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.
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
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
The Mission: Impossible films have become superbly polished vehicles with exotic locales, death-defying stuntwork and spectacular action sequences. This enacts it all well; the main problem is that Ghost Protocol is such a tough act to follow that this cannot help but fall in its shadow
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
Action film from Avi Nesher that comes with a solid and satisfying punch. Michael Biehn is a mild-mannered clockmaker who suddenly discovers he is a brainwashed assassin
Film featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme as a temporal police officer. While you expect another time travel action film, this has quite a deal more sophistication in the scripting department than you expect
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
Halfway reasonable action film in which US President Roy Scheider is taken hostage by Taiwanese terrorists who want to use the nuclear launch codes against China. The surprise about the film is how political it is willing to get
The sixth of the Mission: Impossible films. Not the best of the series but Tom Cruise and associates have everything polished to an expertly honed formula by now and the film is a kinetic ride of intensive and often jaw-dropping action sequences
You don’t think the mix of cartoonishly over-the-top action and a Groundhog Day timeloop scenario would work but this proves your assumptions wrong in highly entertaining ways
Pierce Brosnan’s second outing as James Bond holds up fairly well, especially in the action department, although Jonathan Pryce seems miscast as a Rupert Murdoch-modeled super-villain
Dan O’Bannon scripted film about a hi-tech helicopter, this crackles with great writing and some immensely exciting aerial action scenes from director John Badham
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
Michael Bay takes on the 1980s toy phenomenon, turning it into a massive blockbuster filled with copious mass destruction and machines beating the metal crap out of each other
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
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
About the only ‘vs’ titled zombie film to take itself seriously. I have no time for films about the glory of military heroism, but this must be commended as one of the few films where the soldiers feel like a real trained combat unit
The eighth James Bond film and Roger Moore’s debut in the role. This is one of the most variant Bond films also incorporating Blaxploitation and voodoo elements
The first of several sequels Albert Pyun made to Nemesis. This copies The Terminator with bodybuilder Sue Price being pursued through East Africa by killer androids
Kingsman with its parody of gentlemanliness and action movie sensibilities, was the smartest of the modern spy movie parodies. This sequel has gone to the excesses of the Roger Moore Bond films in the space of one film
Predator was one of the better Alien/Aliens copies of the 1980s. This sequel does little more than serve the same up all over again bar the substitution of a near-future L.A. for the jungle but manages to generate a reasonably intensive ride out of the action
Another of the string of cyborg action films that low-budget director Albert Pyun made in the 1990s. This has a head-scratching fascination, featuring very weird cyborg sex scenes, the unearthly bodybuilder heroine Sue Price and a series of strange philosophical ruminations
The eighth of the Mission: Impossible films. The previous entry Dead Reckoning was a high point in the series and this is left wrapping up the storyline in what would appear to be Tom Cruise’s final outing for the series
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
Shane Black, a writer-director with a reasonable cult following, makes the sixth Predator film (he also appeared as an actor in the original). Black shakes the series up, introduces a number of new ideas and makes an okay entry
SF film with Stephen Baldwin sentenced to life on a prison planet where he becomes saviour to a small peaceful community
One of The Wachowskis returns to the world of The Matrix and rather wittily turns it into an anti-blockbuster about her reluctance to do so
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
Daniel Craig’s swansong as James Bond but it no longer seems a Bond that Ian Fleming would recognise leading to the question of whether James Bond still has any relevance in 2021
A sequel to the 2021 revival of the film series based on the videogame and a much more satisfying film than its predecessor. The first film was all origin story, but this plunges us into the actual kombat itself
Post-apocalyptic zombie action played with a tongue-in-cheek comic-book tone. Plus Danny Trejo as a badass zombie-hunting priest
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
The directorial debut of Ryuhei Kitamura. A film premised on the idea of mashing the John Woo-styled gangster film up with the gore-drenched George Romero zombie film.
Female-led spy/action film that serves everything up in an enjoyably kinetic mix with likeable characters. Not wheel reinventing but more enjoyable than most Hollywood product
A film about post-apocalyptic bounty hunters pursuing bankers, this was an Occupy Movement era film and hits a deliriously unserious comic-book tone
I was never a particular fan of the Schwarzenegger original and this improves on it somewhat. This is far better conceived as an action film with some amazing Cyberpunk designs. On the other hand, the two decades interim has made the story’s Philip K. Dick-ian reality bendings seem commonplace
B-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a cyberpunk action film where the cut-price nature of the exercise is elevated by a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour
The third of Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne trilogy and one of his better films. The action scenes are slickly choreographed and the film is largely made by Michael Paré and Clint Howard who play to the gallery with entertaining regard
The Marvel onslaught continues with this resurrection of a martial artist superhero character from the 1970s. Amid the mostly ho-hum MCU offerings of the 2020s, this becomes an energised action vehicle
A Jet Li vehicle that falls into the masked superhero genre where the show has taken a few leaves from the tv series The Green Hornet. Enjoyable fun with some exhilarating action sequences
Classic work of dystopian SF set in a future where an ultra-violent sport has been created to pacify the masses
A fairly blatant copy of Mad Max 2, although this is one of the better-made and budgeted. Crucially what is lacking is much in the way of the action that made Mad Max a hit
This stirs a bunch of elements from the late 90s vampire film and dark poses from the graphic novel to create a slick vampire action film. Several sequels followed.
