THE LIST: PURE POPCORN ACTION MOVIES -- Vote!
Posted by Miah 13 weeks ago
And here are your Top 10 greatest general popcorn action films from the time period 1980-today:
Casino Royale
Die Hard
Die Hard II
Hard Boiled
The Long Kiss Goodnight
Rambo: First Blood II
Red Dawn
Remo Williams
Ronin
Shoot 'Em Up
We now move to our voting round. Your instructions are:
1. Rank your top 5 movies from 1-5.
2. Movies will be awarded points in reverse placement order: Your 1st place movie will receive 5 points, 2nd place 4pts, and so on.
3. Send your votes to thelist at predicate dot org.
Here were your original nomination criteria, for your reference:
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CATEGORY QUESTION
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What are the greatest general popcorn action films from the time period 1980-today?
Wikipedia defines: "Action movies are a film genre where action sequences, such as fights, shootouts, stunts, car/vehicle chases or explosions either take precedence or, in finer examples of the genre, are used as a form of exposition and character development. The action typically involves individual efforts on the part of the hero."
There were several subcategories to attempt to avoid as being not "actiony" enough, including:
-- Epic Science Fiction/Fantasy "Adventure" films
-- Epic Historical Drama "Adventure" films
-- Epic "Superhero" films
-- Overtly Dramatic Thrillers with "Action" elements (Godfather, etc.)
-- Grittily Realistic Dramatic "War" films (Saving Private Ryan)
-- Wuxia.
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What if?
Tommy Shaw's epic exploration of the mysteries of human potential forms not only the theme song for Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, but also frames the fundamental questions the film explores. For who would really ever "want to see you standing by the light of the fire"? Who indeed.
Back in the dark days of the mid-1980s, the people yearned for a man with no name to subvert the justice system and the Constitution itself in order to root out corrupt defense contractors through the most savage means imaginable: Remo Williams was that man. Delivered into the capable hands of a master assassin by a shadowy government agency, Remo is transformed from blundering New York cop to faceless bare-handed killing machine, discovering in himself new frontiers of badass that he never knew existed, finally building to an epic confrontation with a villainous purveyor of faulty small arms.
Goldfinger veteran Guy Hamilton's direction is kinetic, rising to the level of fellow Bond veteran Christopher Wood's crackling script. Fred Ward, Wilford Brimley, and Kate Mulgrew deliver capable performances, but Joel Grey's Oscar-worthy performance as Chiun is really the centerpiece of the film. Remo's irascible mentor in the dark arts of Sinanju essentially defined the aged master professional assassin for a generation, while his prescient critique of the perils of American foods can only have been an inspiration for the work of Eric Schlosser and Morgan Spurlock.
As an adoring New York Times gushed in 1985, the film includes "includes a lot of arbitrarily vicious scenes of mayhem." And indeed, Remo delivers on that promise: this is really the action film par excellence, notably featuring useful aphorisms aplenty, training sequences that make Rocky look like a punk, Sinanju bullet-dodging, battles atop the Statue of Liberty, concrete drownings, and perhaps the finest diamond-studded-tooth glass-cutting to-escape-from-poison-gas-chamber sequence ever committed to film.
There have been a number of fine films made in the action genre over the years, but none can compare in sheer creative battery, misogynistic Orientalism, and general wisecracking to Remo Williams. The only flaw in this film is its title, an all-too-optimistic promise of a series that would sadly never come [probably as a result of the discomfort of the Trilateral Commission with the film's premise].
Dissenting view
Giving the future Captain Janeway an orgasm with a flick of her wrist was all very well, but this is a film that simply spends too long spinning its wheels on the "training" sequence (which, while entertaining, delivers more humor than action and borrows too heavily from The Karate Kid) and thus doesn't have enough gas left (ho ho!) for a real rock-'em sock-'em climax.
I congratulate the good doctor on a well-stated case, but wave away the smoke and there's just no there, there.
As if.
Borrows from Karate Kid? Please. The sequences in question have more in common with those in, say, Empire Strikes Back. I shall leave you to your creepy Kate Mulgrew fantasies; in conclusion, go back to Russia.
Ahem. The very definition tells you.
"Action movies are a film genre where action sequences, such as fights, shootouts, stunts, car/vehicle chases or explosions either take precedence or, in finer examples of the genre, are used as a form of exposition and character development. The action typically involves individual efforts on the part of the hero."
