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.
Nobody knew it at the time but this was the beginning of the huge surge of Marvel Comics adaptations on screen in the 00s/10s. This distills the basics of the vampire hunter comic-book down into a smart, kinetic action film
Low-budget action film that blatantly rehshes the plot of Firefox with Michael Dudikoff as a pilot recruited to go into enemy territory and steal back a hi-tech plane
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
The third and best of Pierce Brosnan’s outings as James Bond. All the aspects of the formula are contained within a strong plot and Sophie Marceau proves a standout in a role that combines both villain and love interest
An inane action film that sets out to copy Speed with Skeet Ulrich and a motormouth Cuba Gooding Jr forced to drive an ice cream truck filled with chemical weapons
Fred Olen Ray and Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson combine forces on a low-budget action film about psychic powers. The action scenes are competent but the film lacking in the script department
A Dolph Lundgren starring action film about a coup in a kingdom that exists as an oddly atemporal mix of clashing historical periods
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
Sequel to Roland Emmerich’s Universal Soldier, this brings back Jean-Claude Van Damme but otherwise substitutes a brain dead plot that has him facing an evil A.I.
A film that was as groundbreaking when it came out as Star Wars was in its day. The Wachowskis create a defining work on Virtual Reality themes and do so with a sublime cool and a series of breathtaking action moves that blew everybody away
The second of Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible films where he has the smarts to hire John Woo as director who brings his customary stylish flair with action to transform the film into something exhiliraing
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
Arnold Schwarzenegger revisits something of Total Recall in this modest and clever action film in which he discovers that a clone has stolen his life
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
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 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.
Low-budget Fred Olen Ray action film is another variant on Die Hard with security guard Treat Williams foiling a terrorist hijacking of a nuclear power plant. For some reason this also includes reuse of footage from Terminator 2
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
Action film in which an agent tries to prevent a nuclear arms deal after being given a memory-erasing drug
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
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
The first film adaptation of the popular videogame is a film largely premised around the personality of Angelina Jolie. Outside of that, the film is a half-baked series of plot ends and action scenes taken from better films
An action film set against the backdrop of a new Moon mission where Bill Pullman plays a US marshal assigned to protect judge Lena Olin whose life is under threat
Halfway reasonable Jean-Claude Van Damme film in which he plays the clone of a serial killer who is brought to life in attempt to track down the original
Back when Dwayne Johnson was a wrestler billing himself as The Rock, this was a forgettable sword and sorcery effort spun off from his appearance in The Mummy Returns. This led to a surprising number of sequels
Japanese SF film that makes a rather enjoyable magpie collage out of a Terminator time travel action plot married to John Woo and Matrix action stylistics
Australian vampire action that feels like a single pose that has been inspired by too many watchings of The Matrix
Remade, the 1975 dystopian film about future sports is stripped of any of its big message (even of its future setting) and is turned into no more than a formulaic action film
Blade was a solid vampire/action film but the sequel is a quantum leap over that, a visually kinetic and immensely exciting comic-book of a movie thanks to the employment of Guillermo Del Toro in the director’s chair
Tsui Hark takes over the directorial reins of the sequel, filling it with much more fantastical elements, pitting the hero against a mad scientist and his mutant creations in a series of wild martial arts scenes
The third of Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive trilogy. While the previous entries are Yakuza films, this is an action film about androids set in Blade Runner-homaging Cyberpunk future
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
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
One of the most brainless action films ever made. This has the laughable notion of trying to make a James Bond film but recasting it with Vin Diesel as an extreme sports junkie. Everything about the film is absurd.
An action film that sets Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu up as rival assassins. Despite a reasonable budget thrown at it, the film comes strangely without enervation
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.
Flop Jackie Chan film that tries to recapture some of his Hong Kong heyday with Jackie in a quest for a boy and medallion with magical powers
Third of The Matrix sequels and the weakest of the series. This offers one showstopping effects sequence, on the other hand it also leaves a host of unanswered questions dangling
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.
