25. TOSHIRO MIFUNE, SEVEN SAMURAI (1954)
Few actors can summon the sheer rock-solid presence that Mifune can. And he was never better than when he sliced and diced as a samurai for director Akira Kurosawa
24. STEVEN SEAGAL, UNDER SIEGE (1992)
Hollywood never gives up on searching for the Next Great White Martial Artist. First, Chuck Norris. John Saxon had a moment there. Then, Jean Claude Van Damme burst on the scene, quickly followed by Steven Seagal. And this Die Hard on a Battleship is Seagal's best. (The search continues
23. SEAN CONNERY, GOLDFINGER (1964)
I'm pretty sure the phrase ''Women want him and men want to BE him'' was invented for Sean Connery, the former bodybuilder who swaggered into the role of James Bond and walked away a screen icon
22. KURT RUSSELL, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981)
Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken is a Western hero — allegedly, Carpenter and Russell's tribute to Clint Eastwood — in a dystopic NYC.
21. ANNE PARILLAUD, LA FEMME NIKITA (1990)
French filmmaker Luc Besson's first stateside hit felt like a languorous, velvety inhale from a Parisian cigarette: smooth, stylish, and deadly. And Anne Parillaud is perfect as a street urchin remade by the government into a coquettish assassin
20. ANTONIO BANDERAS, DESPERADO (1995)
In the years before The Matrix, Robert Rodriguez's sequel to El Mariachi was the greatest comic-book movie not based on an actual comic book. It's all mythic swagger and south-of-the-border legend. And Antonio Banderas struts like a gun-slinging matador as a guitarista looking for revenge
19. BURT LANCASTER, THE CRIMSON PIRATE (1952)
Burt Lancaster is all brawn and brio as one of Hollywood's first pirates of the Caribbean. No, there aren't any kraken or squiddy bad guys' ships that sail on sand, but it's rousing as all get out.
18. SYLVESTER STALLONE, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (1985)
Here's where Rambo gets elevated from wounded Vietnam veteran trying to find a place in the world to entire-village-slaying, POW-rescuing American myth. Written by James Cameron (at the same time he was writing Aliens — busy boy!), this sequel corners like it's on rails, hugging the plot turns and accelerating straight through to the speechifying finish
17. TOM CRUISE, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III (2006)
M: I 1's plot was an incomprehensible mess. M: I 2 suffered from John Woo's tick-laden, uninspired direction (oh, yes, more doves, of course, John, no one's seen those before). But M: I 3 worked because Lost creator J.J. Abrams brought a TV-honed story-sense to Tom Cruise's action franchise. It bounces with some nifty plot mechanics and turns Ethan Hunt into a real, honest-to-goodness character.
16. JEAN RENO, THE PROFESSIONAL (1994)
The Frenchiest hitman thriller ever to take place on the streets of New York. Jean Reno is all Gallic cool as a simple-minded assassin and Natalie Portman, in her movie debut, is heartbreaking as the teen who falls in love with him.
15. JACKIE CHAN, DRUNKEN MASTER II (1994)
You know how masterful editing is essential in the making of a great action film? Well, Jackie Chan is the exception to that rule. What you want out of a Jackie Chan movie is for the director to put the camera on a tripod, grab some coffee, and just let the Hong Kong phenom work. Toss martial arts, slapstick, stunts, and Jackie's willingness to risk ridiculous bodily harm just to entertain you
14. UMA THURMAN, KILL BILL — VOL. 1 (2003)
Ever get the feeling that with a Tarantino movie, you're watching a mash-up of whatever he likes at the moment, be it heist movies, blaxploitation, or the back of Ving Rhames' head? With this revenge opus, it's clear he had a thing for chicks kicking butt. And, woman alive, Uma Thurman dug into the role of the Bride, an assassin left for dead on her wedding day, fresh out of a coma and paving the road to vengeance with the blood of those who wronged her
13. ERROL FLYNN, THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938)
Let's be clear about something: Errol Flynn is the king, nay, the pope of derring-do. And he was never as good as in this, the definitive steal from the inordinately wealthy and give to the financially disenfranchised adventure. With him at the center — buckling swashes, dueling dastardly dandies, and stealing kisses from Olivia de Havilland's Maid Marian — Robin Hood bounced with a joy, with a spirit that's almost entirely absent from movies made today.
