Oh, man, what’s good, folks? I’ve been hibernating for a few months, so I’m a little out of the loop. Anything happen while I was gone? Any noteworthy events occur in my absence? Probably not, yeah? Cool, cool, cool. Cool.
JK.
Covid, am I right? Trump? Jee-zus. Walter the puppet running for president, got ya down? I feel ya. It’s been a whole damn thing.
But you know what makes everything better? Lists! In fact, this will be a series of lists spread out over a few weeks. I got to thinking about action movies and their lack of representation during awards season. When a movie like Mission: Impossible Fallout can’t get a sniff of anything approaching prestige, it’s kind of criminal. But stuffy awards organizations, and the equally stuffy people who arbitrate them, have always turned their noses up at action movies. With the rare exception of a Mad Max: Fury Road, or the pat-on-the-head technical awards, action flicks are always left to be successes at the box office while their trophy cases remain empty.
I say, no more! In honor of one of Action Friday’s favorite heroes, I present the First Annual Action Friday Harbor Seal Awards! The Sealies for short. Now, currently the organizing body for the Sealies (me) only have two awards lined-up: Best Action Film and Best Hero. That doesn’t make for a very long broadcast, and I think Bad Boys For Life is the only film in 2020 that would qualify, so we’re going to give some retroactive awards first. I waffled on how far back to go, and after some internal whining and tantrum throwing, settled on starting in 1980. Why 1980? Partly because 1980 was kind of the unofficial start of the modern action film era, and partly (mostly) because I’m lazy. We’ll hand out trophies for the 80’s this week, then each subsequent decade will follow until we arrive in 2020. So without further ado, let’s hand out some hardware!
(Side Note: We have no “hardware” per se. Instead I have mailed a live harbor seal to all of the winners. This should be fine, right?)
1980
Best Action Film: The Empire Strikes Back
1980 was a barren year for action films. I’m not kidding, it really sucked. This was the year of Chuck Norris and his weird whispering inner monologue in The Octagon, Jackie Chan’s The Big Brawl, and Steve McQueen’s laboring effort in The Hunter before he passed away. Even conceding that Superman II is a fun flick, and probably the best of the Christopher Reeve entries, it’s not exactly murderer’s row.
This might sound like it weakens the case for Empire, but what it really does is highlight what an achievement this film is, and how its influence still resonates. There’s a reason this film is considered the best in the franchise’s long, storied history (J.J. Abrams sycophants can go whine on Reddit, you have no power in this place).
The light saber duel between Vader and Luke is obviously God Tier, but the entire opening sequence on Hoth, the AT-AT attack, and Han Solo’s asteroid field gambit make this a complete action experience. We also get one of the most my-god-do-heros-die? moments of my childhood as Han is frozen in carbonite after giving the best “Later, Beb” in movie history. Annnndddd! We get the famous, “Luke, I’m ya daddy.”
Best Action Hero: Superman (Christopher Reeve/Superman II)
For people of a certain age, this will always be the one and only Man of Steel. And for the sake of full disclosure, I hated Superman comics. His perfection doesn’t appeal to me. The late Christopher Reeve’s portrayal of Kal-El has nuance the comic could never provide. As Clark Kent he’s goofy, bumbling, earnest, and hopeful. In the red and blue PJs he’s powerful, determined, earnest, and hopeful. He shows weakness in Superman II that feels in keeping with his vision of the character, and not some Zack Snyder, surface-level bullshit designed to feign actual emotion. Even when he’s getting his ass kicked, he’s trying his best. That’s a hero to me.
1981
Best Action Film: The Road Warrior
What a year! Where 1980 was slim pickin’s, 1981 is fat with juicy candidates! We’ve got Stallone in Nighthawks (underrated), Burt Reynolds in Sharky’s Machine, Michael Mann’s Thief, For Your Eyes Only (a better than average Roger Moore-era Bond film), and another cinema game-changer by Steven Spielberg with the great Raiders of the Lost Ark.
But those are pleb choices. The real hotness, the legit pick here, is George Miller’s Mad Max 2, aka The Road Warrior. It’s a gnarly, filthy, edgy, homemade, quality bit of madness served with a heavy dollop of invention. Pre-anti-semite Mel Gibson is a dirty doll baby who acts his ass off by barely saying a word. And the Car v. Car duels? *Chef’s Kiss* Magnifique!
All of which is dandy. Except action films need antagonists to drive said action. And Road Warrior has a doozy that puts it over the competition. I give you LORD HUMUNGUS!