Fights? Bruce Willis beats up Alexander Godunov. That is bad-ass.
Shootouts? Bruce Willis wins a shootout with the building. Even more bad-ass than beating up Alexander Godunov.
Stunts? Bruce Willis jumps off a skyscraper with a fire hose wrapped around his waist. Do I even need to say what form of ass that is? Very well, then. I shall. It was bad-ass.
Car/vehicle chases? Okay, in this I shall admit Die Hard is lacking, as it takes place entirely within a single building. And yet, we have a police car getting hit with a dead body; a limousine vs. an ambulance; and "Oh my God, the quarterback is toast."
Explosions? The top third of the skyscraper goes up, killing guys in helicopters, but not Bruce Willis. Because, as previously proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, he is more bad-ass than fire.
"The action typically involves individual efforts on the part of the hero." What movie more exemplifies that definition than Die Hard? One single positive action is taken by any other character. One. Everything else is Bruce Willis killing the fuck out of eurotrash and shooting and blowing shit up for no reason other than it was keeping him from killing the fuck out of more eurotrash.
Don't get me wrong -- there are some really good movies on this list.
Casino Royale is among the very best Bond movies ever made. Because James Bond stopped acting like Raffles and started acting like John McClain.
Die Hard II is not amongst those rare sequels (Terminator 2, The Godfather Part II, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey) that surpass their originals.
Hard Boiled stars Chow Yun Fat. That is a goofy-ass action hero name, I'm sorry.
The Long Kiss Goodnight survived solely because it was long ago enough that you people don't remember it. Plus it was the genesis point of the "people outrunning explosions" cliche. And Geena Davis kills a deer. That's just uncool.
Rambo: First Blood II is another of those sequels that doesn't surpass its original.
Red Dawn? Seriously? I... what, Footloose didn't make the cut?
Remo Williams was only awesome because you were twelve when it came out. It no longer is.
Ronin was a brilliant parable of the post-Cold War espionage malaise, but it stars Robert De Niro, who made a better action movie in Heat, and Jean Reno, who made a better action movie in The Professional. Plus it has ice skating.
Shoot 'Em Up was clearly placed here by some sort of crazy person who is blinded by lust for Paul Giamatti, and is so silly a finalist that I refuse to discuss it further. Good day to you, sir!
And so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit for your approval, the greatest action movie not only of the last quarter-century, but indeed of all time.
Bruce Willis is John McClain in Die Hard.
HEAT?
I think that pretty much says it all with regard to your judgment.
Mm hm.
"I'm not sure I would characterize it as 'sci fi' just because there were aliens and spaceships in it."
Now, normally I wouldn't say that one thing could possibly outperform the cavalcade of wrongitude that Ajax has espoused over the years. But this may well do it. You don't get to claim rightness about anything until that gem is off the front page at least.
*flail*
You should be able to do better than that. Just like somebody should have been able to find a better vehicle in which to finally insert Pacino and DeNiro.
"Shoot 'Em Up" knocks 'em down.
You know, it is backhandedly chivalrous of George, in a way, to refuse to offer any substantive argument against this movie besides an ad hominem attack on the person who submitted it, who was, of course, me. But the more I consider it, the more I come to believe that he really just couldn’t muster any genuine or significant criticism of a film that both stands on its own as an incredibly enjoyable over-the-top popcorn action flick and as a commentary on and critique of the entire genre. None of the other movies nominated on the List can say that, and it is this extra element, this finely-wrought layer of meaning, that causes it to rise above the rest of this admirable crowd.
There are so many magnificent touches to this movie that I can hardly make mention of them all as I re-watch and they fly by, which is part of what allows it to bear re-watching. The movie has a gritty, noirish feel, and is far better-acted than even its sublimely subversive undertone could naturally merit. More than anything, though, one can’t forget the carrots…the fucking carrots.
In the opening action sequence, Clive Owen, playing our hero, Smith (the generic name itself a nod to the movie’s intention to parody the trope of an Everyman forced into violent heroism) munches on one as a pregnant lady, fleeing thugs, staggers by him. Smith resignedly admits his own sense of justice and KILLS A MAN WITH A CARROT. I mean—a carrot to the cerebellum. How great is that? Come ON. The carrots appear several more times in the movie, once more as a weapon, but more typically at moments when a run-of-the-mill action hero would be prompted to light a cigarette. Smith’s substitutive carrot-chomping deftly references this while turning it on its ear.
