LEGENDARY ACTION MOVIES OF ALL TIME

 THE BEST ACTION MOVIES OF ALL TIME 

                             PART TWO

last time we spent five slots covering the major action sub-genres and this time we're back rounding out our list with some of the more important aesthetic trends these are the rest of our picks for the top 10 action films of all time part two

it's pretty much impossible to talk about action movie-style especially as far as Hollywood is concerned without a serious look at its golden age the 80s and 90s saw the newly formed Hollywood tentpole machine pour never-before-seen energy into the creation of ever bigger ever crazier testosterone-fueled shoot-em-ups  that launch the increasingly muscular action star careers of Mel Gibson bruce Willis chuck Norris Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger these decades and their seemingly insatiable taste for sweat beaded biceps carrying absurdly sized machine guns brought us the ridiculous likes of 

1. Robocop

 2. True Lies

 3. Total Recall 

4. Tango and Cash

5. Point Break

6. Big Trouble in Little China

8. Predator

 9. First Blood 

10. They Live 

11. Top Gun 

12. Running Man

 13. Demolition Man

But if there's one best of the bunch one crowning achievement of the entire  20-year period where Hollywood's ammo budget rivaled the armies god help us if it isn't  

14. Die Hard 

so much energy has been spent singing the praises of what may be the most iconic film in the Hollywood action canon and for good reason, the film is structurally perfect it balances its heaviness with its levity with grace and manages all its ballistic chaos without ever seeming excessive john McLean is built with bottomless competence and an endearing vulnerability a rare combination amongst his cohorts in the era and then there's 

15. The Villain 

every single detail of the film fits perfectly amidst the others advances the action precisely and is also communicated with perfection which if you saw our last installment is an important piece of subtle praise that is rarer than gold awesomeness fills seats awesomeness is easy maintaining sense and coherence while blowing our minds with the newest coolest set-piece over and over that's enough to get you in the history books and if you've got some of the genre's best characters at the same time well you might just be die hard 

Hollywood wasn't the only national cinema going through its heyday in the 80s and 90s just as important and influential and maybe even a little bit more insane was the appetite for action in hong kong coming on the heels of the 70s kung fu new wave that saw the shaw brothers and bruce lee launched the regional cinema into the international spotlight the 80s and 90s brought us Jackie chan and jet li and Donnie yen and sue to hark and Yoon wu ping and johnny toe and so much more here we find 

16. Police Story

17. Super Cop

18. City on Fire

19. Tiger Cage

20. A Hero Never Dies

but nobody's work exemplified and emblemized the egregiously violent excesses of the era like the step print dove flying bullet ballistics of john wu his entire pre-Hollywood career is a catalog of ever-improving balls to wall ballistics and saxophone from a better tomorrow to just heroes 

21. The Killer

22. Bullet in the Head

but he really topped himself and everyone else in the entire world with his career-high watermark 

23. Hard-Boiled

Hardboiled starts in the tea house and ends in the hospital bookending itself with two of the best most hong longest most john lewis sequences this side of the killer's church finale and it's no tea party in between the media, the film is chock full of wu's signature tropes hard-drinking jazz listening brooding cops who dual wield pistols as birds flap in slow-mo jumping from cover to unleash never-ending clips before engaging in gun food and in the two cops team up to take down bad guys plot we just want to make sure you all either learn or remember that Chao young fat's Saks playing hero character is named tequila we think that says quite a lot 

in the aftermath of two decades that saw action production numbers crash back down to earth as the various bubbles pop it seems to us that from the ashes three distinct aesthetic trends in the genre have emerged the first seems like the simplest outgrowth of last millennium's excess a style that leans into the humor and insanity permitted by the increasingly bonkers conflicts that audiences had learned to enjoy this is the 

over-the-top action trend increasingly invincible heroes take on increasingly impossible obstacles in increasingly suicidal ways the set pieces are ever bigger focuses on the novel and new in stunt and vehicle and CGI work and there's a progressive sense of oh no they won't oh yes they did movies like 

24. Total Recall

25. Desperado

 gave way to modern action insanity like those in the later 

26. Fast and Furious Franchise

27. Crank

28. The John Wick

john woo comes to America and makes face Robert Rodriguez gives us 

29. Sin City

we find more explicit parodies of the decades passed in films like the 30. Expendables

31. Shoot 'em up

but as far as contemporary access in action is concerned our favorite belongs to a loving send-up/homage rip-off evolution that seems to operate on a never-enough ethos from our very own Quentin Tarantino the 

