Top 25 Action Movies Ever Made

Whenever you make a list like that, you're going to get into trouble. I would have though Entertainment Weekly would have learned its lesson after it printed the Top 25 Sci-Fi movies ever and then had to print a subsequent article about the ones that necessarily got left out a week later. Maybe it's a slow news month and they're looking to do a follow-up article. Anyway, here's the list: ( A reputable magazine says these are the greatest action movies ever, so who are we to judge? )

The preponderance of sci-fi in that list is pretty interesting. I won't argue with the #1 choice--it's a fair call, you ask me, that Die Hard is the best action movie of all time. I do take offense at Predator lurking so close to the bottom (behind Spider-Man 2!?!? The fuck?), though, upon further recollection, Predator isn't even that much of an action movie. It's more a thriller-horror movie--bunch of bad-asses being stalked through South American jungles by an alien hunting them for sport. There's suprisingly little action in that movie, save for the end. I think there's exactly one punch thrown. Still doesn't seem right some how.

Mostly, I take greater offense at the characterization of Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 as mannish (this was brough up to show how the buff and beautiful Ellen Ripley needed not to be bikini-clad heroine nor "mannish" in Aliens to be tough and awesome). Sarah is "mannish" in what sense, exactly? Because she has muscles? Because she acts to destroy evil instead of moralizing about it? I'm pissed that her ability to be a soldier is somehow determined to be her aping "manly" attributes. Would that John Connor (by T3) had half of her chutzpah.

I also don't recognize Saving Private Ryan as an action film. And, as an action film, it is NOT better than Speed. So, nyah!