The Action Movie Bracket

You know what the internet needs? More bad faith bullshit movie discourse. And not just the usual toxic Reddit stuff either. I’m talking the really obnoxious stuff. The most unhelpful and uninsightful dork crap.

A few months ago, I had my roommate fill out this action movie bracket. I think it’s a pretty interesting one, but action is my roommate’s favorite genre, and she took issue with a lot of the bracket’s selections. I found her another one, but she didn’t like that either, and after a few futile attempts to find one that lived up to her standards, we eventually decided to make her a custom one.

Then I saw it. My chance to fix the Things That Make Movie Nerds Mad shortage. I’ll just take what my roommate was doing and turn it into content for my barely read blog, of course! So many hours of dumb internal debates and one purchased bracket asset hastily turned white via a free Photoshop clone later, here we are!

Rules/Guiding Philosophy Behind the Bracket

A good stupid internet debate is only as good as the needless restrictions, gatekeeping, and obstruction surrounding it. As such, I made a bunch of arbitrary rules for myself and tried to follow some equally arbitrary guiding principles.

1. One movie per franchise.

2. The films in the first round are not paired by seed, but by a connection they have with one another.

Sometimes it’s a filmmaker. Sometimes it’s more of a thematic connection. Sometimes it’s an aesthetic similarity or a filmmaking technique or even the means by which you may have watched them in the first place.

This was my way of not leaving everything up to randomness. Though there is wisdom to drawing all the names out of a digital hat, so to speak, I felt that this way gives everything at least somewhat of a shot to move forward. Goldeneye vs. Mad Max: Fury Road is a fun debate, but it’s also one that’s easy to predict for most people.

3. Though the movies are paired by a connection, go for which one you think is the better movie, not which one fits the theme better.

The connections are an organizational tool for myself, not a framing device for your own debates. When it comes to the pairings, go with your heart and ignore my existence.

4. The bracket is intentionally designed to call into question what does and does not qualify as an “action movie.”

Part of the benefit of doing this is to encourage debate about what is or is not an action movie, or what is or is not a sub-genre of action, and how do we define any of these terms in the first place.

However, to be honest, the primary reason I did this is because I don’t see the point of needlessly narrowing what an action movie can be. Plus there’s the benefit of having a larger variety of movies to work with, thus giving myself the chance to make (what I think, at least) is a more interesting bracket. We could just talk about the usual machismo bullshit, but is that fun?

5. This is not a bracket to determine the greatest action movie of all time. It is a bracket about picking your favorite movie in the bracket.

In other words, the omission of your personal favorite action movie should not be seen as a slight on its potential quality. I’m just trying to make an interesting bracket with interesting movies. I’m not pretending I have any insight to give beyond that.

Also, there’s a section towards the end of this article about why you’re favorite movie might not be on here.

6. I am intentionally not setting the parameters of what you’re debating.

I’m not telling you if you’re debating the best executed action or the best overall movie or anything in between.

Personally, I’d go best overall movie, as I think the action should ultimately serve the narrative and the aesthetic of the movie as a whole. Or frankly, if a movie has expertly crafted action, but it’s other elements are non-existent or poorly executed, I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable calling it “good.” 

But that’s just me! Some people are wired to have a stronger emotional reaction to the craft of an action scene than how a movie uses action to tell a story, and that’s fantastic! Subjectivity and all that good shit!

The value of brackets and lists and all the gimmicky ways we quantify films is to find out what we truly believe. Why do we love the movies we love? Why do we hate the movies we hate? What are the flaws in our favorite films? What does a terrible movie do well? These are all worthwhile questions because they ask us, in a roundabout way, to interrogate ourselves and figure out what we value. So use whatever metric you want. Just make sure you mean it.

The Pairings

Below are the pairings and an explanation of the connection the pairings share, as well as some rambling. (If any of this post counts as an “article,” here it is.) They’re in alphabetical order because the arrangement of the bracket has changed several thousand times before these words were written, and it’ll probably change a thousand more times after I’m done.

(Note: I’ll present some opinions every now and then. But take them with several handfuls of salt. Again, when you fill out the bracket, follow your heart.)

Also, in case you need it, SPOILERS!

Attack the Block vs. Dredd: Battle of the Apartment Complex

When it comes to genres that rely on violence and death, I feel like horror gets all the credit when it comes to film’s transformative ability on locations and settings. Specifically, the way the genre creeps into spaces we encounter in our everyday lives. A mall was just a mall until you saw Dawn of the Dead (hopefully the original), and then you saw its benefit as a hideout during an apocalypse. That hotel you stayed at in Colorado with all the appropriated Native American iconography on the wall was just that until the day you saw The Shining. That long set of stairs you drove by every day when you crossed the Key Bridge were just stairs until you saw The Exorcist. (I went to high school in DC.) 

Rarely do you watch a car chase on a homogenized American highway in an action movie then drive to work the next day feeling like that space has been transformed. Either that or you and I have very different brains. Then again, in the above scenario, the highway is just a means to get from point A to point B. It doesn’t have any transformative power because it isn’t supposed to. Horror would look at that stretch of road and see a way of critiquing infrastructure.

Enter Attack the Block and Dredd, two movies, both underappreciated on release, neither The Raid, that look at apartment complexes and see spaces for intense and inventive sci-fi action. Both understand the confining nature, both literally and metaphorically, of the industrialist hellscape of contemporary apartment living. Both understand the microcosm at play, and both feature characters put through its ringer.

Truth be told, I haven’t seen Dredd in a long time. I’ve been meaning to go back to it for a while, but I haven’t out of sheer laziness. But Attack the Block is a movie I return every now and then, and I think it’s one of the most underappreciated movies in the bracket. When Star Wars: Force Awakens was coming, I wasn’t hyped for a new Star Wars. I was hyped for Boyega.