A vigorous copy of the Mad Max post-apocalyptic action film made by the underrated Cirio H. Santiago
Passable B-budget 1990s direct-to-video sf/action film about robots and humans warring across time that develops out an interesting plot about a changed timeline
The military action film is a genre that does nothing for me. But this does have a furious, survival-oriented pace as it pits Alan Ritchson and a detachment of soldiery up against an alien killer robot
The Resident Evil films are designed for people who were introduced to drama via the Xbox, action sequences that can be assembled in random order and where it doesn’t matter what happens. I watched this, the sixth and final entry, with next-to-no enthusiasm but then quite unexpectedly it starts to work
B-budget director offers up a copy of Mad Max 2 and peppers it with plentiful tongue-in-cheek exploitation elements stirred with undeniable vigour
Sequel to Timecop with more of an action emphasis as Jason Scott Lee replacing Jean-Claude Van Damme trying to stop a criminal who is erasing agents from the timeline.
xXx, with Vin Diesel as an extreme sports junkie version of James Bond, was ridiculous. This second sequel surprisingly turns out halfway watchable, keeping the stunts moving fast and introducing an ensemble to build this out as a Fast and the Furious-type franchise
Adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story is killed by being turned into an Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle and by director Paul Verhoeven’s burying the reality bending subtleties of the story under bludgeoning ultra-violence
Action film with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson as a cyborg soldier fighting a one-man war against rogue police drones of the future. A fairly generic assemblage of cliches
This reboot of the film series based on the videogame franchise is a mixed affair. Certainly, the perpetually non-acting Angelina Jolie is replaced by Alicia Vikander who gives Lara Croft living, breathing emotions
The sixth Terminator film that boasts the return of both James Cameron and Linda Hamilton to the franchise. After the troughs of Terminator: Genisys, this makes one forget about the last three sequels
A heist film set in a near-future USA where a group of criminals are preparing a last big caper before the activation of a mind control device that will make crime impossible
The fourth Terminator film is slightly better than you would expect of something directed by the empty-headed McG. There are some undeniably spectacular action sequences, although the film still stands too much in the shadow of what has gone before
Early Roland Emmerich film with Michael Paré investigating pirates targeting a mining moon. As usual with Emmerich, the focus is on action while neglecting the plausibility of the scenario
Another videogame adapted film, this has almost entirely been conceived around a series of slick fight sequences and little else
Blatant copy of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Hard Target and both in turn from The Most Dangerous Game. Here Ice-T is a homeless man forced to flee hunters and survive with his bare hands.
Lowell Dean, director of WolfCop, makes what feels like a revival of the low-budget Mad Max film – an action film set in a socially collapsed future
The most expensive film ever made at the time, a Kevin Costner epic in which he is a lone mariner in a drowned world where survivors cling to shantytowns floating on the surface. Essentially a Mad Max film located on water.
