The Greatest Action Films Part 6: The Dependable

Part 6 – The Dependable

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The films in this tier that work all commit without apologising. Road House establishes cooler as a profession with its own circuit and famous names and nobody on screen raises an eyebrow. Vampires treats hunting as a job done by profane working men who find it tedious. Speed Racer builds an aesthetic nobody had attempted and never once softens it.

The ones that do not work mostly have a good first act and no idea what to do afterward. 28 Weeks Later opens with the best four minutes in its franchise and becomes a pursuit. Silverado is craft without a subject.

Every rating is the one carried by the review it links to. Ties are broken by year, and this is the sixth of eleven parts.

Road House treats cooler as a profession with a circuit and Vampires treats hunting as a trade with unpaid invoices. Make the impossible operational in the World Builder’s Handbook.

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1. Nighthawks (1981) [full review]

► Read the full review of Nighthawks (1981)

1981
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.6/10

"Ninety-nine minutes, and Rutger Hauer’s first English-language role."

Bruce Malmuth took over the production after Gary Nelson shot some early material, and the film was intended as a French Connection sequel before rewrites. Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams are decoy officers in New York hunting a European terrorist. David Shaber wrote it and had co-written The Warriors two years earlier.

Rutger Hauer is the reason to watch it and this was his first American film. Wulfgar is charming, professional and entirely without ideology, and Hauer is operating at a level the picture around him never reaches in any other scene. Lindsay Wagner and Persis Khambatta round out the principal cast.

The subway sequences were shot in real stations at night and the tram hostage climax over the East River is genuinely well staged. The film’s energy comes from location work instead of from its script, and the script has visible seams from the rewrites. Keith Emerson scored it, the only synthesizer score in his film work.

Stallone made it between Rocky II and Rocky III and plays it considerably quieter than the period expected of him. Deke DaSilva is a man who hesitates, and the film’s ending turns on whether he can stop doing that. Universal released it in April 1981.

For WritersHauer plays a terrorist with no political content at all. He is a professional who enjoys the work, and removing the ideology makes him considerably harder to dismiss than any manifesto would. When you write an antagonist, consider whether their stated cause is doing anything. Readers argue with a cause and then file it away as handled. A person who simply enjoys what they do offers nothing to argue with at all. The absence is far more unsettling to sit with across a whole book. An ideology is also a promise you have to keep, since a cause stated early has to govern behaviour later or the reader already caught. Why villain motivations fall apart covers stated causes.

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2. Code of Silence (1985) [full review]

► Read the full review of Code of Silence (1985)

1985
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.2/10

"The best Chuck Norris film, and it is Andrew Davis who makes it work."

Andrew Davis directed the best film Chuck Norris made and did it four years before Under Siege, using the same method. Shoot Chicago as a real city, cast character actors in every supporting part, and build an actual police film around a performer with a narrow range.

The El train sequence is the reason it holds up. Norris moves along the roof of a moving elevated train through a genuine Chicago neighborhood, and Davis shoots it wide with real geography so the audience can track the whole thing. Michael Butler, Dennis Shryack and Mike Gray share the screenplay credit.

The plot is about a cop who will not testify falsely against another officer, considerably more interesting than the marketing suggested. The silence in the title is the department’s, and the film is unusually direct about what that costs. Henry Silva plays the cartel enforcer and Dennis Farina an officer in the unit.

The Prowler robot is the element everybody remembers and the one thing that does not belong. An armed remote vehicle arrives in the last act from a subplot the film had barely established, and the finale becomes a different picture for ten minutes. Davis had shot documentaries in Chicago before moving into features.

For WritersDavis surrounds a limited lead with performers who can carry scenes he cannot. Norris is never asked to do anything outside his range, and every requirement for nuance is loaded onto the supporting cast. When one element of your book is fixed, distribute the demands accordingly. A protagonist who cannot change needs a world that does, and readers will follow a constant figure through three hundred pages if everything around them keeps shifting. Decide which element is fixed before you outline, because a book that discovers the constraint in the third act has already overbuilt the first two.

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3. Silverado (1985) [full review]

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1985
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.1/10

"Every element is first rate and the film is about nothing at all."

Lawrence Kasdan wrote it with his brother Mark and made a deliberate attempt to revive the western at a point when the genre was commercially dead. The cast is extraordinary and the picture is more affectionate than it is dramatic. Kasdan had written The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders before directing.

Kevin Costner is the best thing in it and it made his career. Jake is reckless, delighted with himself and genuinely dangerous, and Costner plays the whole part at a pitch nobody else in the film attempts. Scott Glenn, Kevin Kline and Danny Glover play the other three protagonists.

Kasdan assembles four protagonists and gives each of them a separate grievance, then spends two hours bringing the grievances together. The structure is sound and the individual objectives are thin enough that the convergence never carries much weight. Brian Dennehy plays the sheriff and Jeff Goldblum a gambler.

Bruce Broughton’s score was nominated for an Academy Award and is doing an enormous amount of the work. The film looks superb, moves well and has almost nothing underneath it, the difference between craft and a subject. John Bailey shot it in New Mexico and the exteriors are genuine.

For WritersEvery element of the film is well made and none of it is about anything. The photography, the score, the cast and the staging are all first rate, and the picture has no argument and no question underneath it. When your book is competent everywhere and inert overall, the missing piece is usually a subject instead of a technique. Craft is what lets you deliver a position. It is not a substitute for having one. Ask what the book is arguing before you polish anything, since technique applied to nothing produces something readers admire and forget. Theme in fiction covers finding the subject.

