouthed Mad magazine. But when our antiheroes parachute into France, where they’re to infiltrate a chateau and kill as many Wehrmacht officers as possible, the film becomes a stirringly desperate piece of renegade action bravado. The most memorable moment: Jim Brown trying to run to safety after tossing a fateful grenade. — OG
Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (2011)
It has the most thrilling sequence in any “Mission: Impossible” film: Ethan Hunt’s extended shimmy over the surface of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building (2,717 feet of plunging obsidian glass in Dubai), a don’t-look-down feat that Tom Cruise genuinely enacted, in what remains the single most audacious of his celebrated stunts. But the fourth, and greatest, entry in the “M:I” series is more than just a pedestal for that vertiginous feat. Director Brad Bird invests the entire movie with a dizzying, trap-door instability that makes the audience an intimate part of the action. — OG
Foxy Brown (1974)
Pam Grier earned legend status for her performance as Foxy Brown, a woman unafraid to go after the white drug dealers who killed her boyfriend in this gritty blaxploitation classic. Endlessly quotable (right up to its terrific last line: “Death is too easy for you, bitch. I want you to suffer!”), the movie is filled with flair, Foxy’s inimitable style and some truly subversive moments of revenge and chaotic violence. Coming on the heels of “Coffy,” Grier’s surging performance was so successful that it elevated female roles in action movies overall. Pair this with Grier’s iconic turn in Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 “Jackie Brown” for a perfect night of cinema. — WE
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
After the singed-rubber bravura of “Mad Max” and “The Road Warrior,” writer-director George Miller stumbled a bit in “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” (1985). Maybe that’s why it took him 30 years to find the moxie to regain that edge in “Fury Road.” In spirit, the fourth “Mad Max” film is of a piece with “The Road Warrior,” as Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa, taking the reins from a now-catatonic Max (Tom Hardy), leads a mad chase through the desert. But the action scenes are something at once classic and new: meaner and faster and more combustible than before, edited with a split-second precision so explosive that your eye almost can’t take it all in on one viewing. “Fury Road” has the slash-and-burn exhilaration of a ride you watch, live and master. — OG
Police Story (1985)
Jackie Chan drew on years of practical stunt experience when directing this cop thriller, blending his comedic instincts with astonishing acrobatic skill, which has earned him comparisons to Buster Keaton. The film’s plot serves as little more than a frame on which to hang several hall-of-fame set-pieces — most notably the early chase, in which Chan hangs from a moving bus, and the climactic shopping-mall showdown, which leaves no window unshattered or bad guy unbattered. Chan’s training allowed him to pull off complicated moves in a single shot that other stars would surely cheat by relying on body doubles and editing, like the gutsy leap and long pole slide that sends Chan crashing through a glass ceiling. — PD
Point Break (1991)
Today, the world knows him as John Wick, but we were still figuring out what to make of “Bill & Ted” breakout Keanu Reeves when he booked his first action movie. The role lent itself to the dude-star’s slightly awkward screen presence, as cocky FBI rookie Johnny Utah takes up surfing as a way of cracking a series of bank robberies by rebels in rubber ex-president masks. That means cozying up to a gang of daredevils led by “Dirty Dancing” star Patrick Swayze, showing audiences a whole new set of moves. The brilliance of the slightly boneheaded movie’s design is that even the down scenes feel kinetic, since they’re mostly spent surfing. And the one orchestrating all that testosterone? That would be future “Hurt Locker” director Kathryn Bigelow. — PD
United 93 (2006)
It may sound disingenuous, or insensitive, to call Paul Greengrass’s great docudrama about the hijacking of a United Airlines flight by Al Qaeda terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, an “action film.” Yet part of the movie’s revelatory power is that it is one; it immerses us in what a truthful and profound experience an action movie can be. In form, the situation “United 93” is about isn’t so far removed from the setup of “Air Force One.” But Greengrass works in a hand-held style as spontaneous as it is rivetingly psychological, placing us in the shoes of the civilians who risked their lives to stop the terrorists who’d hijacked the plane from crashing it into the United States Capitol. The film’s heart-in-the-throat momentousness never overwhelms its humanity — a quality that extends to its portrayal of the terrorists. — OG
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