From the director of the original Inglorious Bastards, an action film with Erik Estrada as a cop pursuing a blackmailing scientist who has a powerful laser weapon
Are there any new creative directions that Michael Bay feels he he has to explore for a fourth Transformers film? All the Transformers beating the crap out of each other and copious mass destruction has become hard to tell one of the films from each other
The final outing as James Bond for a visibly aging Roger Moore, the fourteenth Bond film all told. One of the more anonymous among the giant unserious cartoon shows the Moore Bond films became
The third of Michael Bay’s Transformers films. While the human scenes opt for a ghastly miscalculated sense of humour, the effects houses are at the peak of their game, even if Bay allows them to drag the mass destruction out to a numbing excess
Low-budget action film with Dolph Lundgren as a modern-day Knights Templar tasked with preventing The Devil returning to Earth at the millennium
Based on the popular videogame, this is fairly much Death Wish by way of Jacob’s Ladder and proves an underwhelming delivery of its promise
The first of Michael Bay’s Transformers sequels has even better effects and more copious mass destruction to the point it washes over you without any effect
One of the numerous Mad Max imitators made in Italy. Directed by notorious adult director Joe D’Amato who pushes the material further than the other entries do
Routine action film about the attempts to stop a rogue general who has hijacked a nuclear missile silo
A reboot of the film series adapted from the popular videogame. Produced by James Wan, this emerges as a kinetic and enjoyable effort that has clearly designed to introduce an ongoing franchise
One of the more cheesily entertaining among the Italian-made ripoffs of Mad Max 2 during the 1980s (as well as more than a few dashes of Escape from New York). The film works up a moderate head of steam
The fourth of the Die Hard films and the only one that enters into genre territory with Bruce Willis now fighting a catastrophic hack attack that disables the entire US
Action film with police officer Olivier Gruner investigating a murder on Mars. For a film that claims such a definitive title – that it is about the planet Mars – this lets all opportunities slip through its hands
Thriller with Pierce Brosnan as a bomb disposal expert who comes up against terrorists who have invented an explosive that can be drunken in a glass of water
The first studio film from Roland Emmerich, a loud, noisy action featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren as Vietnam Vets resurrected as super-soldiers
The fifth of the Universal Soldier films reuniting both Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, while being given a tough, brutal action punch by director John Hyams
An action film variant on the thriller D.O.A. where Ethan Hawke plays an assassin who is resurrected from the dead and has 24 hours to bring down the corrupt corporation who betrayed him
Action thriller with Bruce Willis as a river patrol detective hunting a serial killer
Bizarrely uncategorisable film from Zack Snyder that seems a mix of Girl, Interrupted and Inception
A Hong Kong take on RoboCop with Sally Yeh as crimefighting android. Though produced by and also starring Tsui Hark, a very silly slapstick element comes to dominate what are otherwise imaginative action sequences
Huge Netflix hit adapted from a comic-book about a team of immortal mercenaries
Albert Pyun cheapie in which the plot of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo is relocated to a post-apocalyptic setting and cast with androids
From Italy, a blatant copy of Predator – only where instead of a military unit being hunted through the jungle by an alien, they are hunted by a copycat of RoboCop
Promising idea of an alternate world-hopping film from James Wong, this spends too much time copying moves from The Matrix and lets most of its possibilities pass by
Hong Kong-made copy of RoboCop where Amy Yip has her mind transferred into a cyborg body to track a mad scientist
A low-budget spy/action film with entertainingly bizarre elements including a cryogenically frozen Hitler and the hero going into action accompanied by a baboon
SF action film with Eric Roberts as a future cop travelling through time trying to stop kids before they become criminals
This Philip K. Dick adaptation has a great premise – Ben Affleck is an engineer with a blanked memory blanked only to find he has left himself clues from the future of things that are starting to come true. Alas, this is reduced to an action vehicle in the hands of John Woo
Steven Seagal makes an SF film. Even more bizarrely, Seagal plays the villain for one of the few times in his career, namely the dictator of a dystopian future. An overweight and aging Seagal has a handful of scenes philosophising, while the bulk of the film is a super-soldier plot carried by others
Lucio Fulci was a cult Italian horror director. This was the only occasion that Fulci visited the SF film, a low-budget ripoff of Rollerball by way of Mad Max featuring futuristic gladiatorial games
Another unnecessary entry in a creativity-handicapped series, the continuing popularity of which is baffles. This shuffles through the familiar moves, brings back several familiar characters but only leaves me asking why I have invested some nine hours of time following this series
Third of the Resident Evil films. This expands the scale of action to show the entire world destroyed by the virus but for all that and a decent budget, director Russell Mulcahy fails to push the elements to a suitable head of steam
The first of the Resident Evil sequels and a better film than its predecessor, getting in a series of spectacular, if at times ridiculously silly, action sequences
Based on the survival horror videogame, this was the first in a surprisingly popular series of films. It also presaged a major return of the zombie film during the 2000s/10s, even if this only treads where George Romero went better before
SF film set in a future where agents are sent to repossess artificial organs when the owner’s fall behind on payments. Sort of Sicko by way of Logan’s Run but lacking the necessary sense of black humour to work
The Predator series continues. Dan Trachtenberg, the director of Prey, makes an animated offering that tells three stories of encounters between human and Predator in different eras of history
Australian vampire action that feels like a single pose that has been inspired by too many watchings of The Matrix
Amid the huge surge of Marvel Comics adaptations in the early 2000s, there came this version of The Punisher. Cast with Thomas Jane, the film is tepid and singularly lacking in the grim, dark avenging violence of the comic-book
The thirteenth James Bond film. the fifth for Roger Moore. While the preceding entry had tried to trim back the cartoonish excesses of the Moore era, it is back to business as usual here. The film frequently feels divorced from the remotest shred of realism