32. Kill Bills 

kill bill sits at the excess nexus of all things both awesome and extra as an exploitation kung fu samurai spaghetti western animation revenge extravaganza where else but in this action epic in 2 elements are you able to notice one on eighty bloodbaths chain manuals insanely tasteless coaching sequences multiple eyes pluck and one in all of the foremost badass action heroes this facet of the pacific Quentin Jerome Tarantino managed to funnel all of the simplest elements of his signature reference everything steals everything mock everything else vogue into an amorous elevation of all the extremes of decades past nearly every fight sequence contains a replacement style of craziness, the choreography comes from the best possible there is few prime it does not reconsider and that is specifically however one thing like ought to this could be ostensibly reacting against the absurdity of the extraordinary trend a perpendicular aesthetic has conjointly developed in all probability most familiarly delineated as gritty ANd realistic thereforert of action film was best typified ANd popularized by the bourne triad here the main focus moves from larger is best to find the intensity within the intimate lighting tricks is a lot of probably hand-held than swooping on crane heroes square measure a lot of likely imperfect or past their prime or a minimum of a bit fallible wounds ANd consequences appear a lot of dire and knives become a revived threat whereas before bazookas and fighter planes had virtually lost their danger here we discover trendy greats like 

33. Drive 

34. The Elite Squad Films 

35. Collateral 

36. Atomic Blonde

a person out of nothing even the bond films forever dedicated to the sillier facet of things took a detour a lot of towards thusrt|this type|this kind} of action with the introduction of the daniel carbon but assume|we expect|we predict} the simplest film within this class really predates concerning} all of those discerning in so terribly many ways here we tend to gotta decide archangel man's 

37. Heat 

heat is simply just enough action sequences to even be thought as an action film that should tell you one thing about their quality that we tend to square measure selecting it there is maybe ne'er been an action show that felt the maximum amount sort of a documentary once the guns came out solely zero dark thirty and sicario comparable planned choreographed and trained intensively by U. S. Army Special Forces troopers ne'er has the sound obstruction photography and intensity of an action sequence been so deeply felt however we tend to conjointly think loads of credit is thanks to the exceptional acting of kilmer actor pacino and sizemore delivery in performances extremely|that basically|that really} exemplify worry|the phobia} vasoconstrictor mania and stakes that finding yourself in an exceedingly world not a show honest god firefight would actually bring they're skilled however not herculean disciplined besieged however not calm you get to examine them battling at intervals themselves to stay their emotions in check so as to operate making this multi-layered import of a jaw-clenched spring-coiled internal tension compare that to the standard action hero WHO is either uber cool roaring loudly or indicating their fear and you see why the eye to detail really pays off in conclusion, we wish to appear at a more moderen trend that is getting down to be commonplace enough to be value golf shot a finger on reductively we tend to'd decision this 

The hyperviolent action film fitting in complicatedly aboard our last 2 slots typically superficial to please within the sexual pleasure of additional gratuitous violence typically superficial to condemn it with however uncomfortable it makes North American nation feel it's realistic within the sense that it's unflinchingly at the worst consequences of violence even supposing its frequency is seriously heightened it's over the highest within the amount and gratuity of the gore we see on screen however the results are not subtle humorously and ethical success like you'd expect in your typical blockbuster it's excess is in blood and guts, not explosions and bullets you hear each bone crack and that is comparatively new a number of the simplest films during this last niche square measure those like previous 

38. OLDBOY

 

39. Brawl in Cell Block 99 

40. A Prayer Before Dawn 

41. Bone Tomahawk

42. GREENROOM

43. ICHI THE Killer 

44. Thirteen Assassins

45. Super 

we can we will we square measure able to} trace these film's roots back to 2 separate however vital influences the transgressive sexual pleasure of dark Japanese action that began method back with the blade of doom then resurfaced larger and badder on the worldwide stage in a battle royale and therefore the extra-lethal martial arts generator of newer southeast Asian designs 1st breaking move into angbok continued to the current day within the night comes for North American nation and reaching its apex in our last decide 

46. The Raid Redemption

The raid hit action cinema sort of a dumper exploding onto the worldwide scene with the rampage vehemence of a overzealous bulldog serving up blood-curdlingly vicious action nearly from go it trades in largely all its plot character backstory and theme for one issue and one issue solely action and here gareth evans and his indonesian stunt team are completely first-rate however once all you are doing is fighting for 2 hours straight you've got to be quite smart at it, you've got to be perpetually innovating that the raid sets concerning exploring all the various {ways|ways that|ways in that} to harm hardly shying aloof from the blood-drenched physicalness of it  to show to consequent murder and come and square measure available climax time once it is time to show things up {yet another|yet one a lot of|one more} notch the pain and maiming these unpitying men visit upon one another surpasses all traditional decorousness and that is what is therefore special and to thereforeme a bit involved about this new vogue it reaches on the far side the polite sanitised violence we tend to appear to own all united is appropriate into a realm typically reserved for horror but this is often action these are trendy gladiators and we tend to're not here to evaluate the ethical consequences of it all we simply decide those that do what they are doing best and therefore the raid is definitely among them which is why assume we expect|we predict it's one in all the simplest action films of all time 

what does one think to aLL any of our picks can we miss any of your favorite action flicks allow us to apprehend within the comments below and take care AND subscribe TO OUR BLOG for more

IMAGES USED FROM WIKIPEDIA AND MAX PIXEL