From the opening pulse of director John Carpenter’s synthesizer score to the explosive finale in the basement of a decommissioned police station, the American genre-master’s second feature is a master class in delivering thrills on a micro budget of just $100,000. The movie plays like a modern-day Western, as a handful of cops try to hold down the fort, outgunned and outnumbered by members of the Street Thunder gang. After a daring scene in which a carful of joyriders shoot and kill a girl in cold blood, audiences realize that nobody’s safe, making the climactic siege — in which the cops have no choice but to enlist a couple of criminals en route to Death Row — all the more exciting. — PD
Gladiator (2000)
After his wife and son are crucified by the corrupt Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), Russell Crowe’s Maximus has but one motivation: to take revenge, at which point he’ll be ready to die. As Maximus is made into a slave and a gladiator, Crowe’s performance takes on a special hellbent power. And it’s his squinty, implacable royal thuggery that fuels the extraordinary action scenes of Ridley Scott’s Roman spectacular. Maximus isn’t just angry — he’s possessed. In the blood-soaked ring of the Colosseum, he’ll meet and slaughter whatever gets thrown at him. Scott stages the gladiatorial clashes with a CGI innovation that remains breathtaking, but what makes them so searing is that the stakes for an action film have never been higher. — OG
The Wages of Fear (1953)
Action needn’t require great speed. Case in point: Henri-Georges Clouzot’s nail-biting suspense classic, in which four desperate men tasked with transporting trucks loaded with highly combustible nitroglycerin across 500 km of bumpy terrain find that moving slowly and carefully is the only way to keep from blowing themselves sky high. It takes nearly an hour for the mission to get started (cut down for the film’s original U.S. release, which sacrificed some of Clouzot’s political critique). Once it does, audiences hardly want to budge in their seats, lest they trigger an explosion. A risky turn on a rotting wooden platform provides the film’s tensest scene, as Yves Montand backs his truck right up to the edge. — PD
Heat (1995)
Michael Mann’s self-described “L.A. Crime Story” may feature some of the most staggering set-pieces in action-movie history, but the glue that holds it together is the specificity of its characters, navigating the world according to personal codes that get challenged by their adversaries, and inevitably, themselves. In addition to the epic bank job — which spills into the streets of downtown Los Angeles for a high-caliber open-air shootout that has cops and robbers firing machine guns from behind abandoned cars — there’s a tense armored truck hit and the final mano-a-mano between crime-movie icons Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Mann’s conceptualization of the heists, their interception by the authorities, and the clash that ensues between them lets audiences thrill at the danger, even as it forces them to take sides between characters they grow to admire and fear in equal measure. — TG
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Ang Lee was in only the nascent stages of becoming a genre chameleon when he decided to make one of the greatest wuxia films of all time, anointing budding star Zhang Ziyi with the help of three legends of Asian action — Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh and Shaw Brothers’ mainstay Cheng Pei-pei. Combining ephemeral, balletic wirework with cultural and philosophical traditions, not to mention bittersweet, multi-tiered romance, the film further mesmerized a world already enthralled by the Hong Kong influences on “The Matrix,” offering a version of the death- (and physics-) defying thrills that were authentic and sumptuous without being encased in skintight leather and techno music. — TG
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Sam Peckinpah’s wildly violent Western depicts a group of aging gunslingers, but the simple story is lapped by dazzling visuals. Men scream, blood splashes, bones crunch in outrageous detail as cowboys are torn apart by pistols, rifles and even larger instruments of death. Beyond the bloodshed, “Wild Bunch” is defined by Louis Lombardo’s innovating editing during shootouts, blending a kinetic mix of speed and slow motion, swooping into certain moments and darting to others in balletic carnage. Released two years after “Bonnie and Clyde” left its antiheroes bullet-ridden and bleeding in the dust, the Oscar-nominated film built to an even more spectacular crescendo, marking a clear and permanent break from the relatively tame Westerns that had come before. — WE
Ben-Hur (1959)
Sometimes one scene can elevate a film to glory, and the religious epic “Ben-Hur” will be forever remembered for its breathtaking and innovative chariot race — hands down, one of the best action scenes ever filmed. The pomp and circumstance leading up to the event shows the grand scale of the crowd, the track, the horses, the combatants. Once the competition begins between Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) and Messala (Stephen Boyd), spokes rattle and kick up dirt during the life-or-death turns, as Messala tries to take Ben-Hur down with a blade on his wheel. But when one of Messala’s own wheels flies off, his chariot is destroyed and he is pulled behind his horses before getting trampled by a rival, a squirm-inducing moment that leaves his body battered and bleeding. — WE