Best Action Hero: Snake Pliskin (Kurt Russell/Escape From New York)
I know, tough beat for the Indiana Jones stans out there, but listen, this ain’t a charity. Does Indy wear an eyepatch? No. Is he a disillusioned former soldier with a penchant for robbing banks? No. Does he have explosive charges planted in his neck that will explode if he doesn’t save A-numba-one!, er, I mean, the President? No! So maybe you should just shush and let the Snake work.
Besides, Kurt Russell is just too damn cool.
1982
Best Action Film: Conan the Barbarian
Another great year for guts and guns. First Blood. 48 Hours. Tron. One Down Two to Go. It’s a good list with only one winner. Everything I have to say about this muscle-bound masterpiece can be found here.
Best Action Hero: John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone/First Blood)
Once upon a time, Sly was considered the next wunderkind in Hollywood. He wrote and starred in the first Rocky, starred alongside Rutger Hauer in the aforementioned Nighthawks, and gave this layered, painful, rugged performance in First Blood. Then he turned Rocky and Rambo into cartoons and most of that early promise was cashed-in for commercial success via sequels. It’s fair to say that Sly never got better than this role, at this moment in time, when the nation was still trying to sort out complicated feelings about our involvement in Vietnam. In 1982 he was the perfect anti-hero for a new age of action.
1983
Best Action Film: Project A
Jackie Chan, baby! Also, Sammo Hung! This is when Jackie really struck gold with his style of action humor. There is a loving (and of course, one-upped) homage to Harold Lloyd’s clock-tower stunt from Safety Last! And the comedic and martial chemistry between Sammo and Jackie is one of a kind.
The big draw, obviously, is Chan doing his own stunts, and there are some doozies here. Along with the clock-tower bit, there’s an absurd bicycle chase scene, and Jackie using a flagpole as a method of escape. It’s just great stuff.
Project A also wins by default, if I’m being fair, as this was a bit of a lackluster year for action. This was the year of Return of the Jedi, which is great, but it is really just a glossy re-playing of the hits from the first two films in the franchise. Gotta save Luke/Han/Leia, gotta blow-up the Deathstar, lightsaber fights, and we get an award for bravery or some shit. Cool. There were two (?) Bond films this year – the dreadful Octopussy, and the return of Sean Connery (!) in Never Say Never Again – but neither pushes Project A off the podium.
Best Action Hero: “Dirty” Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood/Sudden Impact)
Oof. This is a pick I come to with great trepidation. In today’s heightened awareness surrounding police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement, and a general fear surrounding the militarization of the police, calling a cop who is suspicious of Miranda Rights a “hero” doesn’t exactly cover me in glory.
But fuck it, I stand by it. Sudden Impact finds Callahan actually reaping what his cowboy-style of justice sows. His violence and cavalier policing methods have forced his superiors to send him….on a vacation? Jesus, I’m in deep on this one. Look, there’s a softer side to Harry here as he’s forced to face a female vigilante/serial murderer who he also happens to be romantically involved with…on his police brutality vacation. Look, just fuck off, okay! Dirty Harry rules! Where’s 1984??
1984
Best Action Film: The Terminator
James Cameron’s time traveling action thriller turned 36 this year and I feel hella old. In a lot of ways The Terminator is timeless – strong female lead, dope practical SFX, and an antagonist for the ages. In other ways, it’s a badly aged and dated movie – stop-motion animation (yikes), Cameron’s weird preoccupation with ruthlessly massacring soldiers and cops for no particular reason other than malice, and a visual feel to the cinematography that doesn’t really hold-up.
But warts and all, this is such a good movie. Aside from butchering soldiers and cops, Cameron has a knack for championing female protagonists and allowing them to thrive in roles predominated by men. Sarah Connor is his prototype. Linda Hamilton deserves a tremendous amount of credit, too. Sarah starts the film as a wide-eyed working girl just trying to finish her shift as a waitress, and ends the film as a barking-mad drill sergeant bent on killing the time traveling robot assassin that’s bent on killing her.
And Schwarzenegger is great – duh – as the emotionless titular killing machine. He’s got deadpan one liners, tremendous screen presence, and is truly believable as an unstoppable death dealer…I mean, right up until the moment where he becomes a Ray Harryhausen reject.
Special shout to my boy Michael Biehn! An 80’s and 90’s “that guy” who was actually better than “that guy” to me. I’ll never figure out how you knocked Sarah Connor up so that you could then have her son – your boss – decide to send you back in time to save her, thus him, and then start the cycle over again, because, you know, you would have had to have knocked her up first, so that he could be born, you see, and you weren’t even born yet, so, it’s, look, if you say “Paradox” I’m going to punch your fucking face.
Best Action Hero: Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller/The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension)
Ahhh, cocaine, our old friend. Don’t believe cocaine was involved in the making of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension? Read the title of the movie again. See? Cocaine.
