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.
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
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
Fourth in a series of energetic Hong Kong slapstick action capers. The film has no pretence to anything more than providing a new action sequence every five minutes, although by now the level is juvenile
The second in a series of Hong Kong slapstick action caper comedies where the action is maintained at such a madcap and dementedly over-the-top pace that it frequently heads into orbit
An Albert Pyun action film with police officers Christopher Lambert and Natasha Henstridge pursuing an infected man through the sewers of a future quarantine zone
Disappointingly watered down live-action adaptation of the cult animated series. Karyn Kusama creates some interesting visuals but eventually everything lapses to Hollywood formula
Action film with Dave Bautista as a treasure hunter retrieving items in a post-apocalyptic world. Directed by a former stuntman, this plays much to the action element with little else of substance
Steven Seagal tries to extend his career by taking on the zombie film. However, this is routine on all levels, although to its advantage Seagal is not on screen much
Reboot of James Patterson’s criminal profiler books makes the mistake of hiring an action director. Tyler Perry lacks the genius mental agility Morgan Freeman previously brought to the role but Matthew Fox does crazy well
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
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
A routine post-apocalyptic action film with Nicole Hansen as the last fertile woman on the run hunted by killer cyborgs while being protected by Joe Lara
Fine thriller about the hunt for a frogman serial killer prowling the canals of Amsterdam. The police procedural plot is not so important as the entertaining dispatches and some of the finest action sequence of the 1980s
Amsterdamned with a detective pursuing a frogman serial killer prowling the canals of Amsterdam was a hugely underrated action film. 37 years later the director and lead actor reteam for a sequel
Not very well made Danish vampire film that almost redeems itself by trying to conduct everything as a John Woo-styled action film
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
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
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
Behind the generic action movie title, this is an SF about a unit of soldiers led by Wesley Snipes venturing into an automated prison to investigate the death of personnel by an unknown force
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
From Walter Hill, one of the legendary action directors, comes what is either the most edgy or tasteless concepts for a revenge film – Michelle Rodriguez is a hitman who seeks revenge after having gender reassignment surgery forced on him
Olivier Gruner plays an android who goes rogue after accidentally killing his boss. A dull action film with no greater ambition than to be an SF version of Die Hard
Action film from Cannon Films with Michael Dudikoff forced to undergo a Most Dangerous Game scenario and be hunted through the bayous by white supremacists
Japanese film that true to its title offers pits ninja against alien creatures. The film plants tongue considerably in cheek as it offers up a series of wildly fantastique action scenes and creature effects
Lightweight action in which a young carjacker gains possession of a teleportation device and is pursued by government agents
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
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
Sequel to the French action hit. The plot shuffles the same basic elements around but it is the action we have come for, which is slow to start but soon kicks into exhilarating high gear
Adaptation of the Battleship boardgame that emerges at best as wannabe Michael Bay. Imagine Pearl Harbor mashed up with a Transformers film and lots of bone-headed glorification of American militarism
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 has the interesting idea of mind-controlled people being used as shooters in a live-action videogame. However, the rest of the film is a routine low-budget action film
Action film with Thomas Ian Griffith tracking the killers of his brother to Poland and uncovering an organ harvesting scheme run by Rutger Hauer
Skyline was a modest alien invasion film; this is a long-planned sequel. The new director has simply turned it into an action film and tediously deals with every alien encounter with gunfire, stunts and explosions
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
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
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
The first MCU film to emerge since the Great Pause of the pandemic, the question is whether one of the least interesting characters in The Avengers can carry a film all by herself
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
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
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
Jackie Chan starring action film that reads like an earthbound Star Wars with he up against a villain in black and his army of super-soldiers
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
A film about post-apocalyptic bounty hunters pursuing bankers, this was an Occupy Movement era film and hits a deliriously unserious comic-book tone
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 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
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 Dolph Lundgren starring action film about a coup in a kingdom that exists as an oddly atemporal mix of clashing historical periods
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
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
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
Film from low-budget director Rene Perez where a hitman who wears a beaten steel mask is pitted up against a hulking backwoods killer
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
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
This is a completely demented Hong Kong film about alien body snatchers who are hiding in an apartment building on Earth
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
A completely ridiculous action film (that features no cyborg cops) and instead concerns the attempts to create an army of cyborgs using insect DNA
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
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
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
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
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
Rather enjoyable action film that conducts an amusing spin on Lethal Weapon buddy cop formula with Dolph Lundgren taking on an intergalactic drug dealer
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
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 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
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
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