And who can argue with the brilliance of Paul Giamatti’s menacing yet nebbishy villain, Hertz? The movie is self-aware enough to allow him a self-referential "fuck me sideways" upon being thwarted, but serious enough about confronting how so much of the action genre views women by showing him copping a feel of the dead pregnant lady. After the particularly ignominious end of a large cadre of minions at Smith’s hands, Hertz intones, "My god, do we really suck…or is this guy really that good?" He places the most obvious audience criticism of every action movie into its supertext, mocking us for enjoying its improbability.
Part of what cements the movie as a sly parody of the action genre is Smith’s ferrying a baby around throughout. You see, having rescued pregnant lady (for a little while, anyway), he helps deliver the little guy while (of course) fending off thugs with the aid of a largish sidearm. In sequence after clever, allusory sequence, Smith conducts both gun battles and hand-to-hand combat while lugging the infant around, until he can finally deposit him safely in the arms of his one true love, Donna Quintano—a whore who specializes in satisfying breastfeeding fetishes, played by the incomparable Monica Bellucci. Later he soothes the child with baby’s first lesson in gun safety. Other nods to the movie recognizing its own ridiculousness include an exhilaratingly fake-looking Technicolor-toned sky-diving gun battle and Smith using his own spurting blood to blind an attacker.
Meanwhile, the film is rife with puns and terrible jokes trying to tart themselves up into catchphrases. Early on, Smith shoots up a sign to help convey that timeless sentiment, "fuck you, you fuckin’ fuckers." Later he gives a disquisition about and subsequently exacts road-rage revenge on drivers who refuse to use turn signals, which is exactly the level at which an audience member might visualize him- or even herself carrying out an impulse toward vigilante justice. He most piquantly dispatches eight assailants while in flagrante with Donna. She is of course multiply, ahem, appreciative. And Smith caps the moment with the immortal quip, "Talk about shooting your load."
Any number of times, the movie subverts its own (and that of more sincere examples of the genre) glorification of guns and violence. Indeed, special attention should be paid to the uberthug’s soliloquy on why Americans love guns, to divine the movie’s intent in pointing out what the action genre satisfies in us. It’s called back in subtle anti-gun references like Hertz’ "guns don’t kill people – but they sure do help," and Smith’s "What I really hate...is a pussy with a gun in his hand."
At one point, Bellucci’s Madonna/whore tells Smith, "You are the angriest man in the world." The decent man, driven to improbable (not to say sociopathic) acts in the service of decency: this is the essence of the action genre, and we can revel in Smith’s living out our fantasies of rectifying the world’s wrongs through judicious use of guns and carrots, while examining our own discomfort with where the line is drawn between justice and revenge.
Casino Royale With Cheese
It is patently indisputable, and thus must be stipulated by all comers, that any action movie with James Bond is ipso facto superior to a corresponding action movie without James Bond, according to the Bond Doctrine.
That said, the question still deserves some study. Let us examine the Bond oeuvre from 1980 to present:
1. For Your Eyes Only (1981). Begins the indifferent John Glen-directed Moore Bond films; indeed, marks a fairly stark contrast between the earlier, totally awesome Bond movies and the later, frustrating decline in quality of the franchise.
2. Octopussy (1983). The most ridiculous name ever given to a Bond Girl, and that's saying something.
3. A View To A Kill (1985). Utterly forgettable except for the Duran Duran-penned theme song.
4.The Living Daylights (1987) & 5. Licence to Kill (1989). Starring Timothy Dalton, who was used primarily because they were legally barred from using Pierce Brosnan. When you come in second to Remington Steele, you're not Bond enough.
6. GoldenEye (1995). Not completely awful, but even fans say that the video game is better.
7. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), 8. The World Is Not Enough (1999), 9. Die Another Day (2002). The turn of the century was not a good time for Bond, what with the Cold War being over and the War On Terror yet to begin. Probably the nadir of the entire franchise, despite the best efforts of Pierce Brosnan.
That leaves us with the one Bond film that was actually nominated -- Casino Royale from 2006. A thorough rebooting of the franchise and reimagining of Bond that keeps the most compelling aspects of the character and jettisons the bloated, unworkable and frankly self-parodic continuity established in the nine previous films.