I’m gonna be straight with you: this pick is just a flex. I don’t owe you any explanations. Just remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
1985
Best Action Film: Police Story
Probably Jackie Chan’s best film, and easily some of his most dangerous stunts. He also wrote, directed, and choreographed, so, you know, no big deal.
I saw this movie when I was a kid on a Saturday afternoon when the local television station would either play a creature feature like Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, or a kung fu flick like The Mystery of Chess Boxing (cool!). I remember being thrilled by Chan’s stunts, his expressive acting, and also being a little scared. This dude was doing shit that wasn’t safe! Where was his mom to tell him to look both ways before crossing the street? Didn’t his dad ever tell him to dress his “witnesses” in more than lingerie and his jacket when his actual girlfriend was going to be around? The point is, you can’t fake real, and when I saw Jackie Chan doing his own stunts, and not some stuntman with a wig that almost made him look like Chuck Norris, a legend was born in my mind.
Best Action Hero: Oscar “Manny” Manheim (Jon Voight/Runaway Train)
This is another eyebrow raiser, I’m sure, but you have to believe me when I say, Manny is legit. He’s more of an anti-hero in Runaway Train than straight-up hero, being as he’s an escaped prisoner, but he bears the qualities (determination, relentlessness, and bravery of a sort) we identify with our standard hero.
Voight was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance – obviously the second most prestigious bit of hardware he earned for the role – and it should be mentioned that the film was written by Akira Kurosawa, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, if not THE greatest. And if you look up “Like a Boss” in the Urban Dictionary, I think Manny’s exit from the film is listed as a prime example.
And yeah, I get it, Voight is cancelled or some shit. I can’t keep up with whose “problematic” now and who isn’t, and at the pace of play, cancel culture will eventually get everyone. Just be an adult and separate the art from the artist and I promise you that you’ll enjoy this.
1986
Best Action Film: A Better Tomorrow
This was tough, but not really that tough. Aliens would have been a fine choice here, and it is for sure a better overall movie than A Better Tomorrow, but come on, this shit is so dope. The director, John Woo, had one foot out the door of the Hong Kong movie scene. His previous films had all disappointed at the box office and his experiences making them had wrung him out. He went for broke with A Better Tomorrow and made a film that would be oft imitated, even by Woo himself. This film is often cited as one of, if not the, launching points of the “heroic bloodshed” action film.
The film was also the breakout role for Chow Yun-fat, who would go on to become Hong Kong cinema’s king of duel-wielding gun-fu.
It looks and feels dated, and yet you can still see how action movies were influenced by the stylized violence on the screen. It forever changed Asian cinema, and would eventually make its way west to change Hollywood, too.
Best Action Hero: Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver/Aliens)
Easy choice. Ripley is the greatest female action hero of all time, and in the conversation for Top 10 or 20 action heroes ever, full stop. James Cameron at it again. Weaver plays Ripley as a person with multitudes: frightened, but brave; hard-assed, but soft-hearted; intelligent, but tough. And “Get away from her, you bitch!” is an all-timer.
1987
Best Action Film: Predator
1987 kind of low-key sucked for action films. Lots of sequels, lots of dreck. The only three real candidates were Predator, Robocop, and Lethal Weapon. I wrote all the reasons I love Predator here, and it’s still my second or third favorite movie of any genre, of all time.
Best Action Hero: Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson/Lethal Weapon)
You’re going to have to believe me here when I say, Once Upon a Time…Mel Gibson wasn’t the worst. I look at his career today with a great deal of sadness. How could somebody so lively, so charismatic, so talented, ruin a career that seemed like it was indestructible? Rage and bigotry, that’s how.
Lethal Weapon and the even better Lethal Weapon 2 are two of the best action movies ever committed to film. Much of their greatness is owed to Gibson’s portrayal of shattered, broken police detective Martin Riggs. His character’s fictional turmoil turned-out to be not too far from the truth, and now these amazing movies and this excellent character have been consigned to the garbage heap of cinematic history.
1988
Best Action Film: Die Hard
This was a no-brainer, and not because 1988 was a fallow year for action. ’88 was the year of They Live, Police Story 2, Rambo 3, the very underrated Midnight Run, Bloodsport, and Above the Law. A really good year, but none of them are John McTiernan’s masterpiece.
Die Hard would change action movies for good and for the better. Before Die Hard, action needed to be dumb and loud. After Die Hard it could be smart, well-constructed, and bombastic without being overly silly. It’s essentially the one-man army story that Sly and Arnold were repping the entirety of the ’80’s, but this was being done on a level that felt far less cartoon-ish.
