The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The action film is a popular subgenre of cinema where the emphasis is on action sequences – gunfights or unarmed combat, vehicular chases, stunts, frequent explosions and mass destruction – which are usually presented as serial set-pieces.
The action film emerged a distinct genre in the 1970s. Action films usually feature lone male (occasionally female) heroes who win out through muscular brawn or martial ability. In genre material, heroes often come with cyborg enhancements or occasional powers.
There have been numerous genre crossovers from action films set in dystopian and cyberpunk futures, featuring killer androids and cyborg heroes, time travel action films, others set in post-apocalyptic venues, or blends of action and horror featuring vampire and zombie-hunting action heroes, plus a good many others.
Not to be confused with the Stephen King novel/film. A zombie film with a military focus that appropriates the basics of Escape from New York as a tactical unit is sent into an infestation zone to retrieve an antidote
Another variant on The Most Dangerous Game with an unarmed man on the run against armed hunter(s). This was made just after Rambo came out so it becomes one lone man fighting an entire army with his bare hands.
One of the film from legendary bad movie maker Al Adamson. While it has some SF elements, this is mostly an action film where Adamson has set out to mine the burgeoning Blaxploitation and kung fu genres of the day
A mockbuster copy of Death Wish that gains its novelty from the casting of Robert Kovacs, an actor who could be a dead ringer for the late Charles Bronson, who is naturally cast as a lone man with a gun cleaning up the streets of scumbags
Quentin Tarantino’s less interesting half of the Grindhouse double-bill. Tarantino makes a film about a psycho stuntman but gets sidetracked by referencing 1970s car chase movies
The first of three sequels (actually a prequel) to Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race, this gives the origins of Frankenstein and the Death Race. This rehashes much of the first film as generic direct-to-dvd fodder
By tthis third film, the Death Race series is straining trying to find something original to do with a ry limited premise. The Death Race now takes place in the South African desert but the action scenes prove monotonous
Paul W.S. Anderson’s remake of Death Race 2000 strips the satire from the original and turns it into a modern action movie – a to-the-death car chase film set in a near-future prison
The third sequel to Death Race and the most interesting of the series. This sets up an Escape from New York scenario and has fun with bad-ass posturing in depicting the interior of the prison as a open air biker bar
Another action movie variant on The Most Dangerous Game with Chuck Norris’s son Mike facing hunters on a remote island. Featuring a cast made up of the relatives of more famous actors
Although the character names have been changed, this is based on the book sequel to Death Wish. Saw director James Wan goes for broke on the grim vigilantism and turns in an immensely satisfying work
A Jean-Claude Van Damme action vehicle set in a prison that becomes an interestingly stylised realm in a wild plot featuring serial killers and organ harvesting schemes
Terrible film made to exploit the success of Death Race 2000 with David Carradine as a mystical post-apocalyptic Range Guide. This is however a post-apocalyptic action film that prefigures much of Mad Max 2
Early Stephen Sommers film that feels like it has been mounted as Alien meets Titanic. Between the ridiculous one-dimensional writing and Sommers’ CGI overkill, this heads well into bad movie material
Tony Scott directed time travel film with Denzel Washington viewing and then entering into events of the past in an effort to stop a terrorist bombing. Action driven as you might expect with Jerry Bruckheimer as producer
One of Sylvester Stallone’s better films, a satirically funny work where he plays a contemporary police officer unfrozen in a future overrun by Political Correctness to chase down criminal Wesley Snipes
Nicole Eggert stars in this cheap and rather laughable copy of RoboCop, where she is a police officer killed in the line of duty who is resurrected as an avenging cyborg vigilante
Pierce Brosnan’s final outing as James Bond lacks the sharpness of the preceding entries and is hampered by Halle Berry who is given great presence but nothing to do. Despite which this has some of the best action scenes of any Bond film
Fairly average 90s SF/action video release about soldiers hunting an amok military android before realising the androids have also infiltrated their troupe
One of the numerous action films to use a variant on the Die Hard scenario (with an added nuclear threat). For once, this has an okay script and a sense of humour but is killed by a fatal miscasting of its two leads
Neill Blomkamp’s first film starts well as a strong, highly politicised work about human-alien prejudice. However, Blomkamp loses steam about halfway through where it feel as though he didn’t know where to take the story