Bad Boys II vs. The Bourne Supremacy: Battle of The George W. Bush Administration

The Bourne Supremacy is a movie about a man whose brain was scrambled by the CIA discovering that the love of his life was killed due to the machinations of the old guard of the agency trying to cover up their illegal training program. Bad Boys II is a movie where two cops form an unofficial army of government agents, invade Cuba, and blow up the bad guy outside of Guantanamo Bay. Both use every microsecond of their runtime to remind us of the good ol’ days of the Bush administration.

This one puts me in a weird spot. On one hand, I personally find the Bourne franchise overwrought and dispassionate. But Bad Boys II, despite being peak entertaining trash, probably would’ve written in Cheney on its ballot if films could be sentient.

As of writing this, I haven’t actually filled out this bracket for myself yet. I still don’t know what I’m going to do here.

Black Panther vs. Hot Fuzz: Battle of the Insular Communities Being Forced to Reckon With The Consequences of Their Self-Imposed Isolation

I promise that the pairings aren’t all going to be this much of a stretch. I should also come clean that this is really the battle of the movies I didn’t want to cut from the initial list I made of what should be on this bracket.

The point is that there’s Sandford and Wakanda. Sandford is a town whose residents kill off anyone who doesn’t conform to their standard of living, and as a result, they’ll have to deal with a hotshot London cop straight out of an action movie. Wakanda is a hidden kingdom in Africa that has to face the man that grew up in systemic racism and colonial hell after being denied his legitimate claim to the throne.

Most people will probably go for Black Panther on this one, and admittedly, they’re probably right for doing so. It will probably be advancing in my own as well. The midnight screening of it at the Arclight (RIP) during the days of the Trump administration was one of the most memorable moviegoing experiences I’ll probably ever have. (On top of which, I got a picture with Common in the lobby!) And even if you didn’t see it in theaters, there’s a copaganda aspect to Hot Fuzz that’s admittedly a bit of a turn-off in 2021.

But in Hot Fuzz’s defense, I’d argue that the movie probably agrees with you. It's ultimately a film that finds the testosterone-pumped douchebaggery that assuredly drove many towards a career in law enforcement absurd. (Though, to be clear, I’m not exactly sure it’s that much of an ACAB movie either.) I would also argue that Hot Fuzz is probably the better made movie of the two and it probably has the more airtight script. (And if it matters to you, if you bought a ticket to Hot Fuzz, you weren’t forking your money over to Disney.)

Still, I got a pic with Common in the lobby of the Arclight.

City of God vs. Battle Royale: Battle of the Broken Political System Inflicting Itself Onto the Youth

I know I’m the one who made this bracket, but this one’s a real fucker for me. 

City of God, despite how alive a movie it can feel, is a story about how ineffective government, systematic abuse, and corruption (and don’t forget easy access to firearms) trickles down and creates a life of violence and death for those who live in what should be paradise. Particularly for the teenagers in the Cidade de Deus who have to dodge bullets, as well as shoot them, when they should be worried about teenager shit. Falling in love. Getting high. Following your passions.

Battle Royale, on the other hand, is a movie about teenagers on the cusp of graduation who are forced into a government mandated fight to the death. Some of them realize the unfair burden being placed on their shoulders. Some of them take it too well for their own good. Anyone who’s ever entered the job market can probably relate.

In a way, this one’s asking you how you like your social critique. Neither of these movies are subtle, but one of them is clearly going for a more grounded (if frenetic) approach, set in a real city facing real tangible systemic issues, while the other is going for the unreality of a sci-fi dystopia. Which approach works for you more? (“One that works.” Says detractors of either movie. Very funny.)

Collateral vs. Edge of Tomorrow: Battle of the Non-Franchise Tom Cruise Vehicle

Similar question being asked here, sans social critique. Although I’m sure there’s some to be found if you look a little closer. Perhaps something about a white guy intruding himself onto a black working class cab driver’s life and traumatizing him, or the disposability with which the armed forces sees its own soldiers.

Something like that.

Commando vs. Predator: Battle of Arnold

You don’t need me to explain this one.

Crank: High Voltage vs. Punisher: War Zone: Battle of the Self-Aware Action Movie with Poor Taste

Punisher: War Zone was one of the first movies I watched when I went home for the first time after a year and a half of isolated quarantine. I watched it at the behest of Walter Chaw, or specifically, his Twitter thread about the erasure of the film’s female director Lexi Alexander. It is, certainly, very stupid and over-the-top. I also sincerely loved every second of it and I thank Walter Chaw from the bottom of my heart.

Crank: High Voltage, on the other hand, is probably the closest art has ever come to truly capturing the spirit of white male id. It has the energy of what I imagine speed is like, and it feels like it was made by a giant walking erection. I also love every second of it.

So how do we judge this one? Hard to say. Both dip their toes into deeply troubling waters. I’d say Punisher: War Zone certainly has a rather vast aesthetic edge, but I’d also argue that Crank: High Voltage does a better job of defining the line between what we’re supposed to take seriously and what we aren’t. So how do we evaluate the ridiculous? Honestly, I’m not sure yet.

Die Hard vs. Enter the Dragon: Battle of the Star Maker Movies (With Guys Named Bruce)

Can I confess something to you all? Bruce Lee isn’t really my guy. Of course, as any rational human being should, I have nothing but unending respect for him as a person (in most regards), but I don’t really enjoy his movies that much. The bottom line is that I tend to not enjoy actors who take themselves too seriously, and that was almost the entire point of Bruce Lee’s work in Enter the Dragon. Many action stars were left off this list for similar reasons. (Steven Seagal, for example. Though to be fair, he’s also not in this bracket because his movies are garbage and he’s an abhorrent piece of shit.) 

