The 50 most memorable action movie moments

You’d think that compiling a list of memorable action movie moments would be quite simple, since there are so many violent, exciting, funny and downright bizarre nuggets to choose from. As we quickly discovered, the sheer number of classic moments in the genre’s history makes whittling them down to 50 extremely tricky.

To this end, we’ve established a few arbitrary rules: one, that the movies in question have to be live-action – so the wonderful downhill chase sequence from last year’s Tintin, for example, is out of the running.

Second, only movies that are in the action genre first and foremost actually qualify. Action movies with sci-fi, fantasy or comedy elements are fine, but space operas with action elements (sorry, Star Wars franchise) and dramas with glimmers of pulse-racing violence (The Godfather, Michael Mann’s Heat) are out of the running, too. Third, no comic book movies – the quantity and quality of such films has been so exceptional in recent years, they’re probably better off with a list of their own.

So with those silly rules established, what on earth does that leave? The kind of movies whose fight scenes, explosions, car chases and amusing one-liners had audiences queuing around the block to see – or more often, paying to watch on video, or tuning in to see on late-night television.

We’ve tried to come up with a decent mix of the startling and the absurd, the eastern as well as the western, and the sublime and the ridiculous. There are appearances from famous names we’ve all heard of, but there are a few less familiar faces thrown in there, too.

We can’t please everyone, of course, and there are more than likely a few omissions in the list below that you’d have preferred to see. If so,you know the drill: add them in the comments. With all that out of the way, let’s unleash a rousing Schwarzenegger battle cry, and move onto the first entry…

Out on the beat
RoboCop (1987)

There are so many classic moments of satire, outrageous violence and quotable dialogue in Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop that it’s almost impossible to know which to choose. Here’s a less obvious selection, though: the first sequence after cop Alex Murphy is brutally killed and resurrected as RoboCop, where he’s shown stomping back into his precinct, shocking everyone with his extraordinary shooting skills down on the practice range, before driving triumphantly off on his first patrol – all cut to Basil Poledouris’ rousing march. Wonderful.

Seagal’s soup
Under Siege (1992)

It’s the post-Die Hard action movie that saw Steven Seagal at the height of his glowering potency, and Under Siege also treats us to some sublime, chortling, villainous performances from Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones. And if Under Siege teaches us absolutely nothing else, it’s that you should never, ever spit in Steven Seagal’s soup.

Fighting by the book
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

Matt Damon’s odyssey into improvised weapons concluded with a spectacular sequence in his final Bourne movie to date, the superb Ultimatum. After a startling free-run chase, Bourne engages in a desperate close-quarters punch-up where a book is applied forcefully and repeatedly to his opponent’s face and throat. We could make wry comments about actions speaking louder than words, ‘he really threw the book at him’ and things of that nature, but we won’t.

Get to the chopper
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

For sheer audacity, in terms of both stunts and what was possible with CGI at the time, the sequence in Terminator 2 where the T-1000 commandeers a helicopter takes some beating. Having already stolen a highway patrol officer’s bike, the relentless shape-shifting assassin smashes through the window of a multi-storey building, clings onto the front of a police helicopter, head butts the windscreen, and oozes into the passenger seat like a dribble of metallic toothpaste. Okay, so the CG side of the whole thing doesn’t look quite as seamless as it did 20 years ago, but it’s still an extremely cool idea. “Get out” indeed.

Umbrella bus ride
Police Story (1985)

Few action sequences showcased Jackie Chan’s extraordinary athletic prowess and apparent love of danger than the show-stopping opener in Police Story. In it, Chan’s fearless supercop engages in a highspeed chase through a hillside shanty town after a group of criminals.

When said criminals make their escape in a bus, Chan continues the chase on foot, first hanging off the side of it using an umbrella as a hook. When that doesn’t work, Chan takes a shortcut down another steep hill, and forces the bus to stop by standing in front of it with a gun pointed at the driver. The bus screeches to a halt, throwing two criminals standing on the top deck straight through both windows and crashing to the road below with bone-crunching force.

Hollywood later paid Chan the ultimate compliment by ripping this classic scene off in two movies – Bad Boys II, which borrowed the downhill car chase section, and Tango & Cash, which recreated the same technique of stopping a bus almost frame-for-frame. Neither, it has to be said, are as thrilling as Chan’s original.

You have ten seconds to comply
RoboCop (1987)

Yes, it’s probably cheating to stick two entries from one movie in the same list, but we don’t care – RoboCop more than deserves such special treatment. The second classic moment, then, has to be the spectacular introduction of ED-209, a new-fangled law enforcement droid that somehow manages to be both menacing and absurd – much like the film itself, in fact.

In this classic scene, executives at Omni Consumer Products are demonstrating the prowess of its newest invention, only for the hulking menace to malfunction and shoot a young executive for what feels like several minutes. Having reduced the poor chap to the consistency of a milkshake, someone shouts out the priceless, “Someone call a goddamn paramedic!” It’s a moment that perfectly summarises the film’s violent, pitch-black sense of humour.

Get away from her you bitch
Aliens (1986)

Having already given us a film packed full of quotable lines, James Cameron tagged on a somewhat expected coda, and one final zinger for the audience to leave the theatre with. Just when Ripley, Newt and Bishop think they’ve escaped from the spindly-fingered inhabitants of LV-426, a decidedly angry alien queen emerges from the landing gear of their drop ship, and tears poor Bishop in half.

Shaken but with plenty of fight left in her, Ripley scuttles away and then re-emerges clad in a yellow power loader outfit. Her resulting “Get away from her you bitch” is the opening cry for a great one-on-one joust. More than a quarter of a century later, it remains a classic line, and an unforgettable final fight.

Add your own suggestions in the comments.

See also:

• The top 50 post end credits sequences
• The greatest homoerotic action movie moments
• The 10 best late night, post-pub movies
• The 10 greatest Nicolas Cage moments

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