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
The lessons James Cameron learned on “Aliens,” he applied to this sequel to “The Terminator,” subversively remixing the same story structure as on the first film and then amplifying it by a factor of ten: what was during the original go-round a tense street chase through some dark alleys becomes a sprawling David-and-Goliath showdown between a Mack truck and a pair of motorbikes in the L.A. River canals — and it only gets bigger from there. Leveraging every ounce of technical expertise (and commercial freedom) he’d yet earned in his career, Cameron not only skillfully reimagines as a hero Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, one of the greatest villains in sci-fi movie history, but then creates a second one to surpass him with the T-1000, leading to an epic faceoff that makes the business of immovable objects and unstoppable forces seem like a shoving match on a playground — which is also one of the many locations Cameron literally explodes. — TG
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Sergio Leone made too many opuses for any of them to be the true magnum among them, but this climax to his “Dollars” trilogy comes pretty close. Refining his technique over the first two films, he spreads style across the then-biggest canvas of his career — no less than the American Civil War — for an operatic showdown between Clint Eastwood’s drifter Blondie, Lee Van Cleef’s mercenary Angel Eyes and Eli Wallach’s bandit Tuco. Each shootout feels more exciting than the previous one as Leone skillfully melds metronome-precise editing and Ennio Morricone’s sweeping music, building to a cathartic payoff of imagery and sound. — TG
Hard Boiled (1992)
It’s ironic that Hong Kong director John Woo is so often associated with doves; when it comes to violence, he’s most certainly a hawk. An explosive showcase of oft-imitated techniques — whose influence reverberated around the world (including gratuitous slo-mo and leaping through the air with guns blazing in both hands) — “Hard Boiled” was the last of the movies Woo made before Hollywood wooed him west to direct the likes of John Travolta and Nicolas Cage (in the outrageously over-the-top but shamelessly enjoyable “Face/Off”). Here, Chow Yun-fat and Tony Leung’s characters spend the first hour trying to kill one another, until they realize they’re both working for the same side. Considering the movie’s very bloody body count, it’s either perfect or perverse that the finale happens in a hospital. — PD
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
In recent years, Errol Flynn’s offscreen reputation as Old Hollywood’s ultimate depraved party animal has come close to overshadowing his onscreen magic. But if you go back and watch Michael Curtiz’s enchanting Technicolor swashbuckler, you’ll see that Flynn was nothing less than the movies’ defining action hero, with a devil-may-care effrontery that makes Robin Hood’s slashing sword duels into something awesomely witty and exciting. Flynn, who turns jousting into a form of dancing, appears to be having the time of his life, and his spirit is so infectious that “The Adventures of Robin Hood” often seems to be the happiest action film ever made. — OG
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Working on just about his biggest canvas to date, pop culture collagist Quentin Tarantino synthesizes the influences of Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, “Lady Snowblood,” samurai films, a few decades of Shaw Brothers movies and a whole lot more into a “roaring rampage of revenge” that’s simultaneously funny, exhilarating and emotionally devastating. Featuring “36th Chamber of Shaolin” star Gordon Liu in not one but two roles alongside his “muse” Uma Thurman, Tarantino shines a spotlight on the heroes, on screen and behind the camera, that inspired him. But even on a purely visceral level, his camera sense and Hong Kong legend Yuen Woo-Ping’s choreography produces set pieces that live up to those of his forebears, paying forward their bloody inspiration and then some. — TG
Goldfinger (1964)
Of all the actors who’ve embodied James Bond, Sean Connery remains the most iconic, balancing brute strength with unflappable sophistication. Here’s a guy who can convincingly keep his cool, even strapped to a slab with a laser beam inching toward his crotch. Early on, the franchise was still figuring out what shape to take, but by his third assignment, the elements were all firmly in place: a memorable villain (in Gert Frobe’s 14-karat creep), a lethal henchman (that would be Oddjob, with the razor-tipped bowler hat), a feral female adversary (Pussy Galore), plus all kinds of high-end toys (none better than his tricked-out Aston Martin). While silly at times, this outing set the gold standard — not only for Bond, but all spy movies. — PD
Speed (1994)
After working as cinematographer for the likes of Ridley Scott, John McTiernan, Richard Donner and Paul Verhoeven, Jan De Bont graduated to director with this unexpectedly charming adrenaline delivery system starring Keanu Reeves and then-plucky newcomer Sandra Bullock about a bus navigating its way through traffic-stricken Los Angeles while a madman played by Dennis Hopper threatens to blow it up if it slows down. De Bont effortlessly balances the tension of its one-dimensional premise with the personalities both inside the bus and outside trying to figure out how to safely stop it, building to set pieces that each seem more absurd than the previous one yet make us thrill at the shameless bravado of their execution. If “Jaws” made moviegoers never want to go in the water again, this film made them think twice about taking public transportation. — TG
