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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
Zombie action film that features Mark Dacascos driving through the post-apocalyptic landscape in a luxury car looking for a home for his daughter
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Another variant on Alien – a monster movie with Mark Dacascos as a doctor facing a genetically engineered insect monster in the jungles of Borneo
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
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
Fairly average 90s SF/action video release about soldiers hunting an amok military android before realising the androids have also infiltrated their troupe
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
Action film set aboard a space station that houses cryogenically frozen survivors of a devastated Earth as C. Thomas Howell tries to stop a mad Matt Frewer
An enjoyably entertaining film featuring Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco as vampire hunters. This plays out as a comic buddy film mixed with a series of wildly charged action scenes
This exploits the topical fascination with the darknet in a story ostensibly about making snuff videos for sale there. In actuality, this telescopes down to being no more a variant on The Most Dangerous Game
An action movie inspired by tv’s The X Files involving space shuttle pilots returned to Earth possessed by aliens. The emphasis is more on action scenes than a coherent plot
Rather enjoyable action film that conducts an amusing spin on Lethal Weapon buddy cop formula with Dolph Lundgren taking on an intergalactic drug dealer
Disastrous adaptation of the Roger Zelazny novel where the story of a Hell’s Angel on a trek across the post-apocalyptic wasteland is recast with a G.I. and a girl and kid along for the journey, plus the addition of giant mutant cockroaches
B-budget hackmeister Fred Olen Ray makes a hi-tech vehicle fantasies that reads as a cheap attempt to do Blue Thunder with a motorcycle instead of a helicopter. Cheap action but what an amazing cast line-up
From Arrowstorm Entertainment, a low-budget company that make highly professional films. Here they have even roped Danny Trejo into playing a role in a passable attempt to replicate a 1990s Albert Pyun post-holocaust cyborg film
From the height of the 90s RoboCop copycat video release, a sequel that this time pits DEA agent David Bradley up against an army of rogue cyborgs
A low-budget action copy of RoboCop starring David Bradley as a DEA agent up against drug lord John Rhys-Davies who has transformed his brother into a cyborg
A completely ridiculous action film (that features no cyborg cops) and instead concerns the attempts to create an army of cyborgs using insect DNA
Sequel that abandons that mindless chop suey of Albert Pyun’s Cyborg and reconstructs it into a halfway reasonable Cyberpunk film. A then unknown Angelina Jolie plays the cyborg
The first of Albert Pyun’s kickboxing killer cyborg films featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme who was largely unknown at the time. Pyun creates wall-to-wall action but there is almost nothing else to the film
In this sequel to Cyber Tracker, Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson is a police officer fighting a criminal mastermind who is attempting to replace world leaders with android duplicates
An absurd action movie copy of Die Hard where Michael Dudikoff tries to stop terrorist Brion James as he seek to steal an artificially intelligent computer virus
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
Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson stars as a law enforcement officer pursued by killer androids in a blatant made-for-video action movie copy of the basics of The Terminator and RoboCop
The first feature film from Christophe Gans is a live-action adaptation of a manga about an assassin. Gans turns out a film that dazzles with the flamboyance of his action sequences
Cross was a low-budget attempt to copy The Expendables, featuring a C-list team of action stars (plus some fantasy elements). This is a sequel you doubt many people were burning to see
Third of the Cross films, a more fantastical variant on The Expendables, bringing 90s action actors back out of mothballs to form a team as they face various super-villains in present-day L.A.
A copy of The Expendables (albeit with the addition of fantasy elements) that brings together a line-up of B-action movie actors as a team. While some of the actors shine, the feel is of a cheaper effort earnestly trying to copy its betters
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
Everything indicates this should have been a hit – an impressive star line-up, big polished action sequences – only it tanked. Much has been assembled in the service of a hackneyed idea where the memories of an FBI agent are implanted into criminal Kevin Costner
A low-budget SF-action film produced by Roger Corman with David Carradine as a police chief in a dystopian future who becomes wound up in the lives of two young lovers on the run
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
This creates a fascinatingly different future – a world of grim survivalism amid a new Ice Age in the aftermath of Global Warming. The look of the film is fantastic, only to fritter it on an action focus and Mad Max cliches
This is a competent but unremarkable action movie variation on the Mad Max film set in the aftermath of a plague as Gary Daniels must guide a group with an immunity through the wastelands
From Cannon Films, a Sylvester Stallone action vehicle with a near-fascistic view of law enforcement that proves to be an absurd comic-book of a film that is preposterously entertaining
A sequel to the killer android school teacher film Class of 1999. The sequel was made on a far lesser budget and is wrecked by an absurd twist ending
Mark L. Lester’s follow-up to his earlier The Class of 1982 about a teacher forced to adopt vigilante actions in a lawless classroom. In the interim, The Terminator came out and this now has killer android schoolteachers
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
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
The second big screen revival of the hit 1970s tv series. Essentially a Girl Power version of one of the Mission: Impossible films, which turns what was originally a girl-fronted detective show into a spy caper featuring SF gadgetry
Neill Blomkamp’s film about A.I. turns into Short Circuit dropped into the militarised future of RoboCop. Of all the rich possibilities in the idea, all we get is a goofy comedy with a pimped-out carjacking robot
An Australian film from many of the people behind Mad Max about the cover-up of a nuclear accident. Essentially The China Syndrome with the addition of car chases
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
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
This is a completely demented Hong Kong film about alien body snatchers who are hiding in an apartment building on Earth
The Car concerning a possessed car is one of the forgotten films of the 1970s. Why it has produced a sequel 42 years later is a scratch of the head. Not that the two films even resemble one another
Captain America’s second solo outing feels more like a Mission: Impossible film or an episode of 24 than a superhero film. Lots of Marvel continuity and fanservice and you are taken aback at how political it is prepared to be
Film from low-budget director Rene Perez where a hitman who wears a beaten steel mask is pitted up against a hulking backwoods killer
Enzo G. Castellari’s sequel to his Escape from New York ripoff 1990: The Bronx Warriors and a most more polished and entertaining B action movie
John Woo’s second Hollywood film, an action film about nuclear hijacking. Woo’s unique stylistics promptly get buried under the machinery of big-budget action filmmaking
This is in essence a zombie film version of the classic historical film Zulu with a small group of soldiers tasked with protecting a bridge against a zombie horde
A Dolph Lundgren starring action film about a coup in a kingdom that exists as an oddly atemporal mix of clashing historical periods
The English-language remake of the Luc Besson-produced Banlieue 13. The electrifying parkour scenes of the original now seem routine and the film’s social set-up so thinly sketched as to be negligible as science-fiction
A film where you are struggling to find any easy labelling. What it is is an hilariously ultra-violent and over-the-top parody of an action movie that will have your sides splitting
A reboot of the Jason Bourne series with Jeremy Renner replacing Matt Damon. The exhiliratingly kinetic action scenes are watered down, while the plot lacks the same focus. The first of the series to enter genre territory however
A film about post-apocalyptic bounty hunters pursuing bankers, this was an Occupy Movement era film and hits a deliriously unserious comic-book tone
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
Eli Roth adapts the popular videogame and corrals a surprisingly high-profile cast in a knockabout planetary adventure. Alas, that met a very mixed reception and was widely regarded as a bad movie
Denzel Washington as an enigmatic Man With No Name wandering the post-holocaust apocalyptic landscape. This follows the cliches of the genre before it bizarrely morphs into a Biblical allegory partway through
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
That starts out seeming a standard mindless action film in which Vin Diesel is resurrected as an augmented super-soldier only for everything we assume to get turned on its head in interesting ways
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 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
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