Then again, I don’t know what Bruce Lee would be doing with his career if he were still alive. Maybe he’d be retired somewhere remote and peaceful after making several movies I loved. Maybe the eternal racism of Hollywood would’ve driven him off an emotional cliff. Whatever the case would’ve been, odds are that it would probably be more worthwhile than what Bruce Willis is up to these days. All of this is to say that I know some of you think the comparison between Lee and Willis is a little insulting to Lee, and you’re not entirely wrong. 

However, the link I see is that both of these movies launched these men into a different stratosphere. Bruce Willis can do all the VOD shit he wants, but at the end of the day, he still did Die Hard, and even though Bruce Lee’s career was cut tragically short, he’s still a god regardless of what I think.

Put it another way: Bruce Lee deserves a worthy opponent. I rest comfortably knowing I gave him a juggernaut to fight in the form of Die Hard.

Drive vs. The Driver: Battle of the Cool As Shit Car Action Movie With Minimal Dialogue

I first watched The Driver for this very bracket. I feel ashamed that it took me this long to see it. I first saw Drive, on the other hand, in my sophomore year dorm after buying it on iTunes. (I hooked my laptop up to the TV that I bought with a shit ton of Amazon gift card money.) I had the opportunity to see it in theaters, but my stupid friends wanted to see Contagion instead. Another source of shame. (I know there’s been a COVID related reevaluation of Contagion, but I will always resent it for this very dumb reason.)

The lineage between these two films is undeniable. It’s just a question of which one tickles your fancy. Do you like the ‘70s grit of The Driver or the throwback brutality of Drive? As far as I’m concerned, there are no wrong answers here.

Also, I’m fully aware of the fact that The Driver is probably the least-watched movie on this bracket. Do your part in fixing that problem.

Face/Off vs. Demolition Man: Battle of Basic Cable

The name of this one’s a little bit of a misnomer for me. I first saw Demolition Man at a very young age when my dad rented it from Blockbuster (and I became obsessed with it), and I didn’t see Face/Off until well after college. But cable, and premium channels, sure do love their ‘90s action, and I remember seeing both of these movies a lot on many a TNT schedule.

Sure, Face/Off’s got a little bloat and the politics of Demolition Man haven’t aged particularly gracefully. But in my core, I felt strongly that this tier of action deserves representation on the bracket. After all, there are only so many generations left that’ll experience a movie for the first time censored on a basic cable network.

This match-up also solves a few other problems, mainly a lack of Stallone and a lack of Cage. So there’s that too.

Fast Five vs. Mission: Impossible - Fallout: Battle of the Mega Blockbuster Franchise

About the copout I put at the bottom of the bracket.

The Fast & Furious movies and Mission: Impossible franchise had to be on this bracket somewhere. I chose the two I chose because I feel like they’re largely seen as the consensus favorites. (For the record, Fast Five is my favorite of the franchise by a fairly wide margin, and as for Mission: Impossible, I’d personally go Ghost Protocol, but I understand the Fallout love a thousand percent. I’m just a sucker for a Brad Bird setpiece.) 

The one movie per franchise rule is there to force a more diverse palette of movies, but I also don’t find the idea of using the bracket to determine which movie in an individual franchise is the best to be all that engaging. What is interesting, to me at least, is which overall franchise you like more and whether or not the strongest of each franchise can truly hang. So as far as which respective movie from each franchise you like the most and which one you think should be in the bracket, it doesn’t really matter to me. Substitute away!

As for why these two particular franchises, well… you know damn well why they’re here.

Goldeneye vs. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Battle of the Strong Later Franchise Entry.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes changed how I structure my own screenplays. Specifically, it got me to embrace a method called sequence structure, in which you basically build your story as eight mini-stories with their own mini-arcs (of sorts) as opposed to three amorphous blobs that you call acts one, two, and three. It changed how I do the thing I set out in life to do. That’s how much I love this film, and I personally think it does the original movie proud.

Goldeneye, on the other hand, is a Bond movie, a franchise I’ve loved since I was very little. (And too young to understand, shall we say, the parts that haven’t aged well.) And not just any Bond movie either, but a notedly strong entry in the beloved franchise. The Bond movie that introduced Judi Dench, including a scene where she calls Bond a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” in what might be the best scene in the whole franchise. It also has the scene where Sean Bean says to Bond, “I might as well ask you for the vodka martinis that have silenced the screams of all the men you've killed, or if you find forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women for all the dead ones you failed to protect.”

On the surface, this one’s kind of odd match-up. But the more I thought about it, the more I think this is actually a pretty fair one. Also, you may be wondering why I didn’t pick a Craig Bond like Casino Royale or Skyfall, and the answer is because I felt that this list already has a bad enough recency bias, and the last thing it needs is more 2010s movies. So apologies for that. 

Green Room vs 10 Cloverfield Lane: Battle of the Contained Hyper Suspense

10 Cloverfield Lane is a movie about young people trapped in a bunker with a paranoid survivalist fanatic named Howard. He has strict rules to keep them in place, he’s obsessive to the point of crazed, and he’s not afraid to be violent. Green Room is a movie about young people trapped in an off-the-grid bar who have to defend themselves against a group of nazis. The nazis are organized to a terrifying level, and in order to battle with them, each of the band members has to lose a part of themselves. Both films perfectly capture what it’s like to be on Twitter.

There are a few match-ups on this bracket that I hate not because they’re hard (though they all are on some level, hopefully), but because I’m not really giving a movie that deserves to move forward a real chance, at least for myself. I love both of these movies, but the question “Is Green Room the best movie of the 2010s?” has crossed my mind more times than I care to admit. (The answer, by the way, is probably not. But it might be?)

You deserved better from me, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and in a weird way, despite my clear preference for Green Room, I hope many people who are not me pick you instead. 

Hard Boiled vs. Supercop: Battle of the 1992 Hong Kong Action Movie

I have an embarrassing confession to make. I didn’t watch Hard Boiled until this year. 

