Matrix

i liked it, but i thought i was a little too strange for me. and im not a huge fan of keanu reeves

Pride and Prejudice

last action hero lol

also any jean claude van damme movie

and carate kid

Hmmmm... Tough one to call... One of the Indiana Jones movies, one of the Bournes, one of the Bonds, DieHard, Matrix, Matrix Revolutions (the fight with all the Agent Smith's versus one Neo, and the incredible car chase on the highway), First Blood, Terminator, Conan the Barbarian...

After much thoughtful debate, it's between Bourne Identity, Quantum of Solace (if just for the opeing car chase alone), DieHard (Yippee-Kay-Yay...), IJ & the Last Crusade (We named the *dog* 'Indiana'), and the original Raiders of the Lost Ark (Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?). I'm calling it a tie.

Oh, I forgot Under Seige... Nah, it's good but not tied with the ones I mentioned.

i like draugnars list. the bourne movies are awesome, quantum of solace-ehhh, was kind of confusing. indiana jones movies are great too.

I was just running on the action element of that list. Bond movies (and Bourne too) also have the spy element. Quantum is hardly the best Bond, but it has arguably the best action sequences.

I'd say, Terminator 2, but I'm totally partial to Arnold (the governor of Kah-leee-fowrn-ya).

Matrix 2 i think has the best car chase action sequence, and the music by Juno reactor rocks too. Bourne movies walk all over tired cliche all look no substance Bond movies in my opinion. but im going to go with Matrix 1, it just really pushed the genre along, incorporating Chinese style action, new camera techniques and great music. Terminator 2 was similar in expanding the genre. pity Neo whats his name is a bit bland and arnie a bit...crap. oh wait does Fight Club count as action? then that wins my vote hands down.

CRANKED

yeah, cranked was a good ride, didnt take itself seriously. loved the scene when they started having sex in the middle of china town with the crowds barracking them on. i havent seen no2 yet.

action movies i didn't like- Wanted - felt it was a bit snooty with its "hey i was a loser like you once" attitude.
anything with steven segal, van damme (but his latest semi satirical movie about himself looks quite good) or arnie (when he is the baddy- good, when he plays the good guy, yawn)

I'm with IMurk789 - Die Hard, top of the list.

I would add "Highlander", "The Hunt for Red October"* and "Independence Day".

*Although, with "Hunt", I'd read the book long before I saw the film which may have coloured** my perceptions. The book is epic.

**No pun intended.

what about "shoot em up" with clive owen??

Shaving Ryans Privates - or was that the wrong kind of "Action" movie?

ID4, definitely. totally forgot abou tit.

Highlander was a good movie, but a better TV series. Adrian Paul, being a martial artist, is so much more at home wielding a katana than Christopher Lambert with a Claymore. Not really Lambert's fault as fighting with a Claymore isn't a finesse thing. Claymore are big and heavy and powerful and lop multiple heads off with a single swing, but once you dodge that swing, the "reload" time allows anyone with something fast and light, like a katana, to get in numerous blows. Claymore are great on the battlefield to swing around over your head, but the katana is the better one on one weapon and makes for a flashier fight on screen.

Hunt for Red October is one I never really considered and action flick. It's a taught thriller and an awesome movie. However, Patriot Games and Clear & Present Danger very much fall in the category and I forgot about them too.

I did forgot a couple of classics though, The French Connection, Bullitt, and Dirty Harry.

Depends on your definition, but from the list so far

Terminator (1 or 2), Die Hard (1 or 3, not seen 4), Matrix (1 only) are all fine movies. RotLA or IJ&tLC are more 'pulp' than action, but great.

For me Bond >>> Bourne (Goldeneye & Casino Royale).

And as for ID4, bleugh, with an added helping of bleugh. It's the Titanic of action/sci-fi (looked great on the big screen, but actually pretty poor when you look at it again).

I'm withyou on Bond over Bourne, Pete. But to me, Goldeneye and Casino Royale (while two of the best Bonds) are more Spy and less Action. Of course, that is why they rank up there with From Russia With Love and For Your Eye's Only (minus the chase down the coffebean fields) as great Bond flicks.

Goldeney did impress the hell out of me for a first outing in that Pierce actually looked deadly. The fight on the boat when the helicopter is stolen was fast and he quickly dispatches his enemy, like a real operative would. And the brutality of the final fight with Alec at the end... Awesome!

But for action alone, Quantum of Solace beats both movies. the opening car chase, the boat chase, the spycraft/quick kills as Craig investigates Quantum at the opera, the airplane sequence, and the final fight are all well done, edge-of-your-chair sequences.

Without question I think the greatest action movie of all time is Terminator 2.

There are many action movies that are also quite good but I've yet to see one that surpasses it, it has excellent action, good acting and a reasonably well written and thought out plot. Also Linda Hamilton is a fucking bad ass as Sarah Conner in that movie.

@sean - if you liked the car chase in the second Matrix movie, you should DEFINITELY check out Ronin, which has by far the best car chases I've ever seen in any movie (and it has TONS of them!).