Bullitt (1968)
Simply put, there had never been a car chase like this one. It starts in San Francisco’s Mission District, with police detective Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) jumping into his Ford Mustang GT, which he drives at top speed to pursue a hitman to the edge of the city. He never stops — but what was revolutionary is that the chase scene itself never stops, racing on and on for what felt, back then, like a deliriously endless 10 minutes and 53 seconds. McQueen is always at the wheel, so we believe every twist and turn we’re seeing, with the cars’ flying leaps over the San Francisco hills lending it all a thrilling instability. Yet the game-changing dimension of “Bullitt,” which became the prototype for just about every vehicular set piece going forward, is the way it allowed speed and action and the thrill of pursuit to simply take over a movie, as if nothing else mattered. — OG
Seven Samurai (1954)
A film so deeply important to the history of cinema it’s hard to imagine modern film without it, Kurosawa’s masterpiece sets the bedrock of countless men-on-a-mission movies to follow. The story is simple, as a group of samurai masters vows to protect a village from bandits. But do you love a “getting the team together” scene? Kurosawa did it first. Characters willing to sacrifice it all for honor? Kambei (Takashi Shimura) and his men are ready. Epic, beautifully shot action sequences with impeccable pacing? This film set the standard. By translating aspects of the American Western to a historical Japanese tale, Kurosawa created a template for countless blockbusters, including an actual Western, “The Magnificent Seven,” a few years later. — WE
Aliens (1986)
Piggybacking on the blue-collar cannon-fodder premise of “Alien,” each sequence in James Cameron’s sequel ratchets up tension with an expert precision, then pays it off with intense and gruesome violence that always feels more tethered to the humanity of the characters than the fetishization of its eponymous, genocidal xenomorphs (by either Weyland-Yutani’s venal corporate overlords or by Cameron himself). Meanwhile, returning to the role of Ellen Ripley, Sigourney Weaver not only holds her own but proves an able, resourceful leader to a dwindling number of initially-overconfident Marines — leading to a showdown between maternal figures willing to do anything to protect their children. Viscerally, narratively and thematically rich, Cameron raised the bar to a level the series would always henceforth chase, but never quite reach. — TG
The Matrix (1999)
Synthesizing everything from cyberpunk sci-fi to video games to Hong Kong action movies, the Wachowskis rewired what had come before, introducing a sleek new aesthetic that not only represented the future, but influenced fashion and filmmaking codes for decades to come. After “Star Wars,” this is the film franchise that has come the closest to establishing a religious cult in its own image, as fans seized on the movie’s quasi-spiritual/philosophical elements. For most, the key appeal came in seeing how the Wachowskis staged the film’s spectacular, time-bending shootouts, which gave Keanu Reeves’ Neo the ability to transcend physics — the same force that had limited what the genre was capable of — as he did battle with legions of black-suited agents. It’s no coincidence that the directors of “John Wick” and “Atomic Blonde” got their start doing stunt work on this franchise. — PD
The French Connection (1971)
If you were to rank the greatest action sequences in movie history, you could make a good case that the fabled “French Connection” car chase, with Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle driving at reckless speeds to catch a hitman on the elevated subway train above, should come in close to number one. The rest of the movie is quieter than you remember, but the electrifying authenticity of that sequence remains close to unparalleled. It seems to be happening in real streets, in real time, with real cars getting seriously smashed. Yet what ultimately makes the sequence so singular are the emotions behind the wheel: the relentlessness of Popeye’s need to catch that killer, which drives the pursuit into manic velocity. — OG
Enter the Dragon (1973)
Bruce Lee had already released three blockbuster action films in Hong Kong, one of which he directed, before joining Robert Clouse’s international star vehicle for Warner Brothers. Focused on a high-profile martial arts tournament mounted by a suspected crime lord, the film not only gave Lee the perfect platform to showcase the physical and philosophical underpinnings of the Jeet June Do style that he pioneered, but features some unforgettable, inventive action sequences (which he also choreographed). Sadly, its impact on Lee’s career was all posthumous, but “Enter the Dragon” both immortalized him as a star and offered a gateway to martial arts filmmaking that audiences outside of China had not widely experienced. — TG