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4. Cobra (1986) [full review]

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1986
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.7/10

"Stallone’s answer to losing Beverly Hills Cop, and it runs eighty-seven minutes."

Stallone rewrote Paula Gosling’s novel into an eighty-seven minute film after leaving Beverly Hills Cop over creative differences, and the picture is what happens when a star has complete control and no editor willing to argue with him. Gosling’s novel was published as Fair Game and filmed again under that title in 1995.

The opening supermarket siege is legitimately good filmmaking. Cobretti arrives, talks to a hostage taker, and the sequence has more tension in it than anything across the remaining eighty minutes of the film. George P. Cosmatos directed, a year after Rambo: First Blood Part II.

The antagonists are a cult with axes who meet in a warehouse and clash blades overhead in unison, and the film never explains their beliefs, their numbers or their objective. They are an aesthetic and the picture is content with that. Brigitte Nielsen was married to Stallone during the production.

It was cut from a reported two hours to eighty-seven minutes for a rating and the damage is visible everywhere. Characters disappear, motivations are missing, and the last act becomes a chase through a foundry with almost no setup at all. It took around one hundred and sixty million dollars despite the reviews.

For WritersThe film gives its antagonists an appearance, a ritual and no stated beliefs, and the absence is why nobody remembers what the threat actually was. Style without content evaporates on contact. When you design a menacing group, decide what they want before you decide how they look. A reader will forgive a plain-looking villain with a clear objective and will never quite engage with a well-designed one who wants nothing in particular. Decide the objective first and let appearance follow, because a design chosen before the motive will keep contradicting will keep contradicting it. Why characters feel flat covers design without motive.

Nighthawks gives its terrorist no politics at all and Land of the Dead gives its villain a property portfolio. Two ways to remove the argument, in the Antagonist Handbook.

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5. The Punisher (1989, 2004, 2008) [full review]

► Read the full review of The Punisher (1989, 2004, 2008)

1989
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.5/10

"Three attempts across two decades, and none of them solves the same problem."

Three attempts across nineteen years and none of them entirely works, unusual for a character this simple. Frank Castle is a man whose family was killed and who kills criminals, and every version struggles with the same problem. Gerry Conway and Ross Andru created the character for Marvel in 1974.

Mark Goldblatt’s 1989 film with Dolph Lundgren removes the skull entirely, sets it in Australia standing in for an American city, and gives Castle a sewer to live in. Lundgren is better than the film and the yakuza material is genuinely well staged. Louis Gossett Jr. plays the detective in the 1989 version.

Jonathan Hensleigh’s 2004 version with Thomas Jane is the most coherent of the three. The Tampa setting works, John Travolta is enjoying himself as the antagonist, and the apartment block community around Castle gives the film something to protect. Rebecca Romijn and Will Patton appear in the 2004 film.

Lexi Alexander’s Punisher: War Zone in 2008 is the most faithful and the most divisive. It is violent to the point of absurdity, Ray Stevenson plays it entirely without humour, and Dominic West’s Jigsaw is the only screen antagonist the character has had who matches him.

For WritersThe character has a complete motivation and no arc available. Three films have circled that same problem. Castle wants one thing, achieves it repeatedly, and nothing about him can change without ending the premise. When you build a protagonist on a single fixed drive, the story has to come from what they encounter. A character who cannot develop needs a situation that complicates, and without one you are writing the same chapter at different addresses. Give the situation the capacity to complicate, since a fixed drive meeting a fixed obstacle produces the same chapter at different addresses.

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6. Road House (1989) [full review]

► Read the full review of Road House (1989)

1989
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.6/10

"Commits absolutely to a preposterous idea and never once acknowledges it."

Rowdy Herrington made a film in which a philosophy graduate is the most famous bouncer in America, performs tai chi shirtless beside a lake, and eventually tears a man’s throat out. It is completely sincere and that is why it survives. Joel Silver produced it and Sam Elliott plays Dalton’s mentor Wade Garrett.

Patrick Swayze plays Dalton entirely straight. He is soft-spoken, he stitches his own wounds without anesthetic, he has a philosophy degree from New York University, and Swayze never once signals to the audience that any of this is ridiculous. Jeff Healey appears as the bar’s blues guitarist and performs throughout.

Ben Gazzara’s Brad Wesley is a small-town extortionist who owns everything and drives a monster truck through a car dealership out of spite. The performance is enormous and entirely committed, with no wink anywhere in it. Swayze made it immediately after Dirty Dancing and before Ghost.

The fights are shot clearly and the stunt work is real. Swayze did most of his own, including the throat sequence, and the film’s reputation as camp obscures how competently the action is actually staged throughout. Kelly Lynch plays the doctor and Kevin Tighe the bar owner.

The world-building is the joke nobody set up as a joke. Cooler is treated as a profession with a circuit, a reputation economy and famous practitioners, and the film establishes all of it without a single character finding it unusual. A remake with Jake Gyllenhaal arrived in 2024.

For WritersHerrington directs an absurd premise with total sincerity and never winks. The film endures because it refuses to be in on the joke, and a knowing version would have been unwatchable and forgotten inside a year. When your material is ridiculous, commit to it completely. An author signalling awareness gives the reader permission to disengage at exactly the moment you need them committed, and full commitment makes them decide for themselves. Commitment has to survive the supporting cast, because one character treating the premise as absurd does the same damage the narrator would. Commitment to a register covers the discipline.

