To be honest, I think that often times this past decade was a really weird period for the Action/Adventure film. As a kid that grew up in the ‘80s and into the ‘90s, it seemed like that era had Action cinema down to a science, with specific guidelines that were pretty well defined that emphasized terrific photography and editing that accompanied the incredible stunts, explosions and well-muscled heroes. Yet this past decade, often times it seemed like film makers forgot what it was like to actually sit down and watch these films and what made them enjoyable in the first place.
For example, take a movie like Ninja Assassin. Now, this film should have everything it needs to make a terrific ninja movie; a charismatic hero, tons of well choreographed violence, a terrific look, and a script that I would call serviceable (not always a must in this category). Now, what is missing from this equation? How about the ability to see what is going on at any given time? I can actually only hazard a guess that the fights were well choreographed because the camera and editing of the movie are so choppy and poorly put together that I can’t see any of the fights at all.
Somehow it got into the heads of film makers this past decade that it was ok to shoot scenes that were so chaotic that audiences would think they saw everything they needed in an action scene, even when the movie didn’t provide enough information as to what exactly went down in the sequence. While some film makers could get away with choppy editing and “shaky cam”, this seemed to be a rarity, drawing a fine line between when the technique would be expertly used (The Bourne sequels) and when it was not (Batman Begins). Needless to say, this is a trend that I hope dies down in the coming decade.
The other big problem that happened this decade was also one of its biggest strengths. I suppose special effects have always been a part of action cinema, and especially after movies such as Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Terminator 2: Judgment Day came into our consciousness. Those movies were so huge that visual effects seemed to be downright essential. On the other hand, the overuse of CGI can be a big detriment to a film, especially when they’re used with little disregard for how good they look (The Matrix Reloaded, I Am Legend). Sometimes, good old fashioned stunt performers do the trick that a billion dollars of CGI work could never top.
With all that said though, there were still times when action movies exhilarated me as much as they ever have. Films came out between 2000 and 2009 that made me want to get out of my seat and cheer with excitement. They managed to find that balance that reminded us why we love this type of entertainment and why we keep going to action films hoping to be exhilarated once more. They made us feel the blow of every punch and the visceral impact of their high velocity bullet rounds. These are the action films that stood taller than all the rest.
10. Rambo
The throwback of throwbacks. In the same decade Sylvester Stallone went from former superstar, to bit of a joke, to the torch-bearer for the love of pure ‘80s Action cinema. Make no mistake about it, at 60 years old Sylvester Stallone is still awesome and this movie proved it. It’s as if he went back to the 80’s filmed a movie and then brought it back here so Stallone could get away with more violence than your average Saw film. This is a MUST for lovers of the “One Man Army Films” of yesteryear such as Commando, First Blood, Part II and Invasion: U.S.A..
If you’ve ever wanted to see bad guys gutted, decapitated, shot with arrows or turned into hamburger, then this is the movie for you. This is a War movie, through and through, and Stallone the director doesn’t shy away from showing you any of the horror that comes along with that, especially when its perpetrated by Stallone the Action star. Stallone’s Rambo still has life in him, which is more than I can say for much of the population of Burma at the onset of this movie‘s conclusion.
9. Transporter 2
So if there is any star that I would say is keeping on the traditions laid down by Stallone, Van Damme and Norris, it’s probably Jason Statham. Not throwing himself into romantic roles (Gerard Butler) or Kid movies (Dwayne Johnson) in order to make a buck, Statham knows his bread and butter lies in him taking his shirt off and pounding away bad guys with his fists and feet of fury. Sure, this means that he will pretty much star in any awful action movie thrown at him, but you have to love this guy for sticking with the horse that brought him, and you absolutely have to love Transporter 2.
The midway point in his Transporter trilogy of films has Statham’s Frank Martin taking on terrorists who want to infect the city of Miami with a horrible virus, which is really just an excuse for 87 minutes of nonstop mayhem. In the film’s signature scene, Frank realizes that there is a bomb on the bottom of his car about to go off, and instead of exiting said vehicle, he finds a ramp, flips the car over and knocks the bomb off with a large hook that is dangling nearby. The finale involves Frank fighting a villain while their plane spins out of control. That’s what this movie is about, and I can’t help but love it.