Another variant on Alien – a monster movie with Mark Dacascos as a doctor facing a genetically engineered insect monster in the jungles of Borneo
Videogame adaptation that emerges as a conceptual combination of Charlie’s Angels (2000) – a trio of girls, in kickass poses and jaw-droppingly scanty costumery – and Mortal Kombat
Tony Scott directs a biopic of true-life bounty hunter Domino Harvey that becomes a totally madcap film (including fantasy elements) thanks to a lunatically out of control script from Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly
Disappointing film version of the videogame. The film seems to either miss or water down the principal appeals of the game, although you do get Dwayne Johnson (still billed as The Rock) as the bad guy
Immensely satisfying film from Neil Marshall set in a walled-off, post-pandemic Scotland where he seems to have set out to pay homage to sf/action films like Escape from New York and Mad Max 2
A low-budget video-released action effort that attempts to copy the James Bond films featuring the hunt for a device that can trigger all nuclear reactors
Disappointing adaptation of the arcade videogame. The game is premised on mindless martial arts action but the film pitches everything down to pre-teen audiences and make the two brother protagonists into dorks
Modest and conceptually packed B-budget action film in which a motley team are sent to break into a bunker that has been hijacked by a scientist who is threatening to fire nuclear missiles
A second film version of the Judge Dredd comic-book. More faithful than the Sylvester Stallone version, this comes with a satisfyingly visceral kick, yet a low-budget means that we see little of Dredd’s satiric future
Essentially a supernatural version of a 1970s car chase movie with Nicolas Cage as a motorist who has escaped from Hell to settle a score. This makes a play for the trashy and absurd and comes out all the more entertaining for it
Zombie action film that features Mark Dacascos driving through the post-apocalyptic landscape in a luxury car looking for a home for his daughter
Shia LaBeouf ends up on the run from the FBI in a conspiracy involving an A.I. A thriller about the surveillance society that, despite much sound and fury, finds almost nothing to say about its subject
The rarity of a summer blockbuster with smarts – think Groundhog Day reworked by way of Battle Los Angeles. The timeloop idea is dealt with in clever ways making for an action film driven by an original sf story
The second film from Neill Blomkamp. As in District 9, he starts out making a savage and biting social critique about social privilege and financial elites only to let the film descend into action moves in the third act
Arnold Schwarzenegger takes on The Devil on the eve of the millennium. This is essentially The Omen and one of its ilk having been reworked as a mindless big-budget action and effects movie
Joe D’Amato directs one of the numerous 80s Italian Mad Max 2 copies. One of the very first films to depict televised human bloodsports later popularised by the likes of The Running Man and The Hunger Games
The publicity machine made a big effort to convince us we were a more serious Arnold Schwarzenegger film but it is business as usual. The spectacular action scenes are frequently undercut by their absurd improbability
John Carpenter’s sequel to Escape from New York falls too much in the shadow of its predecessor, nevertheless has some effective moments of its own, with Carpenter in particular creating a satiric fundamentalist future
One of the key films from John Carpenter with Kurt Russell giving his best ever performance, a slick exciting action film that imagines a future Manhattan Island having been transformed into a lawless prison
Blatant copy of The Terminator lacking in basic plausibility featuring Renee Soutendijk as an android with an atomic bomb in her chest that goes rogue while on downtown military maneuvers
Rather ridiculous action film where Jeff Speakman breaks into a prison to take revenge against a serial killer because he received too liberal a treatment from the justice system
Vigilante film with a cult reputation that was banned in places because of its ultra-violence. The film is a mix of Taxi Driver and Death Wish, mostly centred around a series of gory despatches
An Italian exploitation film that blatantly copies the plot of Mad Max 2. It offers the benefit of some vigorous action scenes and English-language dubbing that is out of this world
A John Woo directed action film with the improbable premise where FBI agent John Travolta and terrorist Nicolas Cage end up surgically swapping faces and then taking over the other’s identity
One of the worst of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations. This consists of action sequences slung together with random indifference and badly mismatched casting
The Fast and the Furious series has escalated from films about illegal street racing to essentially superhero films involving ridiculous stunt work that defies the laws of physics. This takes the characters into orbit