The first Tomb Raider film was empty-headed but a hit but the series was then killed off by this sequel. Angelina Jolie’s performance is detached from human emotion and the action sequences ludicrous
An action film that takes place in a single room. A samurai is invited to dine by a mysterious host who reveals he is an immortal monster and believes they have been destined to fight
After the highs of James Cameron’s first two Terminator films, this was a crashing disappointment. Schwarzenegger is back but his performance has become self-parody and the uninspired action sequences are accompanied by some terrible effects
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
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
The first of the sequels to The Matrix inevitably disappointed on the massive build-up. The Wachowskis leave more questions than answers, while the new action scenes are often jaw-dropping they also feel boiler-plated on
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
Luc Besson written/produced film that is a French rehash of Escape from New York but director Pierre Morel gives it a series of exhilarating action and parkour sequences
Third of the Blade films with Wesley Snipes. As director, series screenwriter David S. Goyer emulates the same exhilarating, kinetic moves that Guillermo Del Toro infused the second film with, while the script zings with his wryly cynical dialogue
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
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
Disappointingly watered down live-action adaptation of the cult animated series. Karyn Kusama creates some interesting visuals but eventually everything lapses to Hollywood formula
Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades in Greek myth, is appropriated to become the focus of a standard md-00s CGI monster movie
What should have been a modest conceptual SF story about people coming to discover the true nature of the world they live in is killed by being turned into an loud and over-inflated Michael Bay action vehicle
Steven Seagal submarine action where he tackles a terrorist who has perfected mind control techniques
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
A ridiculous film with Lou Diamond Phillips pursuing aliens aboard a runaway train. Cliches are piled on with absurd effect and the show killed by cheap effects
Fair-to-reasonable remake of John Carpenter’s low-budget 1976 film about a handful of staff in a police station under siege from gangs outside. Much of the original has undergone change
Uwe Boll gained a reputation as the world’s worst director on the basis of his videogame adaptations. Prize exhibit was Alone in the Dark, which abandons the game and is a series of action scenes without explanatory rationale
Action film about an artificially intelligent fighter plane that goes amok. Rob Cohen directs in all the cliches of the genre and the seeming need to have something spectacular happening every few minutes
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
Another Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptation, this feels slung together from vampire film and sword and sorcery cliches. Among the badly mismatched casting, the most eyebrow raising is Ben Kingsley as the vampire villain
For his third outing in the series, Tom Cruise made a smart bet on giving the reins to J.J. Abrams who made his directorial debut and turned in the most enjoyable entry in the series to that point. One of the best moves is in the casting of Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain of the show
Milla Jovovich is a part of a vampire rebel underground in a dystopian future. A film filled with incredible design schemes and action scenes that are as spectacular as they are ridiculously improbable
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
The second of the Underworld films where Len Wiseman gets a bigger budget and amplifies the CGI and action sequences,. On the other hand, the characters and story are so stripped to a minimum you lose track of why things are happening
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
This adapts a Philip K. Dick story and then throws it out to make a generic action film with Nicolas Cage as a psychic. All the potential of its idea is lost amid a series of ridiculous plot twists
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
Low budget vampire action about a vampire woman who is recruited into a secret government organisation
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
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
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
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
An action movie where the toughest criminals are forced into a barehanded survivalism competition against one another while this is livestreamed. As the hero, wrestler Steve Austin has zero charisma
A mockbuster from The Asylum that was intended to capitalise on the release of I Am Legend and in fact gets much more of the essence of the original Richard Matheson novel than the official film did
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
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 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
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
The second in Uwe Boll’s trilogy adapted from the videogame, this plays out as a mix of Western and vampire hunter film and is marginally better than Boll’s usual standards
Prequel to The Scorpion King. Unfortunately director Russell Mulcahy allows his broad hand with comedy free reign and the plot is overrun by glib character banter and constant flip modern one-liners
Long-planned project that creates an interesting future scenario, epic action, an array of Dirty Dozen characters but emerges as surprisingly trivial
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
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
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
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
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 Punisher (2004) with Thomas Jane was a dud among the 2000s Marvel Comics adaptations. Here the role is recast with Ray Stevenson and director Lexi Alexander gets the dark, violent tone of the comic-book right
The film that Hitman should have been concerning a secret world of super-powered assassins, revved up by out of this world visuals from Timur Bekmambetov
One of the worst of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations. This consists of action sequences slung together with random indifference and badly mismatched casting
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
Live-action English-language remake of the anime short about a demon-hunting vampire girl. The original is reduced to no more than a series of slick by-the-numbers action poses
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
Produced by The Wachowskis who take the opportunity to reinvent the ninja film with the same flamboyant visuals they employed on The Matrix with exhilarating results
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
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
Hearkening back to the spirit of 1980s B budget killer cyborg/android movie, an entertainingly preposterous film in which a girl biker gang are pitted against a mad scientist and his army of killer androids
Third of the Underworld films, a prequel to the previous entries. In truth, it is just the same as the others – lots of kinetic action moves and Gothic poses with little in the way of plot
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 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