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas put their blockbuster brains together to create whip-snapping, wise-cracking archeologist Indiana Jones. The populist duo tapped into their shared love for Hollywood adventure serials, casting Han Solo himself (Harrison Ford) as the snake-averse adventure magnet. His first outing proved a cinematic roller coaster every bit as exciting as John Williams’ galloping score suggests, from the thrilling opening sequence, which finds Indy one unshaven whisker away from being pancaked by a massive boulder, to the infamous ending, where the treasure he risked his life to rescue gets stored away in a giant warehouse. Who’d have thought he’d still be stealing artifacts from Nazis at age 80, four sequels later? — PD
North by Northwest (1959)
Its propulsion, its antic air of lethal gamesmanship, and its vision of a lone man outrunning the forces of fate were, in 1959, shockingly new, rendering Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller nothing less than the formal and spiritual progenitor of the James Bond series. But it’s in the legendary crop-dusting sequence where Hitchcock, pushing the envelope of danger, reinvented what cinema could be. As Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill stands in that cornfield, pursued by a propellor plane he must somehow outrun, a set piece, for the first time, splits off from the movie around it to become its own reality. At that moment the seed of all modern action cinema was planted. — OG
Die Hard (1988)
Bruce Willis bleeds in the course of trying to rescue his wife (Bonnie Bedelia) from Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and a gang posing as deranged German terrorists, who’ve seized her Los Angeles office tower during a Christmas party. Seeing Willis crawling through glass, covered in cuts, makes all the difference in distinguishing his character, off-duty NYPD Detective John McClane, from so many steroid-swollen ’80s action heroes: He wasn’t an invincible killing machine so much as an ordinary man in way over his head (audiences loved him in the role, which redefined the comedic “Moonlighting” star as a tough guy, and the label stuck until his recent retirement). By pitting such a relatable protagonist against Rickman’s snarling, all-time-great screen villain, “Die Hard” found a recipe for infinite re-watchability — one whose holiday backdrop has made it an irreverent annual tradition for superfans who can’t get enough of Willis’ yippee-ki-yay antics, whether it’s crawling through air ducts or dropping baddies from upper stories. — PD
The Road Warrior (1981)
In 1979, George Miller’s “Mad Max” was a Hell’s Angels movie gone psychotic. It was made on a drive-in-film budget but became such a global phenomenon that Miller was able to transform the sequel into something vastly bigger, more scary-cool, more grandly nihilistic. One of the great dystopian spectacles, “The Road Warrior” presents the vision of a civilization reduced to patched-together cars and cutthroat survival. The film’s scrappy kinesthetic genius is that it incarnates the very godlessness of that world by turning it into an existential demolition derby. As Mel Gibson’s Max, in his form-fitting wasteland leather, joins forces with a colony of straggling desperados to escape the Lord Humungus and his hooligan horde, the film gets heightened into the most delirious action sequence ever filmed: an epic car chase of jalopies from hell, with nightmare foes like the mohawked punk Wez leaping from their vehicles onto yours, the whole thing so fearsomely sustained it’s like a single combustible jolt of energy. In “The Road Warrior,” action is excitement, it’s destruction, it’s war, it’s the rusty speeding pulse of life itself. — OG

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The 50 Best Action Movies of All Time

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

The Fugitive (1993)

Vanishing Point (1971)

Hero (2002)

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

The Day of the Jackal (1973)

The Bourne Identity (2002)

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

The Warriors (1979)

The Raid (2011)

Duel (1971)

Inception (2010)

Once Upon a Time in China Part II (1992)

Casino Royale (2006)

The Black Pirate (1926)

Fast Five (2011)

Run Lola Run (1998)

Commando (1985)

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (2011)

Foxy Brown (1974)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Police Story (1985)

Point Break (1991)

United 93 (2006)

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Gladiator (2000)

The Wages of Fear (1953)

Heat (1995)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

Ben-Hur (1959)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Hard Boiled (1992)

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

Goldfinger (1964)

Speed (1994)

Bullitt (1968)

Seven Samurai (1954)

Aliens (1986)

The Matrix (1999)

The French Connection (1971)

Enter the Dragon (1973)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

North by Northwest (1959)

Die Hard (1988)

The Road Warrior (1981)

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