8. Flashpoint
“My Duty as a cop…is to fight criminals.”
In the opening scene of Wilson Yip’s Flashpoint, Donnie Yen’s Det. Sgt. Ma Jun confronts a criminal who’s been dodging him. The man is in the middle of a boxing match at a local gym when Jun jumps into the ring and absolutely floors the scumbag, immediately knocking him down and then pounding away at his face in a full MMA mount. It’s a quick scene, but it gets the point across that this isn’t a man to be messed with, and believe me, he isn’t. Ma Jun is in the proud tradition of bad ass cops like Harry Callahan, Martin Riggs, and Chow Yun-Fat’s Tequila from Hard Boiled, and Flashpoint is a movie that can stand with any of the movies those characters appeared in.
Flashpoint is probably the best Hong Kong Action film I’ve seen since John Woo left for America, full of terrific gunfights, awesomely villainous bad guys, and one of the best fight scenes ever committed to film. The final showdown between Yen and The Matrix Reloaded‘s Colin Chou is a 16-minute smash-mouth face-off that leaves both combatants bloody and bruised. Yen choreographed the sequence himself, mixing in standard martial arts with modern MMA brutality, and the end result is a flurry of action that deserves to be seen by any action fan, whether you like Hong Kong cinema or not.
7. Wanted
I’ve heard complaints about how this movie is derivative of films like Fight Club or The Matrix, and to that I say, “who cares?” Let me ask you this; would you like to wake up one day to discover that you were actually living in a computer and that you’d been chosen to save the world like in The Matrix or would you rather discover you were bred to be the world’s greatest assassin, and that you get to take baths with Angelina Jolie every day? Wanted assumes you’d want the latter and show’s you exactly why it would be so incredible. Nonstop insane shootouts, great training sequences, and the movie’s big mean-streak are enough to get it on this list.
6. 300
My favorite review of 300 was from writer Neil Cumpston, who described the movie’s plot as “Just ass kicking that kicks ass that, while said ass is getting kicked, is kicking yet more ass that’s hitting someone’s balls with a hammer made of ice but the ice is frozen whiskey.” Pretty succinctly, the movie is about kicking ass and that is something it does very well. 300 is a bizarre mix of Frank Miller’s original aesthetic from the graphic novel and the amazing visual sense of director Zack Snyder, who has become a force to be reckoned with in the last half of this past decade, able to direct a fight scene like nobody’s business.
The movie also features some of the best macho grandstanding I’ve ever seen in a movie. When the 300 Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae aren’t fighting the Persians and their army of ninjas, elephants, freaks, and rhinos, they’re usually making speeches or talking about how tough they are. Best thing is, they’re usually backing up their speeches by decimating the Persian minions. With its amazing mix of violence, nudity, and grotesquery 300 was the second coming of Conan the Barbarian and rightfully takes its place right next to that film in the macho pantheon.
5. Ong Bak 2
The reason I give Ong Bak 2 the nod over films like 300 is because when this movie shows its hero fighting elephants and wild animals, the creatures aren’t digital, they’re as real as Tony Jaa is bad ass. 2009’s craziest movie, Ong Bak 2 is an insurmountable barrage of martial arts insanity peppered with heavy amounts of just plain insanity. Ninjas, pirates, samurai, shaolin monks, island warriors, swordsmen, elephants, and crocodiles all try to take down Tony Jaa’s character Tien in this movie. None of them succeed.
4. Bourne Ultimatum
There’s just no denying how much impact the Bourne series had on this genre during past ten years, and this series capper was the best of the lot. Sure, The Bourne Ultimatum used the very same “shaky-cam” technique I was complaining about earlier, but in the hands of director Paul Greengrass the technique was used how it was supposed to be. Greengrass created an almost documentary feel to the film that adds to the overall aesthetic of a “real” world, which makes Jason Bourne’s exploits that much more impressive. His fight and chase scenes are chaotic, but still get across just enough information to let you know what is going on, and what is going on is awesome.