From the moment Bruce Willis is sitting by himself, shoes off, making “fists with his toes” to fight the effects of jet lag, to his bloody, bedraggled last stand against Hans Gruber (the gold standard of movie villains) and his Euro-goons, no second of film is wasted, not a single plot point is left untied, and the action is relentless. I’m willing to go as far as calling Die Hard the greatest action film of the decade, and maybe of all time.
It helps when your action hero is unlike any that came before him. Speaking of which…
Best Action Hero: John McClane (Bruce Willis)
The term “everyman” gets thrown around a lot when people talk about John McClane, but honestly he’s unlike any man. About twenty minutes into Die Hard McClane begins to take a tremendous, sustained beating. He gets in a shootout, he fights a guy and falls down a flight of stairs, he gets blown-up, he gets his feet stuffed with broken glass (“Shoot the glass.”), he gets shot, he gets in another knock-down-drag-out fight with a guy whom he threatens to cook and eat, and he jumps off a building with a fire hose tied around his waist. It’s a drubbing McClane takes and Keeps. Coming. Forward. Every “everyman” I know woulda quit after the glass in the feet.
And I’m not going out on a very thin limb by saying Willis is perfect. The number of actors who were at one point or another tied to the role of John McClane is legendary. Seriously, check out the Wiki. It’s hysterical who was considered for the role. Willis was the absolute bottom of the barrel choice, and he changed both his career and the future of action cinema. Not bad for an “everyman.”
1989
Best Action Film: Road House
I know I just said, like, just a minute ago, that Lethal Weapon 2 was one of the greatest action films ever. I know this. But this is another flex, and it’s my damn list, so live with it.
Road House is probably the dumbest movie ever made. Patrick Swayze stars as James Dalton, a traveling bouncer – er, I’m sorry, cooler – who is hired to take over at a bar called the Double Deuce. The Deuce is the kind of establishment that has sawdust on the floor to sop-up the blood and chewing tobacco spit, and the level of violence in the place is nuts. The Deuce is located in a tiny town in Missouri that is run by a corrupt, apparently mega-wealthy, super-villain type who, I don’t know, hunts bears for a living or some shit like that? It’s totally absurd. And I love it.
For the sake of full disclosure, I worked as a bouncer for a spell during the Great Recession. The bar I worked at was remarkably similar to the Double Deuce in both the quality of clientele and geographic isolation from civilized society. I never once ripped a guys throat out as Dalton is forced to do in Road House. Not once. But I did have to pick up some of my fellow bouncers for their shift – bouncers not being the most reliable types – and they would watch Road House before their shift every time. Every time. So they were ready to throw down at the drop of a hat, which wasn’t ideal, but it was funny.
Is Road House a good film? God no. It’s kind of terrible, really. But is it a great action movie? Hell yeah. Swayze’s lithe, ferocious martial arts is worth the price of admission. If I’m being honest, though, I keep coming back for Sam Elliott’s southern drawl and 1800’s pugilist fighting style. That dude is so cool.
Best Action Hero: Batman (Michael Keaton/Batman)
Do you know what Christian Bale, Val Kilmer, George Clooney (ugh), and Ben Affleck have in common? They’re pretenders to the throne. Michael Keaton was, and always will be, my Dark Knight. (You’ll notice I left Robert Pattinson off the list of pretenders…if The Batman teaser trailer is any kind of indication, we may have a contender to Keaton’s title in 2021).
Director Tim Burton got the one thing about the Batman right, that nobody, even Christopher Nolan’s much lauded version, ever got right. They understood that at the most basic level, at his core, Bruce Wayne is fucking crazy. He’s rich, and he’s a cool vigilante, but he is without a doubt, 100% bug-fuck nuts. He dresses like a bat and fights criminals! He’s one of the richest people on planet earth, could have any woman he wants, never has to work a day in his life, and yet, he spends his nights punching people in the face and maiming them for snatching purses.
He’s not perfect as an avatar of the comic hero. Comic book Bats was retconned to have never killed anyone and to hate guns. Michael Keaton’s Batman has more guns than the NRA and kills the shit outta people with pleasure. He’s soooo fucking crazy.
And still I stand by him as my Batman. His lunacy feels realistic (for a comic book movie) and obvious. Would a man, so scarred by the trauma of his parent’s murder that he spent his entire life training to be a violent, masked vigilante, have enough control that he never killed anyone? Really? No, he’s more likely to be a madman, killing whenever it pleased him.
Michael Keaton understood this about Batman. He knew that Bruce Wayne was the mask Batman wore to hide his howling, insane, true self.
And that’s the 1980’s. Next up, the 1990’s, when action movies get wild.
Talk at ya later.
Averil Dickerson 