I don’t think I loved it quite to the extent that many do. I think act three drags, I think some of the plotting is a little clunky, and I just didn’t buy the central friendship the movie was selling between Tequila and Alan. But the craft on display is awe-inspiring, and much like discovering an old jazz album that birthed a billion hip hop samples, I see the DNA of this movie everywhere. I was told that I would, and yet it still shook me.

Supercop, on the other hand, is a movie my father rented from Blockbuster when I was little, and it’s the movie that made me fall in love with Jackie Chan. (Really it was the one-two punch of seeing Mr. Nice Guy and Rush Hour in a theater, then seeing this movie on VHS.) Most people would probably select Police Story for the bracket, probably on some well-deserved first cut is the deepest logic. But I couldn’t resist the 1992 thing. Also, I happen to like Supercop more, it has some of the greatest stunts ever put on film, which is to say nothing of Michelle Yeoh jumping a fucking motorcycle onto a train.

Again, no wrong answers here.

John Wick 2 vs. The Raid 2: Battle of the New Canon

Why the sequels?

I personally think both are better than their respective first entries. But maybe, I don’t know… by having the sequels in the bracket you can factor in how they both build on the foundation of the first movies and thus this can also be a stealth debate about John Wick vs. The Raid: Redemption.

I don’t know. Just a thought.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 vs. Oldboy (2003): Battle of Revenge

Quick programming note on both of these. For Kill Bill, I didn’t do The Whole Bloody Affair because they were released as separate movies and how you release things matters, dammit! Secondly, there’s some debate in my circle about whether or not Oldboy is really an action movie. And I’m fine with that. 

But as far as the movies themselves, they both occupy a particular place in my mind. My dad rented the Vol. 1 DVD from Blockbuster in preparation to watch Vol. 2 in a theater, and it was one of those experiences where I could feel my brain being rewired. I simply didn’t know you could do many of the things this movie does. The music, the style, the violence. Once the credits rolled, I had to know more about this Tarantino guy I had just been introduced to. (More on why Django Unchained isn’t on here later.)

Oldboy came a little later. My brother got me the big tin DVD box set for Christmas. We watched it late at night, and I had a similar experience. It was during a period of my life where I was really beginning to fall in love with film, and Oldboy was the perfect bridge between my prepubescent love of action cinema and my adolescent love of capital C Cinema. A weirdo revenger tragedy that remains untarnished even after years of toxic hype amongst obnoxious film bros on certain sections of the internet.

Not quite sure what I’m going to do here yet.

Mad Max: Fury Road vs. Children of Men: Battle of the Thematically Connected Post-Apocalypse Movies

Theo Faron and Max Rockatansky both live bleak existences in worlds that have fallen apart. Granted, the world Max occupies is a little further down the slide, but there’s an increasing tangibility to Theo’s London, and if and probably when the world starts to collapse (assuming it hasn’t already), I think it’ll look more like Children of Men than, well… I was going to say Fury Road, but you could probably throw in most post-apocalypse movies in general.

Theo and Max both get by through self-preservation and detachment. Both have, in certain ways, lost a family, and both of them are probably not capable of ever fully getting over that loss. Both are eventually tasked with escorting a woman through a hostile and dangerous landscape, and along the way, both eventually rediscover their humanity and reclaim their ability to change the world around them for the better. Both men end, ultimately, at peace.

Many may bristle at calling Children of Men an action movie. Theo, admittedly, doesn’t have the brawn of Max, nor does he have the confidence or, really, the ability to carry out a big action movie plan. But I’d argue that he’s an effective action protagonist for that very reason. He’s not a projection of what we’d like to be able to do if we were thrust into an action scenario. He’s what we’d really do, and that’s part of what makes him compelling. Similarly, Children of Men doesn’t have the same kind of endless thrills that Fury Road carries by the bucketload. But I saw Children of Men in a theater, and my asshole still clenches every time I watch the farm escape or the long take in the car.

I say all this not because I think Children of Men needs defending. I think we all agree that Children of Men is, you know, pretty good. I say all this because I’m fully aware that Fury Road is probably going to win the bracket for most people, as well as any bracket on which it appears, and I want to emphasize that I gave it steep competition in Children of Men for a reason. You may have noticed that there’s a lot of heavy hitters in Fury Road’s corner of the bracket, and there’s a reason for that too. 

I thought about not including Fury Road because of how much cultural weight it has to throw around. But not including it is also insanity. So I figured that if it’s going to be on here, I need to make it as hard for it as possible. I just hope I succeeded. 

Man on Fire vs. Taken: Battle of the Disgruntled American Tearing Through A Foreign Country

Pretty self-explanatory one, really. 

I imagine a lot of people will have the impulse to go with Taken. But just remember that Man on Fire features a scene in which Denzel Washington shoves a bomb up a dude’s ass and blows him up under a highway. This action movie bracket is important.

Pacific Rim vs. Godzilla vs. Kong: Battle of the Hollywood Kaiju

I realize these movies have many detractors, but I have to admit that I have a bit of a soft spot for both.

I read a draft of Pacific Rim that was written before Guillermo’s involvement with the movie, and I didn’t like it at all. Don’t get me wrong, Travis Beacham is clearly a talented guy. (His movie script Killing on Carnival Row, which eventually just became the show Carnival Row on Prime, was a lot of fun.) But I found it bereft of much of the personality and plot related insanity Guillermo brought to the project once he came on board. (The draft did not have Ron Pearlman’s character or drifting with the kaiju brain or anything like that.) I went to the theater thinking I’d hate it. But whereas a lot of people see what it doesn’t have, I see what it does, and I love it.

As for Godzilla vs. Kong, I love it because it’s not its predecessor Godzilla: King of the Monsters, an excruciating slog that takes itself way too seriously. I love Godzilla vs. Kong because it is, simply put, stupid on a godly level, and it was a much needed shot in the arm during the tail end of my quarantine.