12. MATT DAMON, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (2004)
Where Bond thrillers are smooth like vodka, the Bourne films like to play rough. Thanks to Matt Damon’s brilliant portrayal of Jason Bourne, you now know it's possible to beat the snot out of a man using a magazine
11. BRUCE LEE, ENTER THE DRAGON (1973)
Were it not for Bruce Lee — paving the way while swinging a pair of nunchakus and screaming that weird, catlike scream — Hollywood would've evolved along a different path, one that didn't have wire-fu, Jet Li, or people getting kicked repeatedly in the face
10. PETER WELLER, ROBOCOP (1987)
The Modern Prometheus. That's how Mary Shelley described Frankenstein's monster, and the term's just as applicable to Paul Verhoeven's cyborg peacekeeper. Brutally murdered on the job, a police officer (Peter Weller) is brought back from the dead to become the perfect corporate cop. The face-off between Robo and the panzer-guard-bot ED 209 is one for the ages
9. WILLIAM HOLDEN, THE WILD BUNCH (1969)
If there's an Action-Movie Arms Race, then The Wild Bunch is the film responsible for the biggest escalation. Led by the hewn from a hard stone William Holden, this revisionist oater opened the door to brutality and wedged it there, leaving room for directors from Francis Ford Coppola to Paul Verhoeven to the Wachowski boys to see just how many pulpy bullet wounds is too many.
8. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)
There's a saying that goes '' What good is having an envelope if you can't push it?'' And just because I made that up doesn't make it any less true. James Cameron returned to the series that made Arnold a star and, rather than rest it all on the Austrian Oak's shoulders, the director offered us a villain (Robert Patrick) for the ages: the implacable molten-metal T-1000, which represents the first — and last — time CG morphing was cool.
7. CHOW YUN-FAT, HARD-BOILED (1992)
Happiness is a warm pair of guns — especially when Chow Yun-Fat is holding them. And Hard-Boiled, a quicksilver tale of undercover cops and shifting allegiances, is director John Woo's explosive masterpiece
6. RUSSELL CROWE, GLADIATOR (2000)
This Best Picture Oscar winner could've been just a fair-to-middling sword-and-sandals flick — if not for Russell Crowe. The action still might've been first-rate, given Ridley Scott's hands on the reins, but the reason audiences cared about what happened to poor Maximus — father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, sentenced to a fighting death on the Colosseum floor — was Crowe's steely, soulful performance
5. KEANU REEVES, THE MATRIX (1999)
There had been movies featuring virtual reality or hackers or kung fu or weirdo philosophy or groundbreaking F/X. But those things had never been assimilated into the same film until The Matrix, a Big Idea flick about a programmer (Reeves) who might just be the humanity-saving Chosen Dude
4. MEL GIBSON, THE ROAD WARRIOR (1982)
Who needs a tribute to this postapocalyptic Mel Gibson sequel, when the opening narration does it so well? ''The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed. Men like Max... In the roar of an engine, he lost everything. And became a shell of a man...a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again.''
3. HARRISON FORD, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)
A man should be judged by what he does. So it's fitting that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas' whip-cracking hero Indiana Jones doesn't do much talking, and that this movie doesn't waste much time on dialogue (even though said dialogue is screwball-smart, coming from Lawrence Kasdan). Some of the greatest action scenes ever filmed are strung together like pearls: running from that boulder, fighting the big bald Nazi, wondering ''Snakes...why'd it have to be snakes?'' The posters called Raiders ''The Return of the Great Adventure.'' Truth in advertising if I ever saw it.
2. SIGOURNEY WEAVER, ALIENS (1986)
In all of action herodom, Sigourney Weaver's Ripley is unique. She's a woman, which makes her part of an elite club. And writer-director James Cameron miraculously found a way to treat her gender as both a nonissue and the core of her character. Ripley isn't a vixen like Lara Croft or Charlie's Angels. Yet Weaver wasn't forced to turn Ripley into a man, either. (Remember Linda Hamilton in T2?) Aliens — a relentless Swiss watch of a war film — is a movie about women, about the matriarchs of two tribes fighting to protect their young.
AND DRUMROLL PLEASSSEEE!!.....................AND THE NUMBER #1 ACTION HEREOS OF ALL MOVIES IS.....
. BRUCE WILLIS, DIE HARD (1988)
He's just a guy. That's the amazing thing about Bruce Willis' John McClane, a NYC cop in L.A. to reconcile with his corporate-ladder-climbing wife, who gets trapped in a skyscraper with money-hungry ''terrorists.'' He's not thick with muscles, he's often afraid, and he forgot his shoes. But Willis' street-smart insouciance, along with McTiernan's high-tension camerawork, help make McClane one of the greatest action heroes of all time.