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7. Out for Justice (1991) [full review]

► Read the full review of Out for Justice (1991)

1991
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.2/10

"The best Seagal film, and the Brooklyn material is why."

John Flynn made the most interesting Seagal film and the one with an actual setting. Gino Felino is a Brooklyn detective in a specific Italian-American neighborhood, and the picture spends real time on streets, social clubs and butcher shops. David Lee Henry wrote it and had written 8 Million Ways to Die.

The pool hall sequence is the best thing Seagal filmed. He walks in asking a question, nobody answers, and the fight that follows is close-quarters aikido shot in a confined space with real furniture breaking around it. Jerry Orbach plays Gino’s captain and Jo Champa his estranged wife.

William Forsythe’s Richie Madano is the reason the film has any weight. He is a drug user having a complete breakdown across a single day, killing people for reasons he cannot articulate, and Forsythe plays him as pitiable instead of frightening. Flynn had made The Outfit and Rolling Thunder in the seventies.

The neighborhood material does more characterization than the plot does. Everybody knows everybody, the code about not involving families is stated and then broken, and the film understands that this is a community with rules instead of a backdrop. It was shot largely in Brooklyn and Queens.

For WritersFlynn gives the film a neighborhood with its own rules and lets the plot violate them. The code about families is never explained to the audience directly, it is simply obeyed by everybody until somebody stops. When you build a community, establish its rules through compliance instead of statement. Readers learn a norm by watching people follow it, and the violation lands far harder than any character explaining what should not be done. Establish the norm through compliance and let the violation land on its own, since a rule explained in advance is a rule the reader was warned about. What show do not tell actually means is exactly this.

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8. Bad Boys (1995, 2003, 2020, 2024) [full review]

► Read the full review of Bad Boys (1995, 2003, 2020, 2024)

1995
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.9/10

"Four films across twenty-nine years, and the first is Michael Bay’s debut."

Four films across twenty-nine years and the first one is a Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer production that Michael Bay directed as his debut. It was written for Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz, rewritten for Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, and made for around nineteen million dollars.

The 1995 film works on chemistry and almost nothing else. The identity swap premise is thin, the plot is a standard stolen heroin investigation, and the two leads improvised enough that the picture has a looseness Bay never achieved again. George Gallo wrote the original story, having written Midnight Run.

Bad Boys II in 2003 is the most excessive American action film of its decade. It runs two hours and twenty-seven minutes, the highway chase drops cars from a transporter at speed, and the Cuba sequence destroys a hillside of houses with a Humvee. Tea Leoni plays the witness in the first film and Gabrielle Union joins in the second.

Bad Boys for Life in 2020 is the surprise. Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah took over, the film is about aging, consequence and a son, and it treats twenty-five years of accumulated violence as something that produced a result. Mark Mancina scored the first two and the theme was borrowed from a television series.

Ride or Die in 2024 is competent and unnecessary. The directors returned, the action is well staged, and the film has no argument the previous entry had not already made more effectively. The four films have taken well over a billion dollars combined. Joe Pantoliano plays the captain across the sequence.

For WritersThe fourth decade of the series finally treats the first three as having happened. Twenty-five years of violence produced a son, a health problem and a reckoning, and the film is better for the accounting. When you write a long series, the accumulated past is an asset most writers refuse to spend. A character who arrives in book six carrying everything from books one to five is more interesting than one who has been reset, and the reader has already paid for the history. Let the history accumulate and then spend it, because a series that resets between books has thrown away the only advantage the format offers.

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9. Mortal Kombat (1995) [full review]

► Read the full review of Mortal Kombat (1995)

1995
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.9/10

"The rare video game adaptation that understood what it was."

Paul W. S. Anderson made the first video game adaptation that anybody considers successful, on a budget around eighteen million dollars, and it took over one hundred and twenty. The reason is that he understood the game was a tournament and structured the film as one.

The tournament structure solves every problem the genre normally has. There is a bracket, the fights happen in order, each opponent is established before their match, and the audience always knows what is at stake in any given sequence. Kevin Droney wrote the screenplay from the Midway arcade game.

Robin Shou and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa are doing genuine work. Shou was a Hong Kong performer who choreographed much of his own material, and Tagawa plays Shang Tsung as somebody enjoying his position enormously and entirely without theatrics. Christopher Lambert plays Rayden and Bridgette Wilson plays Sonya Blade.

The techno score and the production design have both outlasted the film. The main theme is more famous than anything in the picture, and the Outworld sets are practical, oversized and lit in a way that has aged better than the effects work has. Anderson went on to direct the Resident Evil films for the same producers.

For WritersAnderson keeps the tournament structure from the source instead of inventing a plot around it. There is a bracket, the order is known, and every sequence has stated stakes before it begins. When you adapt something with a built-in structure, use it. Most failed adaptations discard the organizing principle as too simple and replace it with a conspiracy, and the replacement is invariably harder to follow and less satisfying to resolve. Keep the organizing principle even when it looks too simple, because the conspiracy that replaces it is always harder to follow. The structure also solves pacing, since a bracket tells the reader exactly how much book remains.

Dante’s Peak builds an hour on a disagreement where nobody is wrong, and Twister converts weather into placing one barrel. Find the shape in the Conflict and Tension Handbook.