You know they had to delay the release of Ronin cause the crash resmbled one in real life at the time (not gonna say which as it will be too much of a spoiler). But yes, Ronin had great action AND great spycraft too. It never got the best reviews, but I think it is a top notch flick and Sean Bean and Robert DeNiro are great in it. Hell, the entire cast (many of whom are recognizable figures in Hollywood) was great.

@Draugnar - I've not seen QoS yet :(

Now, if we're going by best fight - then They Live! has something like an 18 minute punch-up, and one of the best lines (which has been quoted in the pick-up lines thread) "I've come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum"

As an aside, one of my favourite real-life quotes is action movie related. Mrs U and I went to see die Hard 3, and enjoyed a good mindless romp with lots of explosions and Bruce in a vest (i.e the same formula as 1 & 2). As we came out, a couple on a date we following us out, and the girl turned to the guy and said 'Well, that wasn't very intellectually stimulating, was it?'

LOL! My response would have been "Next time, just put your brain under your seat and enjoy the ride." Of course, I probably wouldn't have gotten any for a while with a smart ass comment like that.

They Live! - "Rowdy" Roddy Piper! Who doesn't like a good John Carpenter tongue-in-cheek actioner. How about "Big Trouble in Little China"?

BTW, is that the fight early on when he discovers the shades that show the aliens for who they really are and is trying to get his buddy to try them on? The abuse they would have taken in real life would have put one or both of them in the hospital. It was great!

hehe- yeah peter U, i totally agree, Independence day is the Titanic of action movies.

Hey, it's better than that crappy Godzilla that Roland Emmerich put out in the late 90s. Like Ferris Bueller is now a scientist who studies the effects of nuclear radiation on worms?

no "lethal weapon" or "predator" fans?

two other good ones are "heat" and "l.a. confidential". they may not be full bore action movies, but they make up for it with excellent story lines and some damn fine acting.

...oh yeah, "alien" has to be ranked up near the top as well.

@Draugnar - yep, that's the fight. Starts and stops about 4 times before he finally gets the shades on.
Godzilla is worse than ID4 for a whole host of reasons, but thats Emmerich all over - big ideas, big budget, big gaping plot holes, big disappointment..

@Trip - Lethal Weapon is a buddy cop movie - LW2 is the best. And Alien is the finest sci-fi horror movie ever, if not one of the finest movies ever - 'Aliens' is more action, although 'Starship troopers' is good for a mindless blast

i actually like bourne more than bond. im not saying bourne is better or anything, bond has some sick movies, but i just like bourne more. if only ONE movie could have some of these awesome action characters...imagine john mcclain, jason bourne and james bond in the same movie...itd be ridiculous.

I've always onsidered "Alien" so much SciFi that it never flew into the actin radar, but I guess it could. Especially "Aliens" with all the Space Marine stuff and Ripley manning the loader to take on the queen. "Get away from her, you BITCH!" Excellent line. Excellent movie. Lethal Weapon, "eh". Predator, one was good, two was sort of "eh".

Nobody has mentioned any war flicks at all. Tora! Tora! Tora! has, to date, the best attack on Pearl Harbor sequence, although there are elements to the battle that have come out in the nearly 40 years since it was made so aren't included (like the Japanese minisubs which, while not having a real effect in the battle, did provide some warning as to the impending attack).

Pearl Harbor, while a stinker with too much romance crap, did an excellent job of recreating the attack as well, including some historical elements not readily known during the filming of TTT, and some great true personal elements (the actions of Petty Officer Doris Miller played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. for instance). Although the movie as a whole was definitely another Michael Bay stinker...

Let's see: A Bridge Too Far, The Great Escape (a personal favorite of mine), The Dirty Dozen, Kelly's Heroes, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan (if just for the Omaha Beach Landing), Midway, Tora Tora Tora, and The Guns of Navarone... I think that covers the best of the action/war movies.

Dirty Dozen! So great it'll make you cry! :-)

Agree with the idea that Alien was more of a horror/thriller than an action movie. Aliens though... that was an excellent action movie (Actually a lot like the first two Terminator movies, first one was more of a thriller, second was an amazing (James Cameron made, just like Aliens) action movie.)

@Draugnar - I sort of consider war movies to be a different genre.

@jbalcorn - Dirty Dozen is great! (and though it's got a war backdrop feels more like an old school action movie to me).

So is Top Gun a "war" flick as it is military in nature (and has a scenario of US vs. Chinese fighters) or is it an action flick or something else. And despite having Tom Cruise, it still has some great aerial action sequences.

I'm not really sure what Top Gun is, aside from great!

I'm not saying there is a hard line one way or the other, just in my mind there is a feel to war movies (like say Saving Private Ryan or Full Metal Jacket) that is generally somewhat different from the feel of action movies. By the same token I consider martial-arts movies to be a somewhat different genre than action movies. I can't quite articulate the exact dividing line in any of these, but there's a general tone that feels a bit different to me.

Like, I guess something like Tora! Tora! Tora! feels more like a war movie, while Pearl Harbor feels more like an action movie (and a crappy one at that...).

But that's all just me, you may feel differently.

633 Squadron & The Dambusters.

Tally ho, let's give the hun a bloody nose!

Although nothing represents the futility and stupidity of war more than the last 5 minutes of Blackadder Goes Forth