A big-budget space opera from Luc Besson. This offers a dazzlingly designed future but the plot is an inane hodgepodge of bad SF elements with a tone that flails between action and camp
Canadian film set in a dystopian future where private use of cars has been banned and Darren McGavin is among the aging car aficionado who race custom cars in defiance of the authorities
Dreary action film with Michael Paré as a soldier with the army’s psychic warfare unit who is sent on a mission to rescue a girl from the hands of terrorists
The live-action English-language adaptation of the Japanese manga/anime that comes off as a muddled post-holocaust action film that doesn’t know what it wants to be
A blatant copy of the Clint Eastwood film Firefox where Steven Seagal is sent to retrieve a hi-tech stealth bomber that has been stolen by a rogue colonel
A modestly effective action film written by/starring stuntman Corey Michael Eubanks where he is forced by backwoods hicks to compete in bare-knuckle fights
Stuart Gordon, a cult director on the basis of Re-Animator, ventures into making an SF action film set in a futuristic prison. The film has a bone-headed script that feels like it is only rehashing cliches from every SF film
Sequel to the Christopher Lambert starring future prison film, this relocates the action to an orbiting space station. Less brainless than its predecessor if in the end no more than average
Guy Ritchie makes an adventure film that pays homage to Indiana Jones and a host of other works concerning the quest for the Fountain of Youth. A superficial film killed by its constantly distracting flip banter
Michael Dudikoff-starring action film about the use of advanced technology during a Middle Eastern war as Syrian terrorists hijack and threaten to fire US nuclear missles
Emilio Estevez is snatched into the future and pursued for his body by bounty hunter Mick Jagger in an SF film that makes no sense at all. A film more worth watching for some bizarrely awful performances
An early work from Takashi Miike, an ultra-violent comic-book variant on RoboCop about a Yazkuza enforcer who is incarnated in a cyborg body and goes seeking revenge
45 years on, George Miller returns with a fifth entry in his Mad Max saga, a prequel to Fury Road. As to be expected from Miller, this an exhilarating action piece and makes a welcome return to his post-apocalyptic junkyard world
Manically paced Hong Kong action comedy about a time-travelling action team purportedly inspired by the Street Fighter videogame. Imagine The Terminator as a manic slapstick comedy with martial arts sequences.
1990s VHS SF/action with David Carradine as a future cyborg bounty hunter on the run with a wrongly convicted girl while hunted by his own side
Undeniably entertaining Filipino action film that tries to throw in everything including time travel, post-holocaust action, adventure quests, magical artifacts, lost worlds, Nazis and dwarves
Cheap Cyberpunk action film that borrows the basics of Cyborg with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson as android bounty hunter engaged in stopping corporate skulduggery
Low-budget attempt to make a Cyberpunk film. Essentially The Warriors with New Wave fashions as a group of frat boys are pursued by a relentless, psychopathic cyborg
A really bad copy of The Terminator featuring an Amazonian Brigitte Nielsen as an alien come to Earth to stop an evil intergalactic warlord
Film somewhere between Counterstrike and The Running Man where convicts are controlled as avatars inside a live-action videogame. A difficult to believe premise that is pumped up with hyper-adrenalised action visuals
Ang Lee dips his feet into the action genre in a conceptually fascinating work where assassin Will Smith facies a younger clone of himself. Smith’s performance and the effects used to de-age his double are top-notch
This US-made live-action adaptation of the cult anime is a disaster on every level. The original’s haunting meditation on the dividing line between machine and human is diluted to being no more than a Cyberpunk action film
You can’t complain that this is not exactly what you expect it to be – two hours of cartoonish action during which the brain singularly fails to engage. This is less unapologetic about being a military fantasy than the first film
Stephen Sommers make a film based on the popular action toy line. Barring one exhilarating sequence in the middle, this consists of lots of sound and CGI fury amounting to very little at all
The 17th James Bond film, the first featuring Pierce Brosnan who gives a dazzlingly ruthless performance. The series is rebooted and takes the opportunity to reconstruct the mythos in terms of modern politics in ways that often take you aback
The third of the James Bond films and the point where everything that has been defined as the formula of the series – the gadgets, the villains, the henchmen, the cars, the world domination plots – falls into place perfectly
Scott Derrickson film with a captivatingly original premise – a sniper is assigned to a guardhouse overlooking a gorge filled with mysterious monsters and ends up in a forbidden relationship with his counterpart across the divide