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10. Star Trek: First Contact (1996) [full review]

► Read the full review of Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

1996
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.6/10

"The best Star Trek film after Wrath of Khan, and Picard is the problem in it."

Jonathan Frakes directed the best of the Next Generation films while also playing Riker, and the picture solves the problem every Star Trek film has by giving Picard a personal grievance the series had already established. Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore wrote it and had written Generations.

The Borg are the correct antagonist and the film uses them properly. They do not negotiate, they do not boast, and assimilation is presented as a procedure instead of a threat. The corridor sequences are closer to horror than to science fiction. Alice Krige plays the Borg Queen and Alfre Woodard plays Lily Sloane.

Patrick Stewart’s Ahab material is the film’s spine and it works because the audience watched him be assimilated six years earlier on television. Lily’s confrontation with him in the observation lounge is the best-written scene in any Star Trek film. Jerry Goldsmith scored it with his son Joel and reused his own 1979 theme.

The Zefram Cochrane half is deliberately comic and the contrast is the film’s structural idea. James Cromwell plays the man who invents faster-than-light travel as a drunk who wanted money, and the deflation is the point instead of a joke. It cost around forty-five million dollars and took over one hundred and forty-six.

The Enterprise-E hull sequence is the best action in the sequence. Magnetic boots, an open deflector dish, and a rotating starfield, and Frakes shoots it with enough patience that the geography stays legible throughout. Frakes directed two further Star Trek features afterward. Matthew Leonetti shot it.

For WritersFrakes can give Picard an obsession in the first act because the television series spent six years earning it. No scene has to establish what the Borg did to him. When you write inside an established continuity, the accumulated history is the one advantage the format gives you. Spend the accumulated history instead of re-establishing it, because a sixth volume that explains everything has wasted the reason anybody came back. Continuity is an asset the format hands you and most writers refuse to spend it. Backstory is a lie covers what to re-establish. Assume the reader remembers and let the ones who do not catch up from context, because the alternative punishes everybody who did.

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11. Twister (1996) [full review]

► Read the full review of Twister (1996)

1996
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.5/10

"Crichton wrote it, and the tornadoes were a genuine effects problem."

Jan de Bont followed Speed with a film about storm chasers and Industrial Light and Magic built the first convincing digital tornadoes, a job that took about a year and involved simulating particle behaviour nobody had attempted at that scale. Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin wrote the screenplay.

The premise is a working procedural about atmospheric science and the film is genuinely interested in the instrumentation. Dorothy is a barrel of sensors that has to be placed in the path of a funnel, and every sequence is built around getting it there. Cary Elwes plays the rival chaser and Philip Seymour Hoffman is in the crew.

The human material is the weakest element and the film knows it. A divorce that resolves through shared enthusiasm, a rival chaser with corporate funding, and a fiancée the screenplay abandons in the second act without much ceremony. Mark Mancina scored it and the film took over four hundred and ninety million dollars.

Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt are doing a lot of work with very little. The chemistry is real, the technical dialogue is delivered as though both of them understand it, and the film moves fast enough that the thinness never quite registers. It was the first film released on DVD in the United States.

For WritersDe Bont builds every sequence around placing one specific object in one specific position. The barrel has to go in the path of the funnel, and the single objective converts weather into a problem the audience can track. A barrel can be placed, and the reader can measure progress toward it. Conflict that drives story covers impersonal antagonists. Give the protagonist a physical task with a visible success condition, because a force cannot be defeated and an object can be placed. Pick a task the reader can see failing, since a goal with no visible failure state generates no tension while it is being attempted.

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12. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) [full review]

► Read the full review of From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

1996
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.2/10

"Two completely different films stapled together, and the staple holds."

Robert Rodriguez directed a Quentin Tarantino screenplay that had been written years earlier for a special effects company, and the film is famous for changing genre completely at the halfway point with no warning of any kind. Robert Kurtzman commissioned the script and his company built the creature effects.

The first hour is a hostage crime picture. Two brothers take a family across the Mexican border, the tension is entirely about whether Richie will do something unforgivable, and nothing in it suggests what the second hour contains. Harvey Keitel plays the former minister and Juliette Lewis his daughter.

The turn happens in a bar and the film commits instantly. The Titty Twister becomes a vampire nest, the crime plot is abandoned, and the picture spends its second half on practical creature effects and improvised weapons. Salma Hayek performs the table dance and had a snake she was afraid of.

George Clooney was making his first film lead and the casting works because Seth Gecko is competent, practical and the only person in the picture behaving sensibly. Tarantino plays his brother as genuinely disturbing and does not soften it. Two direct-to-video sequels followed and a television series in 2014.

The structural trick only works once and Rodriguez knows it. The sequels attempt the same reveal with the audience already informed, removing the entire effect and leaves a plain vampire film behind. Tom Savini and Fred Williamson appear in the bar. Rodriguez has said he prefers the first hour himself.

For WritersThe film spends an hour establishing one genre so completely that the audience has no expectation of another, and then changes without transition. The effect depends entirely on the first half being played straight. When you plan a hard turn, the setup has to be genuinely committed instead of a holding pattern. Commit to the first half completely, because readers can tell when an opening act is waiting for something and the surprise stops being available. The turn also has to be irreversible, because a book that could return to the first genre has made the change a detour instead of a decision.

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13. Dante’s Peak (1997) [full review]

► Read the full review of Dante’s Peak (1997)

1997
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.9/10

"The more accurate of 1997’s two volcano films and the less entertaining."