“But Garth,” some of you may be asking, “Why don’t you stop being a fat white asshole and put some actual Japanese kaiju movies on this list?” Great question! The answer, honestly, is that I haven’t watched any of the Toho Godzillas, or other international kaiju movies for that matter, in a very very long time. More on my failings of representation on this bracket later. (Specifically, go to the part about Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior.)

So why this battle? Because too many action movie brackets leave out big dumb kaiju nonsense, and dumb fun is an important part of the action movie experience. Also, while we’re handing out unpopular opinions, the 2014 Godzilla is arse.

Princess Mononoke vs. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: Battle of the Epic Fantasy Action

Animation should not be thought of as a genre. It is a filmmaking technique, and it should not be pinned down by storytelling convention or target audience or the perception that it’s just for kids. (If, for example, this was a horror bracket, I’d put Perfect Blue on it, where it would proceed to wipe its ass with a high percentage of its competition.)

Also, I picked The Two Towers because I feel like that’s the one with the least amount of detraction? I think? I don’t know. Feel free to swap it.

Now that my righteous indignation and organizational nonsense is out of the way, having to pick just one of these sucks. They are both stunning artistic achievements, and they’re both some of the best entries in the history of the epic fantasy genre across all mediums.

I don’t really have much to say here, other than that I have no clue what I’d do here.

Seven Samurai vs. Ran: Battle of the Kurosawa Masterpiece

Conundrum: You want to put Seven Samurai in your dumb action movie bracket. The problem is that you have to think of something that could maybe compete with it. I thought about Lawrence of Arabia, but I didn’t want to give anyone an easy reason to dismiss a movie other than the fact that they don’t like it, and Lawrence of Arabia is a standout example of white saviordom. (As to whether it holds up on merit, honestly, I haven’t watched it since early high school.) I also thought about Bridge on the River Kwai, Ben-Hur, Spartacus, and a few others. I almost went with Spartacus, but though some of these movies can measure up in scope, be honest with yourself. None of these movies are really fucking with Seven Samurai.

So who can possibly stand up against Kurosawa? Kurosawa, that’s who.

I know there’s a possibility that someone stumbles onto this bracket and rolls their eyes at the film snob praying at the altar of Kurosawa. Indeed, we probably don’t question the film canon enough. But rest assured, internet stranger, that for Kurosawa, the hype is very real.

Sicario vs. A History of Violence: Battle of the Understated Brutality

I struggled with the name of this match-up, and honestly, I’m not sure I fully nailed it. 

To me, these movies share a certain sensibility. Neither of these movies probably scream “action” on first glance to most as both of these movies play it discreetly in their own way. Then, suddenly, they aren’t, and when they get bloody, boy do they get bloody. Argue about whether these are action movies all you want, but both of these movies feature scenes more intense than most of what you’re ever going to come across.

Much like the movies themselves, I think this one’s quietly one of the hardest match-ups on the bracket. At least it is for me, because fuck if I know what I’m picking here.

One more thing: Let us briefly consider Peter Suschitzky, the director of photography on A History of Violence. He seems to mainly be Cronenberg’s main guy. But he also shot Empire Strikes Back, Mars Attacks!, and After Earth. I don’t really have a point here, I just find his career fascinating.

Source Code vs. Looper: Battle of the Time Bending Early 2010s Sci-Fi Action

Really, this is the battle of the movies given the most amount of oxygen by me and my nerdy screenwriter pals as an undergrad.

Speed vs. Heat: Battle of the ‘90s Transitional Movie

When most people my age (I’m 30) think “blockbuster action” and “the ‘90s,” they’re really talking about the late ‘90s, the line in the sand (probably) being Independence Day. And maybe this is just me, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had conversations with friends where we associate movies that actually came out in the early ‘90s with the late ‘80s. Of course the most famous movies of the ‘90s will be associated with the ‘90s forever regardless of when in the decade they came out. But (and maybe it’s because of its star) I’m willing to bet that a lot of people don’t know that Groundhog Day came out in 1993, the same year as, say, Menace II Society.

This is a fight between films that came out in the between space, when the movies in the ‘90s stopped looking and feeling like the ‘80s, but don’t quite have that big late ‘90s blockbuster aura yet. (Yes, I know Terminator 2 came out in ’91. Exceptions and rules and all that.) It’s an important time to consider because many of these movies were massive, be it in cultural weight or in box office, and yet many of them would probably wind up directly on a streamer today.

It’s also an excuse for me to have on Speed, a movie I love dearly. Yes, the concept is very silly. Yes, act three drags. Yes, the beginning section does as well, and you can bring up many imperfections. But you’re always going to remember your first viewing of Speed. Or you are, to borrow a term from Tarkovsky, a fart face.

As for Heat, I have another confession to make: I don’t really like Heat that much. I understand why people who were more movie cognizant in the ‘90s like it, and it’s certainly worthy of your respect. Every time I talk about it, I think to myself, “Wait, am I sure I don’t like this movie?” But it’s bloated, a lot of the character work doesn’t do it for me, and there’s just something about the sensibility of its dialogue that rubs me the wrong way. But I get the love. Really, I do.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day vs. Aliens: Battle of James Cameron

Yup.

The Dark Knight vs. Logan: Battle of the Dark Superhero

I find myself in a weird spot when it comes to superhero movies. 

On one hand, it takes a lot to motivate me to go to a theater to see one nowadays. I’ll gladly watch them at home, because I do find them interesting to talk about and study. But the thought of paying to watch one in a theater exhausts me. On the other hand, I find that I have very little patience for people who thumb their nose at them. I don’t think criticizing superhero movies because they’re superhero movies is a sign of intelligence or perspective, and while it’s easy to be mad at Marvel, it’s easier (for me at least) to be mad at the years spent by studios and executives conditioning audiences to only go see mega blockbusters. Marvel simply took advantage of what was already in place. Don’t blame them for being American.