The long-planned big screen adaptation of the popular radio and tv masked hero becomes a disaster by placing the script in the hands of a badly miscast star Seth Rogen who plays everything for comedy
Utterly generic action film with Mario Van Peebles as a detective tracing a street drug that turns people psychothic before finding he is up against a body-hopping demon
A film about a genetically tinkered teenage girl assassin that never lives up to its potential. Saoirse Ronan is great in the title role but director Joe Wright never gives the action scenes the kick they need
Ferociously entertaining Japanese film about a cyborg-enhanced heroine on a revenge trail. Mostly a series of ridiculously over-the-top action moves combined with copious degrees of blood
Full-length follow-up to Hard Revenge, Milly and the same mix of ferocious action and over-the-top splatter. Despite a large budget, this is marginally the lesser in sheer entertainment
Hard Target was one of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s better films, featuring an on-fire John Woo as director. While most have forgotten it, we get a sequel here that copycats Woo’s moves to a point of tedium
John Woo made his US debut with this Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle, which is essentially an urban version of The Most Dangerous Game. Woo’s stylised action set-ups give a slight script a dynamism that blows his contemporaries away
An intense kick of pure adrenaline. Imagine a version of The Six Million Dollar Man shot First Person Shooter style by hyper-adrenalised parkour junkies dragging the audience through a series of death-defying stunts
The novelty of a Cyberpunk biker film, this is an efficient actioner and assemblage of paper-thin cliches and poses with almost nothing of substance beneath them
A spy action film starring Gal Gadot as a double agent. The film had its air stolen by Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning, nevertheless is filled with exhilarating action sequences and should have had a higher profile
Another of Albert Pyun’s cyborg films set around a kickboxing competition where Pyun seems to have cut costs by using real competition footage with dramatically dull results
Hysterically bad film where Chuck Norris turns one-man fighting machine and goes all out to save the world from the Anti-Christ calling down the Armageddon
One of Chuck Norris’s action films made for Cannon Films during his 1980s heyday. This is a rather forgettable police procedural where Chuck is cast as a detective hunting an escaped serial killer
This was a minor cult hit at the time and concerns an alien that hops between human host bodies while having the invincibility of a Terminator. The idea is played with considerable panache and directed with great flair
Before this was spun out into a series of sequels and tv series, the first film had an original and captivating idea about immortals warring across the ages, Everything is propelled into high gear by Russell Mulcahy’s visually dazzling direction
The fourth Highlander film sets out to merge the film and tv series, bringing together Christopher Lambert and Adrian Paul. This only produces a continuity nightmare that is a headache trying to follow
The third Highlander film is better than the abysmal second one was. It comes with slick visuals but an often absurd plot that strains to spin the concept out any further
The fifth of the Highlander films. It is hard to believe people could actually make a film worse than Highlander II but this is akin to Edward D. Wood Jr on a multi-million dollar budget
Robert Harmon made the classic The Hitcher, but failed to ever follow up on it. This is the sole work that ever came close – a beautifully tense series of games between Jim Caviezel and a motorised killer on the backroads
Disappointing film adaptation of the videogame from Xavier Gens that comes with unremarkable action scenes, a script filled with holes and Timothy Olyphant miscast as Agent 47
The second film based on the videogame, more a reboot than a sequel. This is far closer to the game than the earlier film and emerges as the superior of the two due to a slick action movie polish
SF/action film with a ludicrous premise about a future prison where criminals are turned into holograms. Joe Lara is one lone cop facing an escaped inmate in a hologram body
A Backwoods Brutality film that becomes quite gore-drenched. Written by its leading man Paul Logan who casts himself as a perfect action hero wading in to kick hillbilly ass
The first of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations and the beginning of his bad director reputation. This is a zombie film by the numbers but it was at the forefront of zombie film revival of the 2000s
A mindless action film made for video as a copy of Universal Soldier in which FBI agent Bryan Genesse comes up against soldiers turned into programmed killers via implanted chips
A quite reasonable Backwoods Brutality item with a group who go hunting in backwoods Oklahoma but stir up the inbred poachers and end up being hunted themselves