Roger Donaldson made the better of the two 1997 volcano films and the difference is research. The United States Geological Survey consulted on it, the monitoring equipment is accurate, and the film is specific about what volcanologists actually watch for. Leslie Bohem wrote it and Universal released it two months before Volcano.

The first hour is a bureaucratic procedural and it is the best part. A scientist sees indicators, the town has an economic reason not to act, and the argument about whether to issue a warning is conducted between people who are all being reasonable. Linda Hamilton plays the mayor and Charles Hallahan the survey supervisor.

Pierce Brosnan plays Harry Dalton as somebody carrying a specific previous failure. That supplies the caution with a source. He was wrong once in a way that killed somebody, and the film does not have him explain this more than once. It cost around one hundred and sixteen million dollars and took over one hundred and seventy-eight.

The acid lake sequence is the one everybody argues about. A metal boat crossing water that has become acidic, a grandmother getting out to pull it, and the physics are wrong enough that the film’s own consultants objected. John Frizzell and James Newton Howard both worked on the score.

For WritersDonaldson builds the first hour on an argument where everybody is right. The scientist is correct about the risk, the mayor is correct that an evacuation destroys the town, and neither position is presented as foolish. Disagreement between reasonable people is harder to write and considerably more tense, because the reader cannot resolve it by deciding who to dislike. Give each side a legitimate cost, because disagreement between reasonable people is harder to write and considerably more tense to read. Write both positions as though you held them, because the moment one side is obviously wrong the scene becomes a delay before the correct answer.

From Dusk Till Dawn changes genre at the midpoint and Resident Evil escalates until nothing is at stake. Two structural decisions examined in the Plot Handbook.

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14. Vampires (1998) [full review]

► Read the full review of Vampires (1998)

1998
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.1/10

"Treats vampire hunting as a job nobody enjoys."

Carpenter made a vampire western and shot it in New Mexico with dust, wide lenses and a score he wrote himself using slide guitar. The whole picture is constructed as a frontier film that happens to contain the undead. Don Jakoby adapted John Steakley’s novel Vampire$.

James Woods plays Jack Crow as a contractor who finds the work tedious. He is profane, exhausted, entirely unromantic about the subject, and the film treats vampire hunting as a trade with equipment, procedures and an employer who does not pay promptly. Daniel Baldwin plays Montoya and Sheryl Lee the woman bitten early.

The extraction method is the best practical idea in it. A harpoon, a winch and a truck, used to drag a vampire into daylight, and the film establishes the technique in the first ten minutes and then works variations on it. Maximilian Schell plays the cardinal financing the operation.

Thomas Ian Griffith’s Valek is barely characterized and the film does not need him to be. He is the oldest one, he wants a specific object, and Carpenter is far more interested in the working men than in the thing they are working against. Carpenter shot it in New Mexico and wrote the score himself.

For WritersCarpenter treats vampire hunting as a job with equipment, procedures and an employer who is late with payment. The supernatural becomes ordinary because the people handling it find it ordinary. When you want a reader to accept something impossible, show them professionals who are bored by it. Awe is contagious and so is tedium, and a character who treats the extraordinary as Tuesday does more for credibility than any explanation. Science Fiction Handbook works the same ground. Show professionals who are bored by it, because awe is contagious and so is tedium, and a character treating the extraordinary as Tuesday sells it entirely.

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15. Romeo Must Die (2000) [full review]

► Read the full review of Romeo Must Die (2000)

2000
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.1/10

"Jet Li’s first American lead, and the wirework is fighting the editing."

Andrzej Bartkowiak was a cinematographer before this and shot a Shakespeare adaptation as a hip hop action picture, with Jet Li in his first American lead and Aaliyah in her first film role. The chemistry is why it holds together. Joel Silver produced it and the soundtrack went platinum twice over.

The fight choreography is by Corey Yuen and the film is the first to use the x-ray impact effect, showing bones breaking from inside the body. It was novel in 2000 and was copied constantly for the following decade. Delroy Lindo and Isaiah Washington play the two crime family leaders.

The plot is a waterfront property dispute between two crime families with a stadium deal underneath it, more coherent than most films in this register manage. The Shakespeare parallel is loose enough not to constrain anything. Jet Li had made Lethal Weapon 4 in 1998 as his American debut.

Aaliyah died in a plane crash the following year at twenty-two and the film is one of three she completed. Her performance is unforced in a way that makes the romance work without the script doing much to support it. Bartkowiak went on to direct Exit Wounds and Cradle 2 the Grave.

For WritersThe film borrows a structure everybody already knows and then ignores most of it. Two families, a forbidden pairing, and after that the plot goes wherever it wants. The recognizable skeleton buys orientation for free. Readers who know the source get a layer of anticipation, and readers who do not lose nothing at all. Take the shape and abandon the specifics, since a reader who knows the source will forgive almost anything except being quizzed on it. Borrowed structure is also free orientation, and orientation is the single most expensive thing a first act has to buy.

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16. The Resident Evil Series (2002-2016) [full review]

► Read the full review of The Resident Evil Series (2002-2016)

2002
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.6/10

"Six films across fifteen years, more coherent as a body than as entries."

Six films across fourteen years, all written by Paul W. S. Anderson and all starring Milla Jovovich, an unusual degree of continuity for a series this large. Together they took over one and a half billion dollars. Capcom published the original game in 1996 and the series has sold enormously.