Bourne is a one man wrecking crew, taking down assassins and government agents by the score; capped in the film’s chase through New York City, which is one of the best executed and chaotic car chases I’ve ever seen. The finality of this movie though, is what I think raises it above its counterparts. Bourne coming to grips with his past is handled with a skilled hand by both Greengrass and star Matt Damon, who wrenches just the right amount of emotion out of his very human, but very deadly bad ass.
3. Shoot ‘em Up
It’s too bad there isn’t an Academy Award category for Excellence in Action Cinema or maybe Insane Achievement in Action Cinema, because the Oscar in 2007 would have been a close race between this film and 300, but I’d have to give the edge to Michael Davis’ supremely demented action-fest. This is action with no limits. The movie is like a lunatic Bugs Bunny cartoon that just keeps getting funnier and funnier as it goes along until Clive Owen’s Smith faces off with the villain at the end of the movie by using his own broken hand as a makeshift shotgun.
The shootouts get more and more unbelievable each time out as Smith effortlessly annihilates scumbags in warehouses, airplanes, alleyways, a gun factory, or falling through the air at 10,000 feet. The movie exhilarates you with its audacity, all the while never letting up on its intensity or hilarious antics. Along for the ride is one of the most beautiful women in the world in Monica Bellucci, her prostitute and Owen’s hero trying their all just to protect a baby from an evil gun manufacturer (you read that right). The movie is endless fun and ingenuity wrapped around the most ridiculous plot ever.
2. Blade II
I may take some flak for putting this movie in here because it may bleed over too far into the Superhero genre, but Blade II is too genius to ignore and the reason it belongs here is because of its action. First off, the movie’s fight scenes are some of the best ever thought out, choreographed and put into a movie. With the help of Donnie Yen and others, the fights featuring Wesley Snipes’ half-man/half-vampire are like those of The Matrix, only with a wild, brutal intensity that Blade would need to take out the monsters in this film.
Then, when you think that the movie can’t get any better, it steps it up a notch. To top the earlier action the battles against the reapers in the sewers playing out like a sequence from Aliens on speed, then Blade gets let loose in the lair of the vampires using Kung fu, cattle prods, sword fighting and wrestling moves to take out what looks to be 600 bloodsuckers. This is on top of the unstoppably cool early scenes featuring The Bloodpack, a special squad of bad ass vampires trained to hunt Blade, but instead end up joining him to fight the reaper strain’s victims.
Guillermo Del Toro’s madhouse of horrors is a movie I could watch over and over again. Wesley Snipes makes the ultimate bad ass list, the Bloodpack includes Ron Perlman, Donnie Yen and a collection of awesome cutthroats, and finally the reapers are an amazing foe for them to deal with. The only thing that really holds this back for me is some of the CGI in this picture that is used to accentuate the fight scenes has either aged badly or is straight up bad. Otherwise, this might’ve been my number 1.
1. Casino Royale
On the other hand, Casino Royale is nearly flawless. I can’t tell you how much skepticism I had for this movie going into it. Mostly, this was because I was a big fan of Pierce Brosnan and didn’t feel like Bond really needed a change. Also, I was unsure about the movie because I didn’t know if the idea of a reboot for the series could really work. Turns out I was wrong on both counts.
Daniel Craig is simply awesome as James Bond. His portrayal has equal parts the suave sophistication of Roger Moore and the roughhouse masculinity of Sean Connery. This is as dangerous as Bond has ever been on screen, evident really early on as he uses his tenacity and a little problem solving to track down a parkour expert trying to elude him. Thing is though, Bond isn’t the superman he had been for the last forty years either. This was 007 a bit more vulnerable, which actually made him a better character.
Sure, Martin Campbell directed this movie as the action maestro that he is, but also put together a movie where we actually care about Bond and whether he will be able to survive along with Eva Green’s beautiful Vesper Lynd. This is Raiders of the Lost Ark-level film making on display, with emotional content keeping us in the movie while the action exhilarates on an almost unbelievable level. The result makes this movie one of the best the Bond series has ever produced, and by successfully reinventing the longest running action series in Western Cinema, it deserves to be considered the best of the decade.