I say all this because I know many people are going to roll their eyes at this one. On top of this, many people saw their emotional stock in The Dark Knight plummet after The Dark Knight Rises, Joker, and the emergence of people who are very loud on the internet about how much they like Joker. You more than likely saw some of them on the news on January 6th.

But do you remember when The Dark Knight came out? Do you remember the excitement in the air? That feeling of, “Oh wait, superhero movies can be this?” We take that for granted now, but there was an energy in the air when that movie came out that I’ll never forget.

As for Logan, well, it’s just a great movie. An angry movie about a grizzled old man falling apart at the seams as he fights to save a girl from what is effectively the Trump Administration. It’s gory, it’s bleak, and it is, in many ways, the promise of The Dark Knight truly fulfilled. 

I feel a little icky (semi) defending superhero movies. But I don’t feel that way defending great movies about superheroes.

The Guest vs. Upgrade: Battle of the Low-to-Mid Budget ‘80s Throwback Action Movie You More Than Likely First Saw on a Streaming Service

Or you could call this one Battle of the Severely Underseen.

Both of these movies understand the ridiculousness of the movies they’re trying to emulate. Both go out of their way to add their own spin as well. Both are well-crafted, both are well-written, and both are a hell of a lot of fun.

In a way, I feel bad for pitting these two against each other because it means one of them has to go. But if you haven’t seen either of these, do yourselves a favor. Stop reading this and get to watching.

The Incredibles vs. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse: Battle of the Animated Superhero Movie That is Better Than Most Live Action Superhero Movies

For my fellow millennials, this one really sucks. I tried an earlier version of this bracket on my best friend, and he got slightly mad at me for making him choose.

Most people (including myself, most likely), are likely going with Spider-Verse. It is, after all, the more innovative of the two in terms of messaging, aesthetic, and just about every other metric you can think of. But The Incredibles is The Incredibles man!

Look. Pick what you want. All I ask is that before you go with Spider-Verse, take a moment to think about the obvious greatness of The Incredibles, then pick Spider-Verse. I know that’s what I’ll be doing.

The Matrix vs. Jurassic Park: Battle of the Leap Forward in CGI

Remember in the Speed vs. Heat section when I was talking about movies that don’t feel like they’re from the decade they were released in? Say out loud, “The Matrix is a ‘90s movie.” Doesn’t feel right, does it?

Anyway, CGI!

The people responsible for CGI are extraordinarily talented, and when their efforts are effective, we should shower them with praise. And that burden is, in fact, on us because based on the number of dead special effects studios buried in Hollywood’s backyard, they sure as shit aren’t going to do it. Hollywood and labor. You gotta love it.

The Wild Bunch vs. No Country for Old Men: Battle of the Anti-Western

There’s a lot of genre discussion to be had here. Apart from the obvious one about whether or not these count as action movies, we can also spend some time debating the difference between a revisionist western or an anti-western or any other term for a western that does not adhere to the values of the older generation of westerns. Or really, whether or not westerns with old time-y High Noon like values even exist anymore. (The last proper western I can think of is Open Range, and even that one’s debatable.) You can’t really call yourself an anti-western if there’s nothing to really be anti towards.

I mention all this because for some reason, I feel the need to talk about how long it took me to choose between Battle of the Anti-Western or just Battle of the Western. 

Brackets are extremely important. Also The Wild Bunch and No Country for Old Men are very good movies.

Total Recall vs. Robocop: Battle of Verhoeven

A message to the friend who knows I’ve done this just to mess with him: I had to.

Unstoppable vs. Train to Busan: Battle of the Train

This one is actually a fight between two personal failures of mine.

The first and most recent failure has to do with Train to Busan, a movie I embarrassingly did not watch until a few weeks ago in preparation for this very bracket. Why I dismissed it, despite the overwhelming pressure to watch it from Film Twitter and people whose opinion I respect, I do not know. But I knew I wanted this movie on the bracket the moment Ma Dong-seok taped up his arms and started punching the absolute fuck out of those zombies. 

Meanwhile, I saw Unstoppable in a theater and didn’t like it. At the time, I was in the depths of my snob phase, and thought movies like this were somehow beneath me. I then rewatched this movie in the days before quarantine began, and I fell head-over-heels in love with it, cursing my freshman year of college self for ever doubting its obvious greatness.

Also enjoy debating whether Train to Busan is more horror than action, and enjoy debating whether thrillers like Unstoppable should be counted in this bracket.

Hey, Why Didn’t You Include…

I wouldn’t be surprised if deciding what should and should not go on the bracket ends up being harder than filling out the bracket itself. As much fun as I had excluding certain movies I find overrated, giving myself yet another opportunity to flex my pettiness, hard decisions had to be made as far as stuff that had to go. 

Rest assured that stuff I cut to be vindictive only takes up a small percentage of what was cut on the whole. Most of the time when I excluded a beloved movie, I did so to make room for movies that should be brought up more in action movie conversations, and to make a more interesting bracket. Case in point…

Indiana Jones

…do we really need to have another conversation about the obvious greatness of at least two of the Indiana Jones movies? Sure, we could talk about Raiders again. Or… we can talk about Green Room!!! Maybe this is just where I’m at in life, but I’d much rather talk about Green Room. (Raiders vs. Green Room: Battle of Nazi Killing.)

I tried to find a balance between canon action movies and non-canon action movies because I’m not as interested in deifying what’s already in the canon. I’m more interested in questioning it, and thinking of movies to add to it. (Yes, yes, movie nerd, make all the Cannon jokes you want.) Or at least that’s what I set out to do. Whether or not I really did it, I’m not so sure.

Also, speaking of Indiana Jones…

The Mummy

Look. I love The Mummy. You love The Mummy. We all love The Mummy. 

If I put The Mummy in the bracket, the most logical thing to put it against would be an Indiana Jones movie, and Indiana Jones would wind up obliterating it, and I couldn’t think of another thing to pair it against. Maybe Romancing the Stone or something like that. But the thing is that The Mummy either destroys its lesser archeology driven action adventure movies, or it goes against Indy and gets slaughtered. 