The first film in 2002 is the best and the most restrained. An underground facility, a sealed environment, a hostile building intelligence and a laser corridor sequence that is the single most remembered thing in the entire series. Michelle Rodriguez appears in the first film and returns in Retribution.

The escalation across the sequence is the problem. Alice acquires telekinesis, then loses it, then acquires clones of herself, and by Retribution the films are operating at a power level where nothing can threaten her without an equally arbitrary countermeasure. Anderson and Jovovich married in 2009 and worked together across the sequence.

The games are about resource scarcity and the films are about abundance, the adaptation failure underneath everything else. Survival horror works on limited ammunition and the series gives its protagonist unlimited everything. Marilyn Manson contributed to the first film’s score. Anderson has been open about the divergence.

Anderson shoots action clearly, worth saying because almost nobody working at this budget level in the period did. The geography is legible, the cuts are slower than the era’s fashion, and the practical stunt work is genuine. A separate reboot arrived in 2021 with no connection to these films.

For WritersThe source material is built on scarcity and the adaptation is built on abundance. Survival horror works because ammunition runs out, and a protagonist with unlimited resources has no scenes of genuine jeopardy available. When you escalate a character’s capability, you are spending tension you cannot buy back. Each upgrade requires a larger threat, the threats stop being credible, and the series ends up with nothing at stake in any direction. Decide the ceiling before book two and hold it, since the alternative is a protagonist nothing can threaten by book five. Pacing problems nobody talks about covers escalation.

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17. Four Brothers (2005) [full review]

► Read the full review of Four Brothers (2005)

2005
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.9/10

"The Sons of Katie Elder relocated to Detroit."

John Singleton made a loose remake of The Sons of Katie Elder and moved it to Detroit, with four adopted brothers returning for their mother’s funeral. The film is considerably better than its marketing suggested. David Elliot and Paul Lovett wrote the screenplay. Wahlberg had made I Heart Huckabees the year before.

The ensemble is the achievement. Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin and Garrett Hedlund establish a genuine family history in about twenty minutes, mostly through argument and shared shorthand instead of exposition. Terrence Howard and Josh Charles play the detectives on the case. Singleton had made Boyz n the Hood in 1991.

The Detroit setting is used properly. Snow, abandoned housing stock, a city where the police response is slow for structural reasons, and Singleton shoots the neighborhood as somewhere people actually live. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the antagonist and is the best thing in the last act.

The ice chase is the best sequence in the picture. Two vehicles on a snow-covered street with no traction, shot at genuine speed, and the physics of the sliding are the whole reason it is tense instead of routine. It was shot in Hamilton, Ontario standing in for Detroit.

For WritersSingleton establishes twenty years of family history through argument. The brothers interrupt each other, reference incidents nobody explains and fall into roles they clearly occupied as children. Write the argument only people with that history could have, because readers assemble a relationship from the shape of a disagreement without noticing. No scene then has to exist purely to deliver background information. Reference incidents you never explain, because the unexplained ones do more work than the ones you describe in full. Let them interrupt each other, because people with shared history never finish sentences and readers recognize the rhythm immediately.

Four Brothers delivers twenty years of family through one argument and Out for Justice states its code by having everybody obey it. Learn the method in the Showing and Telling Handbook.

↑ All Entries

18. Land of the Dead (2005) [full review]

► Read the full review of Land of the Dead (2005)

2005
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.2/10

"The most explicit argument in the series and the least interesting characters."

Romero returned to the sequence after twenty years with an actual budget and made the most explicitly political entry. A fortified city with a luxury tower, a surrounding slum, and a wealthy class that has arranged the apocalypse to their own satisfaction. Simon Baker and Asia Argento lead the crew alongside John Leguizamo.

The zombies developing tool use is the film’s real subject. Big Daddy learns, teaches, and organizes, and Romero’s position is that the dead are becoming a society while the living are running a protection racket. Romero had made Day of the Dead in 1985 and waited twenty years for this.

Dennis Hopper plays Kaufman as a property developer who has simply carried on and the performance is flat, bored and correct. He is not a tyrant, he is a landlord, and the film understands that this is worse. Universal released it and it cost around fifteen million dollars.

The action is better than the series had managed before. Dead Reckoning is an armoured vehicle with a legible layout, the fireworks distraction is a good practical idea, and the raids have a procedure the audience can follow. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright appear briefly as zombies.

For WritersRomero gives his antagonist no cruelty and no speeches. Kaufman is a property developer running a business in an apocalypse, and the horror comes from how ordinary his reasoning is. When you write institutional evil, resist making the person at the top monstrous. A villain who enjoys it can be dismissed as an aberration, and one who is simply managing an asset implicates the whole structure around him. Ordinary reasoning at the top of a structure is the most frightening thing in it. Give him a reasonable objective and let the horror come from the reasoning, since the frightening thing is that it would hold up in a meeting.

↑ All Entries

19. 28 Weeks Later (2007) [full review]

► Read the full review of 28 Weeks Later (2007)

2007
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.9/10

"The best four minutes in the franchise, followed by a film that abandons them."

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo made the sequel to Danny Boyle’s film and the opening fifteen minutes are better than anything in the original. A farmhouse, a survivor group, and a man abandoning his wife to save himself, filmed as one sustained panic. Boyle directed second unit on the opening sequence himself.

Robert Carlyle carries that sequence and the guilt underneath the rest of the film. Don lies about what happened, his children arrive from abroad, and the picture is about a man whose cowardice turns out to be the infection vector. Jeremy Renner and Rose Byrne play the American military personnel.

