Coincidentally timed to align with today’s premiere of Live Free or Die Hard, the magazine Entertainment Weekly released its list of the greatest action movies of all time. Number one in the genre was Die Hard.
It’s a fairly good and reasonable list, albeit tilted toward more recent films as these things usually are. I doubt, for example, that Spider-Man 2 and Kill Bill—Vol. 1 will make the list in future decades, even though they may be justified in making this one.
Some titles I’m glad to see included are Drunken Master II: Legend of Drunken Master (feat. Jackie Chan; I think Drunken Master is better, however), The Adventures of Robin Hood (though it’s absolutely ridiculous that it’s not number 1 or 2), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hard-Boiled (John Woo’s highly influential film starring Chow Yun-Fat is an action film with heart and mind as well as the necessary amount of muscle) and Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (although I like his Hidden Fortress a good deal more).
There are a few films on the list that I wouldn’t care to include, especially those that are not action films or not very good.
Highly conspicuous in absence are The Dirty Dozen, Rio Bravo, and The Great Escape, Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, Scaramouche, White Heat, Dirty Harry, The Big Heat, and several others of like quality.
In addition, I think it’s thoroughly absurd that not a single silent film is included. Lists such as these should educate their audiences, and this one largely fails to do so. Overall, however, it’s about as decent a list as we could hope for from an entertainment magazine.
Fair enough, “John,” but you misinterpret a good deal of this article and attribute thoughts that I did not express or even remotely imply.
I said it was “a fair and reasonable list” and explicitly praised several of the inclusions. And of course regardless of whom the magazine is targeted toward (and I am in fact its target audience and a subscriber), its list has to stand or fall on its own merits.
Regarding the specific films you mention as not deserving dismissal, I never even remotely suggested that either Dirty Harry or Spider-Man is “trash”. I certainly would never do so, as I think they’re both excellent films.
In fact, I was the first national film critic to make a comprehensive case for the vigilante film as a form of movie that can be of high quality and has a long history, in an essay written a full 23 years ago. Clearly I was far ahead of the curve on that. And in that article I included a strong defense of Dirty Harry against the great majority of U.S. film critics, elitist leftists who hated it.
And how did you happen not to notice that Dirty Harry was not on the EW list and I said it should have been on it?
Similarly, I didn’t suggest Die Hard was not a good film. As it happens, it’s a personal favorite of mine, and I’ve written positively about the series on this site (see articles here and here).
So, in penance for your careless reading, I assign you the task of watching the films I recommended for inclusion on the list–The Dirty Dozen, Rio Bravo, and The Great Escape, Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, Scaramouche, White Heat, Dirty Harry, and The Big Heat–and enjoying the heck out of them.
Maybe it’s cuz the magazine isn’t targeted towards YOU in particular. Maybe you might think Dirty Harry or Spider-Man are trash, but the fact that they are two of the most memorable characters on the face of the earth adds them to the list. True, a few are generally unremarkable (ex: Kill Bill is no classic, but then again generally no action film is).
What they should have done is taken a list of well-remembered action movies (Die Hard, The Terminator, Indiana Jones, Rambo, for example, are all synynomous with the word “action” because they are so popular) and sorted them out from best to least best.
P.S.- If you’re so unhappy with the public’s view of what action movies are great, why didn’t you just post your own list of great action movies?