In the end, I thought it best to just let it go.

LA Confidential, The Fifth Element, Léon: The Professional, The Usual Suspects, Lethal Weapon, etc.

I wanted to avoid movies that are easy to cut in the first round for reasons that don’t really have to do with the merits of the movies themselves. One obvious reason to cut a movie is that you haven’t seen it. Another is if it’s made by rapists or stars sexual predators.

And look. This bracket is not entirely rid of toxic men. Given the despicable behavior Hollywood has allowed to fester for decades, it’s probably an impossible task to not have to consider a few of these people when we have conversations like these. Everyone has their own limits as to what they can and cannot tolerate.

Personally, LA Confidential and The Fifth Element were hard cuts for me. That is, until I remembered why I was cutting them. Then it couldn’t have been easier. 

The Last Action Hero/The Long Kiss Goodnight

You know what’s surprisingly difficult? Being able to distinguish between an underappreciated movie and a purely great one. 

I thought about including both of these movies, as I think The Last Action Hero and The Long Kiss Goodnight are both varying degrees of fantastic, particularly when it comes to the former. (The fact that they’re both penned by Shane Black is a coincidence in this particular case.) But are they truly worthy?

To be honest, I think there are worse movies on the bracket. However, for me, it’s the same scenario as The Mummy in that it was hard for me to think of a scenario where both don’t get quickly beaten.

The Last Action Hero was closer to making the final cut. I had this idea to put it against Hot Fuzz and do a Battle of the Action Meta-Commentary or something like that. But I feel like most people, even those who realize the degree to which The Last Action Hero got overlooked, would more than likely go with Hot Fuzz, and I couldn’t think of another thing to pair it with. Alphaville maybe. I dunno.

Ditto The Long Kiss Goodnight vs. The Bourne Identity in a hypothetical Battle of the Amnesiac. But The Bourne Supremacy is only on here reluctantly, and that debate doesn’t inspire me. This is all random bullshit, people.

Dunkirk (Or: Do War Movies Count as Action?)

I would argue that the action in war movies isn’t meant to be enjoyed on the same level as your typical action movie.

War movie action is frequently thrilling, and plenty deliberately cross the line into outright action. (The Dirty Dozen probably should’ve been in the bracket.) However, they aren’t thrilling for the sake of tantalizing you with Hollywood power fantasies. They exist so you can reflect on how we’re a species that sends our young to die in frequently pointless and dangerous combat situations.

Also personally, I’ve never fully bought into the idea that we’re supposed to enjoy something just because it’s thrilling. Car accidents are technically thrilling, but I wouldn’t say I “enjoy” them. (Insert Crash joke.)

Dunkirk is my favorite of Nolan’s movies. I find that Nolan frequently has trouble finding the humanity in his stories, and as Dunkirk proves, all he had to do was have his characters talk less. (Also, given his rush to put out Tenet in theaters before there was a vaccine, he apparently has trouble finding his humanity in real life as well.) There’s the usual Nolan quirks. Time dilation, a sense of scope, Zimmer. But at the end of the day, it’s a movie about scared kids on a beach. I felt more for them than I have anyone in any of his other films.

But I don’t know if you’re supposed to get your thrills from it. Or any war movie, for that matter. Even the combat heavy ones. Of course, you can make the same argument for many of the movies in this bracket. (Sicario vs. A History of Violence comes to mind.) But in those movies, the line in the sand is much clearer.

Inception

Probably one of the bigger omissions on this bracket.

Honestly, whether or not I like Inception depends on the moment. Sometimes, I’m in awe of it as an accomplishment. The vision on display and the technical wherewithal invested to pull it off. Other times, I resent how just about every line of dialogue is exposition, and I find the character work robotic, if not outright absent.

I don’t really have a substantive reason I left it off. It’s because I couldn’t think of anything to pit it against that would be fair, and Paprika isn’t an action movie.

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior

The biggest failure of this bracket is a lack of representation. Simply put, there aren’t enough people of color, there aren’t enough people who don’t identify as males, and there aren’t enough movies not made in America. 

Cutting Ong-Bak sucked. Sure, it’s not a perfect movie. It’s frequently silly, it’s mild hip-hop aesthetics forever date it to the 2000s, and it’s the kind of movie people like more for the execution of the action and the execution of the action only. 

But my god, the execution of the action.

More importantly, it sucks to lose any non-American movie, let alone a non-American with an actor of color. But much like The Mummy and those Shane Black movies, Ong-Bak falls into a specific category of “easily beats most movies like it, but loses soundly if put up against its most obvious point of comparison.” In this case, Jackie Chan movies. (Which there aren’t enough of. I say all these things like I’m not in control of all this.) However, there’s also a layer of ignorance on my part. I haven’t seen enough Jet Li movies, or any of the other action stars that do their own stunts or practice martial arts. 

I felt a need to make this bracket accessible to a certain degree, and certain movies had to go. It’s my fault that Ong-Bak went, and it’s also the movie industry’s fault for so emphasizing American cinema over all else. But it’s mostly mine.

Maybe I’ll make a version of this bracket some day where I don’t care about how many people have seen it, and on that day, Ong-Bak goes on first.

The Grey

The Grey is the best Liam Neeson action movie. I cut it because I couldn’t think of a good match. I thought about The Grey vs. All Is Lost in the Battle of the Survivor Movie. But I had trouble really justifying All Is Lost as an action movie. Sidenote: All is Lost rules.

Drug War

As I said, the biggest failure of this bracket is a lack of diversity. But if we set morality aside (which we shouldn’t), the real biggest failure is a lack of Johnnie To. 

