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.
Fourth entry in the eminently forgettable sword-and-sorcery series, this heads down into bad movie stakes by writing a series of grating quips over everything, while the action scenes exist in the realm of unbelievability that show that nobody is treating anything with the slightest seriousness
There have been some impressive works about A.I. in the last few years. This plays out as Ex Machina by way of Training Day and is only notable in its ridiculous implausibility
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
The third Robocop film killed the series off with a disastrous decision to go for a PG rating and pair Robocop with a cute kid
Four films in and clear evidence that the Resident Evil series needs to be retired. This consists of tediously borrowed action moves now presented in 3D and a plot of random dead ends that make little sense
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
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
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
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
One of the worst of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations. This consists of action sequences slung together with random indifference and badly mismatched casting
Steven Seagal action film in which he plays a former virologist fighting a militia group threatening to unleash a deadly virus
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
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
Seth Grahame-Smith’s original book was a witty historical joke that retold the events of Lincoln’s life as a secret history involving vampires. The film somehow misses the joke and turns everything into a ridiculously over-the-top action film
Completely ridiculous mix of The Terminator and Die Hard where, for no clear reason, an android terrorist decides to take hostages in an office building and the FBI’s only hope is a cryogenically unfrozen football player
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
Director Brett Leonard started the fascination with Virtual Reality off with The Lawnmower Man but shot himself in the foot with this absurd braindead follow-up in which Denzel Washington pursues a madly OTT Russell Crowe as an android serial killer
Sequel to the ridiculous Project Shadowchaser, which has another android terrorist this time take over a nuclear power plant
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
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
Bizarrely incomprehensible film from Avi Nesher set in a Cyberpunk future in which Olivier Gruner is turned into a Neanderthal superhuman by aliens living in cyberspace
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
SF action with Michael Paré convicted to a prison planet from which he attempts to organise the prisoners to make an escape. This is essentially a Western that takes place in SF terms
Laughably badly made ripoff of Blade Runner and The Terminator with a mercenary hunting amok androids
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
Incredibly bad and frequently laughable variation on The Hidden and in turn The Terminator with Jesse Ventura as an intergalactic law enforcement officer hunting a criminal on Earth
An astoundingly bad low-budget RoboCop copy about an android motorcycle cop that goes amok
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.
A really bad copy of The Terminator featuring an Amazonian Brigitte Nielsen as an alien come to Earth to stop an evil intergalactic warlord
A really cheap and unconvincing post-apocalyptic action film starring forgotten martial arts star Ron Marchini as a lawman fighting off mutant crazies to obtain a power crystal
One of a number of Italian-made copies of Mad Max 2 from Enzo G. Castellari. This is cheap and in some of the writing and dialogue frequently laughable
An incredibly cheap ripoff of Predator (and even more so that film’s real source The Most Dangerous Game) relocated to an urban area. Incredibly tatty and dull on all counts
A film that relentlessly celebrates its own brainlessness. Michael Bay directs an asteroid collision film amid plenty of loud noise, mass destruction, flag-waving patriotism and resolute heroism
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
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.
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
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
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
SF film about an international action team outfitted in hi-tech vehicles, this was a big bomb in its day
Completely ridiculous martial arts SF film with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson as a future cop fighting a videogame character incarnated in the real world
A completely ridiculous action film (that features no cyborg cops) and instead concerns the attempts to create an army of cyborgs using insect DNA