Thrills, spills, chills, and kills: this is why we go to the movies, to see big, amazing, improbable and/or impossible stuff happen on the big screen. It gets the blood pumping to see impressive feats of stunt work and death defiance—which is why tons of action movies come out every year. While many are certainly satisfying, only a few contain that elusive combination of a great story, unforgettable characters, and the unmatched technical mastery necessary to transcend genre thrills and achieve great cinema. Here are Looper's picks for the best action movies ever made...
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00:00Thrills, spills, chills, and kills.
00:03This is why we go to the movies, to see big, amazing, and probable and or impossible stuff
00:08happen on the big screen.
00:09It gets the blood pumping to see impressive feats of stunt work and death defiance, which
00:13is why tons of action movies come out every year.
00:16While many are certainly satisfying, only a few contain that elusive combination of
00:20a great story, unforgettable characters, and the unmatched technical mastery necessary
00:24to transcend genre thrills and achieve great cinema.
00:28Here are Looper's picks for the best action movies ever made.
00:31Die Hard
00:32Part of the reason 1988's Die Hard worked so well is its cinematic context.
00:37Action movies at the time all tended to feature stoic dudes with huge muscles laying waste
00:42with boulder-sized fists and machine guns, never doubting their utter alpha maleness
00:47and barely cracking a smile.
00:49Contrast that with Die Hard, in which Bruce Willis is a relatively normal-sized, normal-looking
00:54guy who cracks wise and expresses fear and self-doubt as he almost single-handedly beats
00:58back terrorists to literally save Christmas.
01:01Die Hard also gave us a breakout performance from the beloved Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber,
01:07one of the all-time great movie villains.
01:08"...efficient, adult, cooperative, not a lot to ask.
01:12Alas, your Mr. Takagi did not see it that way, so he won't be joining us for the rest
01:17of his life."
01:18The Dark Knight
01:19Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy is really more like one long movie, but the middle
01:24part is definitely the best chapter, showing the result of Bruce Wayne's training in Batman
01:28Begins and the start of what will play out in The Dark Knight Rises.
01:322008's The Dark Knight is arguably the best-made superhero movie of all time, with a tone that
01:38reflects the character and shows utter faithfulness to the comics it's based on.
01:42"...what would I do without you?
01:43Go back to rippin' off mob dealers?
01:45No, no, no, no, you… you complete me."
01:52The French Connection
01:53Gene Hackman's tough-guy cop Jimmy Popeye Doyle just never stops running.
01:58Or driving.
01:59Or roughing up criminals in the pursuit of justice, even if he has to don a Santa suit
02:03while doing so.
02:04"'All right, all right!
02:05All right, all right!
02:06All right!
02:07All right!
02:08All right!
02:09All right!
02:10All right!
02:11Despite being so frenetic, so tough, so new, and so very violent, 1971's The French Connection
02:18won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, the first R-rated flick ever to do so.
02:24The Bourne Identity
02:25In 2002, as the James Bond franchise was slumping its way through an era of stale, lazily delivered
02:31clichés, The Bourne Identity hit theaters, a refreshingly modern, wholly American spy
02:36movie that reflected a more modern environment of geopolitics.
02:40Matt Damon's ultra-trained super-warrior doesn't know who he is, but he's definitely
02:45aware of his own incredible fighting abilities.
02:47Thanks to the paranoid shaky camerawork and urgent pace, the audience rarely knows more
02:52than Jason Bourne does, and as a result, they never quite get to take a breath either.
02:57Raiders of the Lost Ark
02:58It's supposed to be an homage to the action-adventure serials that director Steven Spielberg and
03:03producer George Lucas grew up watching in the 1950s.
03:06But the thing is, those often weren't very good movies.
03:091981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, however, completely overshadows its source material
03:13and is nearly a perfect film.
03:16Every scene is crowd-pleasing, particularly the iconic action sequences.
03:27Raiders is pure fun, beginning to end.
03:29RoboCop
03:301987's RoboCop is a violent, action-packed futuristic cop movie.
03:36Or is it a violent, action-packed futuristic cop movie that satirizes violent, action-packed
03:41movies from the 80s?
03:42You have the right to remain silent.
03:45F*** you.
03:48Like any good work of satire, it works on both levels.
03:52RoboCop has a lot to say about the value of human life in the crime-ridden future world
03:56of New Detroit.
03:57After all, it's about a cop struck down by some pretty intense violence, and then resurrected
04:02as a cyborg designed to execute as many criminals as humanly possible.
04:06The Matrix
04:07A college-level philosophy class was never so eye-popping.
04:111999's The Matrix kind of blew everybody's minds with its central conceit, that there's
04:15no point to human life beyond their bodies being bags of energy.
04:19Neo gets to decide if he's cool with that, or if he wants to try to exist on a higher
04:23plane with his own free will.
04:25Pretty heady stuff for the multiplex, but The Matrix features a lot of bells and whistles,
04:29such as the insane fight between Neo and Agent Smith, and that innovative bullet-time effect,
04:34which seemed to bend time itself.
04:37Speed
04:38By the mid-'90s, action movies were dying under their own weight.
04:42Huge budgets meant lots of explosions, but not a lot of depth or character.
04:45Then came 1994's Speed, an all-killer, no-filler thrill ride couched in a simple premise.
04:51If a Los Angeles city bus slows to under 50 miles per hour, a bomb planted on board explodes.
04:57It breaks with form to make for lots of surprises, and the plot necessitates absolutely non-stop
05:02action.