Light on gadgetry, big on mystery, with a darker and more ambiguous Bond, it should be no surprise that Casino Royale has the highest adjusted grosses of any Bond film since -- well, looky here, it's Moonraker: the last Lewis Gilbert-directed effort, in 1979.
For single-handedly rescuing the greatest action franchise the film industry has ever seen from a 25+ year decline, and making it interesting and relevant again, Casino Royale deserves to be your choice for Best Pure Popcorn Action Movie 1980-present.
Almost...
Yes, Casino Royale is a pretty good movie, what with the taking out the comic relief and the gadgetry that made the Brosnan movies so over-the-top. You know -- making it more like Die Hard. But they did manage to slip in some parkour, thereby making it as embarrassingly dated as the Moore movies. In ten years, the opening sequence is going to be absolutely cringeworthy, while Die Hard will still be awesome from stem to stern.
Oh, bah.
Regarding hypothesized datedness--only elitist film snobs like yourself, who are so hyperaware as to cite esoteric terms like "parkour," will find it so. The rest of us non-cineastes, who view it straight on instead of with our noses in the air, will just think it looks really fuckin' cool.
Eh. I haven't seen Casino
Eh. I haven't seen Casino Royale, but frankly it probably should have been eliminated on the basis of being a superhero movie. If Batman is a superhero (and I submit that he is), so is James Bond.
It's kind of a complicated
It's kind of a complicated question, but Batman became a superhero as the DC Universe evolved because he fought super-villains and used impossible technology to do so. (Although when he started out in Detective Comics, he was mostly just a genius-level intellect in great physical condition. And the recent Batman movies have tried to dial him back in that direction, giving him more in common with Dick Tracy than Superman.)
James Bond has always been a regular hero because he fights regular villains and uses unlikely technology to do so. Rocket launchers disguised as portable radios, rather than cars that can drive up the side of buildings.
It's a fine distinction, I'll grant you, but I think it holds up.
take that back.
I defy you to characterize Ernst Stavro Fucking Blofeld as the slightest bit "regular".
A gentleman doesn't ask.
A man's prostate problems are between him and his doctor.
I'm a bit surprised.
I sort of wonder why anybody is bothering to still have this conversation, because there simply is no question that Rambo is the baddest-ass Popcorn Action Hero of all time, in the Popcorniest movie ever. EVER.
You say you want cheesy catchphrases? How 'bout "Sir, do we get to win this time?" or Rambo plunging a knife into a table saying "Mission... accomplished."
Rambo shoots arrows with dynamite on it and blows shit up. Rambo shoots dozens of faceless gooks who apparently couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a bucket of paint. Rambo is a patriot, a killing machine, the perfect soldier. His enemies are weak liars and pinko commies or worse, pinko commie sympahtizers.
First Blood Part II was the perfect action movie not just for the Reagan 80s, but for all time. You want car chases, you want a coherent plot? I can only say to you what Rambo told the Russian guy: "Fuck you." Unless you're some kind of pussy or America-hater, you'll vote for Rambo: First Blood Part II.
In conclusion, USA! USA! USA! USA!
Five words:
Alan Rickman vs. Steven Berkoff.
Oh, and eight more:
Screenplay by Sylvester Stallone and James Cameron.
Yes, that one. Saying Rambo: First Blood Part II or Maybe Rambo II or Maybe Rambo Negative Two is the greatest action movie ever is a vote for Titanic. And also probably Joseph Stalin. In conclusion, go back to Russia, commie.
Nice try at pre-emption,
Nice try at pre-emption, pre-emptor. Throw a bunch of actor and director names at us, as if Hollywood glamour means anything. I can't believe the Army still lets you serve our glorious nation, since you seem to hate America so much.
This time, WE GET TO WIN.
The difference between John
The difference between John McClain and John Rambo is that Rambo needed two tries to win. McClain won his war the first time. And the second time. And the third time. And the live freeth time. Rambo took twenty years to win once.
Submitted by osomatic on Fri,
Submitted by osomatic on Fri, 10/03/2008 - 5:09pm.
I would have a better argument here if Die Hard wasn't actually a totally awesome popcorn movie. However, I submit that Die Hard is superior to 8 of the movies on this list, but inferior to just one.
Misplaced lust
Look, just because you're weirdly hot for Paul Giamatti still doesn't make Shoot 'Em Up the greatest action movie of all time. And we were talking about Rambo: Hey, Wasn't There A Movie Before This One Oh Forget It in this subthread.
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