Here’s the thing: I’ve only seen two of this movies. One of them is Drug War, which I love, and the other is The Mission, which I did not. (Forgive me a bit of generational tribalism, but if you’re old enough to have seen one of the original three Tarantino movies in theaters, or you were at least movie cognizant, chances are you pay an undue amount of reverence for movies that involve “cool” men standing around and smoking cigarettes and occasionally some action happens. Though granted, in this case, the action’s really well done.) 

While a lot of the point of this bracket is to question what is and is not action, Drug War may ride a little too much of a line. The final act is excruciating, sure. But most of what comes before that is driven by dialogue-heavy suspense, and I don’t know if it counts.

A bigger factor, however, is that I got insecure about my lack of Johnnie To knowledge. I didn’t have time to watch them all, and I was worried I was going with the wrong one with Drug War. So I let it go in favor of something else. Of all the cuts, this might be the one I regret the most. This or the next one.

Django Unchained

Much like the Craig Bond movies, the only reason it’s not on here is because of my attempts to slightly dull the 2010s bias that is still very much prevalent in this bracket. That said, movies where slave masters are brutally murdered and overseers get their genitals shot off should generally be celebrated.

The Rock

Alright, now we’re getting into my biases here. 

The Rock is thirty minutes too long and its storytelling is disjointed and lumbering. It’s got great moments, most of which are provided by Sean Connery. But there are some movies in the action canon where I genuinely don’t know what the fuck people are talking about, and this is one of them. 

The Fugitive

Sometimes I like a little bit of soap opera in my action. Sometimes I don’t. I don’t really know when or why I’ll fall either way, but for whatever reason, The Fugitive has a paperback thriller you bought at CVS quality to it for me. I’m sure that’s why many people like it, but it does nothing for me personally.

Dirty Harry

I haven’t watched Dirty Harry since high school. I liked it fine at the time, but I haven’t gone back to it since. I thought about doing so for this bracket, but then again, if I have the option of giving a slot to a movie about a rouge cop or giving one to a movie about anything else, I’ll go the latter every time. Or at least if you are going to be a rogue cop movie, you better invade Cuba. 

Con Air

Con Air is dog shit.

Point Break

I personally don’t care for Point Break, but it actually came pretty close to making the bracket. I had an idea to put it up against Speed and do Battle of ‘90s Keanu. But in the end, I thought Speed vs. Heat was more interesting, and again, I don’t like Point Break. Kathryn Bigelow is obviously talented, but in order for the story to work, the philosophical gang of extreme sports dorks actually have to sound substantive, and they aggressively don’t. I suppose there’s some ironic enjoyment to get out of watching them speak, and maybe I’m just grumpy.

A Rambo Movie

First Blood is more of a drama to me than an action movie. That’s hardly a new observation, but it’s one worth making because divorced from its context in the franchise, it’s a movie I was actually surprised by how much I liked when I first saw it a few years ago. It absolutely drops the ball on Rambo’s speech at the end, as its values run very much contrary to everything that’s came before it. But on the whole, I think it’s a pretty smart movie in its own way. Or at least smarter than a movie with the name “Rambo” in it would suggest.

First Blood Part II, on the other hand, is a dumb movie pretending to be a smart one. The core idea of it is a sound one, even if it does famously break off from the tone of the first film. However, there’s the part of it that wants to have a substantive breakdown of PTSD, and there’s a part of it that wants to be a fun action movie, and nary do the two meet. Frankly, I think the movie has more interest in the dumbness, and that’s certainly the part I find more engaging. It wants to pretend it’s still interested in the roots of the first movie, and it does so to its own detriment. 

As for the other Rambos, I haven’t seen them. Maybe I should’ve.

Independence Day

Some people want to build castles around their nostalgia. I want to drown it, at least when it comes to art I liked when I was a less evolved person. Independence Day is not a good movie. I’m sorry.

Full Contact (1992)

Full Contact is a 1992 action movie from Honk Kong directed by Ringo Lam and starring Chow Yun-Fat, Simon Yam, Anthony Wong, Ann Bridgewater, and more. It’s a movie I watched for this bracket, and it’s a movie that I now deeply love. The screenshot in the back of the bracket is from this very film, and that look of glee on the man with the machine gun’s face is one he’s giving whiling shooting two cops.

Full Contact is everything you want an action move to be. It’s gloriously over-the-top, the action is expertly crafted, it’s sleazy, it’s stupid, and it’s everything in between. It contains elements and ideas that are years ahead of its time (include a bullet time shootout seven years before The Matrix), and it contains maybe the greatest closing line in the history of cinema. I dare not spoil it here.

The reason it’s not on the bracket is because I’m a coward. It’s a hard movie to find, and the probability that a lot people (at least in the US) have seen it is low. As such, I could only imagine people choosing whatever I put it against quickly, and my heart couldn’t bear it.

If you take on thing from this exercise, it’s this: Go find Full Contact, and enjoy.

Conclusion

I set out to make an action movie bracket that was incredibly difficult. Did I succeed? That would probably depend on who you ask, but generally speaking, probably not.

The insertion of movies I know to be dumb will probably get crushed by the movies people take more seriously. Some of my picks are questionable at best. There’s a ton of aggressively dumb inner debates I’m still having about the placement of each pairing on the bracket itself and general lingering insecurities about the movies I ultimately did pick over ones that I didn’t and so on and so forth.

But if I’m lucky, I made a bracket that’s at least fun. Subjectivity stops this bracket from being airtight, but in the end, it stops every pop culture bracket from being so as well. And hey, for the sake of covering my bases, I watched a ton of movies I hadn’t seen before. If one person sees this bracket or this article and decides to watch something on it, then this exercise was worth it. Especially if it’s Full Contact. 

Healthy discourse, shooting the shit about movies, and not being assholes while doing it. In the end, that’s all that matters here. That may be an impossible desire, as this kind of gimmickry isn’t conducive to an engaging discussion. But I can live with that if we’re enjoying ourselves.