Unstoppable (2010)
Tony Scott’s final action thriller, Unstoppable, isn’t about fighter pilots or time-traveling FBI agents; it’s about a couple of blue-collar working-class joes. Frequent Scott collaborator Denzel Washington stars as Frank Barnes, a veteran railroad engineer, opposite Chris Pine as Will Colson, a hotshot young train conductor. Frank is from an older generation getting pushed out of their careers and Will is from the younger generation getting brought in to replace them. When a runaway freight train with a mind of its own starts tearing through the town, Frank and Will reluctantly team up to stop it.
RELATED: 5 Tearjerking Moments In Action Movies
As its title would suggest, Unstoppable is a non-stop thrill-ride. The runaway train not only gives these two average-joe protagonists a race against time; it also gives them a reason to put their differences aside and embrace each other’s friendship. The movie is as much about brotherhood as it is about a speeding train.
Falling Down (1993)
Joel Schumacher’s incisive satirical thriller Falling Down stars Michael Douglas as divorced, unemployed defense engineer Bill Foster, who reaches his breaking point while sitting in rush-hour traffic. He gets out of his car, abandons it in the middle of the road, and goes on a crime spree across Los Angeles. Over the course of his wild, unpredictable day, Foster tangles with gangsters, white supremacists, local merchants protecting their bottom line, and, inevitably, the cops. This movie realizes every dark fantasy concocted by bored commuters – and also explores the consequences they would face for enacting those dark fantasies.
Whether he’s fighting back against gang members trying to rob him or forcing a fast-food employee to serve him breakfast a couple of minutes after switching to the lunch menu, Foster is an identifiable cinematic stand-in for the frustrated everyman – until the final twist reveals his horrifying secrets.
Kick-Ass (2010)
Adapted from the Mark Millar comic of the same name, Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass is a wonderfully satirical subversion of the time-tested superhero myth of the masked vigilante. Its title character isn’t an omnipotent superhuman like Clark Kent or an untouchable billionaire like Bruce Wayne; he’s just an average kid who was brought up on a steady diet of comic book storylines starring Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne and believes he can make a difference by following suit. Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as Dave Lizewski, a regular teenager obsessed with superhero comics about fearless crimefighters, who decides to put on a mask of his own and fight crime under the name “Kick-Ass.”
Dave is nowhere near as competent as Spider-Man or the Flash when it comes to fighting crime, and he faces real consequences like getting stabbed and watching a close ally get burned alive right next to him. This is not an average superhero movie.
Big Trouble In Little China (1986)
With the role of eyepatch-wearing futuristic convict Snake Plissken in Escape from New York, John Carpenter turned former Disney star Kurt Russell into one of action cinema’s most beloved badasses. Carpenter then promptly subverted Russell’s fancy new badass on-screen persona in Big Trouble in Little China. Jack Burton is just a trucker who gets unwittingly swept up in an underground martial arts adventure when his friend Wang Chi’s fiancée is kidnapped by an ancient sorcerer lurking beneath San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Wang is the real hero; Jack just goes along for the ride. Russell had a ton of fun with all the goofy one-liners and wacky slapstick gags that came along with this self-parodying role. Big Trouble in Little China is a hilarious spoof of kung fu B-movies, but it also has plenty of affection for its satirical targets.
Dirty Harry (1971)
The gritty 1970s thrillers of the New Hollywood movement generated all kinds of controversy for their dark deconstructions of established action movie tropes – and, more broadly, for blurring the line between heroes and villains. Death Wish was controversial for advocating vigilantism. The Warriors was controversial for glamorizing gang violence. One of the defining works of this movement was Don Siegel’s morally gray police thriller Dirty Harry, about a cop who will happily bend the law in order to enforce it.
Arguably the most memorable role of Clint Eastwood’s storied career (with stiff competition from William Munny and the Man with No Name), Inspector Harry Callahan is a vigilante cop who won’t let anyone’s orders – even the mayor of the city – stop him from pursuing his own brutal brand of justice. This particular unconventional action hero has inspired his own subgenre. Cobra, RoboCop, and To Live and Die in L.A. all owe a debt to Dirty Harry.
MORE: Before Lethal Weapon, There Was 48 Hrs.