The reconstruction premise is smart. A NATO-administered green zone in the Isle of Dogs, repopulation in phases, snipers on rooftops with orders that change mid-scene, and the film is specific about how an orderly plan fails in about eleven minutes. Fresnadillo had made Intacto in Spain before this.

The second half loses discipline. Characters make choices the script requires instead of choices the situation suggests, the helicopter rotor sequence is staged for effect, and the ending exports the problem to Paris for a sequel that took eighteen years to arrive. 28 Years Later finally arrived in 2025 with Boyle returning to direct.

For WritersFresnadillo opens with the protagonist’s worst act and spends the film on the consequences instead of building toward it. The audience knows what Don did before they know anything else about him. Suspense about whether somebody will break is thinner than the discomfort of watching a man who already has, and readers watch him differently from page one. Putting the failure first also costs you nothing, since the reader still has to learn who the character was before it happened. The reader also stops wondering whether the character is good, freeing every later scene to be about something else entirely.

↑ All Entries

20. Speed Racer (2008) [full review]

► Read the full review of Speed Racer (2008)

2008
RLR: 7 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.2/10

"Total formal commitment to an aesthetic nobody has attempted before or since."

The Wachowskis spent around one hundred and twenty million dollars building an aesthetic nobody had attempted, with layered compositing that keeps every plane of the image in focus at once and color saturated past anything in live action. Tatsuo Yoshida created the original anime and it first ran in 1967.

It failed commercially and completely, taking around ninety-three million dollars worldwide, and has been substantially reassessed since. The technique that looked incoherent in 2008 reads now as a deliberate translation of animation grammar. Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci and Matthew Fox lead the cast. Warner Bros. wrote off a substantial loss on it.

The racing sequences are the argument. Cars behave like cars in a cartoon, the track loops and inverts, and the editing uses wipes and split screens that no live action film had used seriously for forty years. Michael Giacchino scored it and reworked the original series theme.

The family material is played completely straight and that is the risk the film takes. John Goodman and Susan Sarandon deliver sincere speeches about integrity inside a hyper-saturated cartoon, and the film never suggests the two registers are in conflict. It was shot almost entirely on green screen at Babelsberg in Germany.

The corporate corruption plot is more substantial than the surface suggests. Racing is fixed, the sport exists to move share prices, and the film’s position is that a family workshop cannot survive contact with that without refusing to participate. Roger Allam plays Royalton and gets the film’s central speech about the sport.

For WritersThe Wachowskis build a visual language nobody had attempted and then refuse to modulate it for a single scene. The family drama is delivered in the same saturated register as the racing, and the consistency is what makes the film cohere instead of fracture. When you commit to a stylistic choice, apply it to the quiet material too. Apply the style to the quiet material too, because a register used only for the exciting parts is decoration and one that governs everything is a world. Imagery that builds a usable space covers consistency. Consistency is the whole cost, since a style applied unevenly reads as a director losing their nerve halfway through.

Honorable Mentions: Action Films Without a Review Here Yet

No review on the site for any of these so far. Each belongs in this tier or close to it and each is on the list.

Knockabout (1979)

⭐ 7.2/10

Sammo Hung directed and Yuen Biao leads, and the training sequences involve a skipping rope used as a weapon in ways nobody has attempted since. The last twenty minutes are almost continuous.

Magnificent Butcher (1979)

⭐ 7.2/10

Sammo Hung as a Wing Chun butcher who is genuinely bad at restraint, with a calligraphy duel that turns a brush fight into a comedy set piece. Lau Kar-leung choreographed much of it.

Warriors Two (1978)

⭐ 7.1/10

Hung again, in the film that introduced Wing Chun to the screen properly. The chain punching is taught to the audience alongside the protagonist and then used in the last act with the reader knowing exactly what they are watching.

Legend of a Fighter (1982)

⭐ 7.1/10

Yuen Woo-ping built a film around a Chinese fighter trained by a Japanese master during an occupation, a considerably harder subject than the genre usually attempts. The final duel is about restraint.

Ashes of Time (1994)

⭐ 7.0/10

Wong Kar-wai made a wuxia film with almost no coherent plot and some of the most beautiful images in the genre. Christopher Doyle shot it and the 2008 redux is the version most people have seen.

Swordsman II (1992)

⭐ 7.2/10

Ching Siu-tung and Tsui Hark gave Brigitte Lin a character who castrates himself to master a manual and becomes something the film never names. Jet Li spends the picture trying to leave and nobody lets him.

Green Snake (1993)

⭐ 7.1/10

Tsui Hark adapted a folk legend into a film about two serpent spirits learning to be human and finding the humans worse. Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong carry it and the tone is closer to opera than to action.

Shadow (2018)

⭐ 6.9/10

Zhang Yimou shot a wuxia film almost entirely in greyscale with ink-painting composition, and built the final assault around bladed umbrellas used as sledges down a wet street. The design is the argument.

Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)

⭐ 7.0/10

Zhang again, with the most expensive Chinese production of its year and a palace coup told as a family poisoning. The chrysanthemum courtyard assault is the largest practical crowd sequence he ever staged.

Lady Snowblood (1973)

⭐ 7.4/10

Toshiya Fujita built a revenge film around a woman raised for one purpose, with blood that sprays like ink against snow. Tarantino lifted its structure and its imagery wholesale for Kill Bill.

Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973)

⭐ 7.9/10

Kinji Fukasaku opened the yakuza film up with handheld cameras, freeze frames and onscreen captions naming men about to die. Five films followed in two years and the whole sequence is built on betrayal instead of loyalty.

Duel to the Death (1983)

⭐ 7.2/10

Ching Siu-tung’s directing debut, with ninjas who combine into a giant, a beach duel and a decapitation that ends the film mid-sentence. It is the most unhinged wuxia picture of its decade.

Dishonorable Mentions: Action Films That Failed

Also unreviewed here. Each had the budget, the cast or the premise and lost it somewhere between the pitch and the edit.

Pixels (2015)

⭐ 5.6/10

A premise about arcade characters attacking earth, attached to a protagonist who is rewarded with a love interest assigned by the plot. The effects work is good and everything around it is inert.

The Last Stand (2013)

⭐ 6.3/10

Kim Jee-woon’s American debut, with Schwarzenegger returning after a decade and a Corvette chase through a cornfield. The direction is better than the screenplay deserves and the film found no audience at all.

Bullet to the Head (2012)

⭐ 5.7/10

Walter Hill directing Stallone should have worked, and the film is undone by a partner dynamic nobody developed and an antagonist introduced too late to register. The axe fight is the one memorable thing.

Escape Plan (2013)

⭐ 6.7/10

Stallone and Schwarzenegger in a prison built to be inescapable, a good premise weakened by a facility whose rules change whenever the plot requires an obstacle or an opportunity.

Hitman (2007)

⭐ 6.2/10

A game about patient planning and disguise adapted into a film about shootouts, discarding the only distinctive mechanic in the source. The sword fight in a train carriage is unrelated to anything.

I, Frankenstein (2014)

⭐ 5.1/10

Gargoyles and demons conducting a centuries-old war that the film introduces in narration and never dramatizes. Aaron Eckhart is committed and the picture has no idea what it wants from the premise.

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What Do You Think?

This tier divides on commitment. Road House, Vampires and Speed Racer all refuse to apologize for what they are, and Silverado is better made than any of them and about nothing. Tell me which way you would rate that.

Continue the Series

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Road House meant to be taken seriously?

The film plays it entirely straight. Cooler is established as a profession with a circuit and famous practitioners, nobody on screen finds any of it unusual, and Swayze never signals to the audience that the premise is ridiculous.

What is the best Chuck Norris film?

Code of Silence, directed by Andrew Davis in 1985. Davis shot Chicago as a real city, cast strong character actors around a limited lead, and built an actual police film about an officer who refuses to testify falsely.

Why does From Dusk Till Dawn change genre?

Tarantino wrote it that way and Rodriguez commits to the turn without any transition. The first hour is a hostage crime picture played completely straight, the only reason the second half lands.

Which Punisher film is the most faithful?

Punisher: War Zone from 2008, directed by Lexi Alexander. It is violent to the point of absurdity, Ray Stevenson plays it entirely without humour, and Dominic West’s Jigsaw is the only screen antagonist who matches the character.

How accurate is Dante’s Peak?

The United States Geological Survey consulted on it and the monitoring equipment and warning indicators are accurate. The acid lake sequence is the exception and the film’s own consultants objected to the physics in it.

Why did Speed Racer fail?

It took around ninety-three million dollars against a budget near one hundred and twenty, and the layered visual style was read as incoherent in 2008. It has been substantially reassessed since as a deliberate translation of animation grammar.

What is wrong with the Resident Evil adaptations?

The games are built on resource scarcity and the films are built on abundance. Survival horror works because ammunition runs out, and a protagonist with unlimited capability has no scenes of genuine jeopardy available.

Was Mortal Kombat a successful game adaptation?

It is generally held to be the first one that worked. Paul W. S. Anderson kept the tournament structure from the source instead of inventing a conspiracy, so every fight has stated stakes and a known position in the bracket.

GenresAction Adventure

Action Films Part 6 – The Dependable

1. Nighthawks (1981) [full review]

2. Code of Silence (1985) [full review]

3. Silverado (1985) [full review]

4. Cobra (1986) [full review]

5. The Punisher (1989, 2004, 2008) [full review]

6. Road House (1989) [full review]

7. Out for Justice (1991) [full review]

8. Bad Boys (1995, 2003, 2020, 2024) [full review]

9. Mortal Kombat (1995) [full review]

10. Star Trek: First Contact (1996) [full review]

11. Twister (1996) [full review]

12. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) [full review]

13. Dante’s Peak (1997) [full review]

14. Vampires (1998) [full review]

15. Romeo Must Die (2000) [full review]

16. The Resident Evil Series (2002-2016) [full review]

17. Four Brothers (2005) [full review]

18. Land of the Dead (2005) [full review]

19. 28 Weeks Later (2007) [full review]

20. Speed Racer (2008) [full review]

Honorable Mentions: Action Films Without a Review Here Yet

Knockabout (1979)

Magnificent Butcher (1979)

Warriors Two (1978)

Legend of a Fighter (1982)

Ashes of Time (1994)

Swordsman II (1992)

Green Snake (1993)

Shadow (2018)

Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)

Lady Snowblood (1973)

Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973)

Duel to the Death (1983)

Dishonorable Mentions: Action Films That Failed

Pixels (2015)

The Last Stand (2013)

Bullet to the Head (2012)

Escape Plan (2013)

Hitman (2007)

I, Frankenstein (2014)

What Do You Think?

Frequently Asked Questions

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