05:03We just got a ransom demand from a dead terrorist, says he's rigged the city bus.
05:05Where's Jack?
05:06Where do you think?
05:07I gotta get on that bus.
05:08You gotta get on?
05:09Yeah, yeah, you get on the bus!
05:12But there's also a lot of humanity in Speed.
05:14Every day, people from many different walks of life are thrust together onto the city
05:18bus, and they come together as a team to rise up and meet the challenge.
05:23Terminator 2 Judgment Day
05:24The original Terminator from 1984 is pretty fantastic in its own right.
05:28Dark, gritty, weird, and menacing, all with a charming, low-budget air.
05:33The 1992 follow-up, Terminator 2, was one of the most expensive movies of all time,
05:38but the money is all up there on the screen.
05:40Especially well-executed is the iconic motorcycles-versus-semi-truck chase scene, and every time a puddle of
05:54liquid metal reshaped itself into that evil Terminator?
05:57Still cool, and still looking state-of-the-art after more than 25 years.
06:02Bullet
06:03Steve McQueen was one of the first action stars, and a pioneer of the form.
06:07He even did as many of his own stunts as the film studios would let him.
06:10For example, he did some of the driving for the landmark on-location car chase scene in
06:151968's Bullet.
06:17The plot is loaded with twists and intrigue, and it all culminates as Lieutenant Frank
06:21and Bullet chases the bad guys in their 1968 Dodge Charger through the very real, very
06:27hilly streets of San Francisco.
06:29No standard-issue police cruiser for Bullet, he's got a sweet 1968 Ford Mustang GT.
06:34The high-speed pursuit ends in the best possible way.
06:41Mad Max Fury Road
06:43Reboots generally don't work, and even if they do, they're still doomed to pale in comparison
06:48to the original thing.
06:49Not so with Mad Max Fury Road, which expands and improves on the Mad Max universe with
06:54a nonstop ride through the familiar, harrowing post-apocalyptic wasteland on modified cars
07:00piloted by crazy, survival-driven nomadic warriors.
07:04Mad Max creator George Miller returned to direct Fury Road, and his 35-plus years of
07:08experience as a filmmaker are up there on the screen with an action movie that's both
07:13endlessly thrilling and emotionally compelling.
07:15Plus there's a character called Doof Warrior who plays a fire-spewing electric guitar,
07:20if you're still not convinced.
07:22Gladiator
07:23Swords and Sandals movies hadn't been popular for decades when director Ridley Scott and
07:27star Russell Crowe brought them back in a big way with 2000's Gladiator.
07:32The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Crowe won Best Actor for his performance
07:36as Roman General-turned-slave Maximus.
07:39"...father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, and I will have my vengeance."
07:47Against a classical Roman backdrop, audiences root for Maximus' quest to avenge the misdeeds
07:52of the evil emperor, win his freedom, and survive the brutal arena.
07:56And Scott stages some of the most thrilling action sequences ever put to film.
08:00Jurassic Park
08:01The original Jurassic Park was a revelation in 1993, popularizing a subgenre known as
08:07the techno-thriller.
08:09Pioneered by author Michael Crichton, these fables inevitably involve technology run amok
08:14to the shock and horror of the humans that created it.
08:16"...before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped
08:21it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it."
08:24But of course, that's all a lot of fun to watch, especially when the technology is realistic
08:28dinosaurs hunting humans under a majestic, unforgettable score by John Williams, all
08:33brought to life with masterful direction by Steven Spielberg.
08:36Add it all up, and you've got a modern masterpiece of popcorn cinema.
08:40Lethal Weapon
08:41Detectives Riggs and Murtaugh are mismatched cops.
08:45One's a loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules, and the other is a by-the-books guy
08:48who is…
08:49"...I'm too old for this s----."
08:511987's Lethal Weapon makes this formula work because the chemistry between Mel Gibson and
08:56Danny Glover is so charming.
08:58That, and the plot, largely couched in dark comedy, never goes where the audience thinks
09:02it will.
09:03"...you think I'm crazy?
09:04I'll tell you!"
09:08"...now that's a real badge, I'm a real cop and this is a real f---- gun."
09:12Even 30 years later, this s---- never gets old.
09:15The Avengers
09:16The superhero genre really got going when Marvel Studios started laying the groundwork
09:20for its vast cinematic universe, setting the stage for arguably the single greatest superhero
09:25team-up possible.
09:27For the Avengers' long-awaited big-screen debut, Marvel hired a director who really
09:31understood comic books, Joss Whedon, and assembled a cast of acclaimed actors who really understood
09:36how to deliver Whedon's witty dialogue.
09:38All right, hey, all right, good job, guys, let's just not come in tomorrow, let's just
09:44take a day."
09:45No expense was spared making a movie that was limitless in terms of superpowers, earth-shattering
09:50fights, things from space, like a comic book come to life.
09:54The Avengers is now the standard by which all other big, fun superhero movies are judged.
10:00Kill Bill
10:01Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill is an epic tale of revenge centered on a hero of near-superhuman
10:06abilities and unrelenting focus, but with enough vulnerabilities and human motivation
10:11to make audiences root for her.
10:13Uma Thurman's bride goes on a quest to locate and murder every member of the squad that
10:18left her for dead years earlier, and find the baby she was pregnant with at the time
10:22of the attack.
10:23The trail ultimately leads to the gang's leader, and her baby's father, David Carradine's Bill.
10:28But along the way, the bride must subdue each of her enemies in insanely choreographed
10:33fight sequences, any number of which would be the centerpiece of any semi-decent action.