Craig presents: Action Films That Should Be Recognized a lot More

One of the great things about being an action movie buff is that you can see beyond the silliness, implausibility, mindless violence, and bad one liners in these movies. You can actually see a good story if you focus pretty hard and remember one simple thing, they’re just movies. The basic premise of any movie is to move the audience away from reality and allow them to explore the depths of their imaginations. Of course the ridiculous over the top action movies require a lot more imagination than others, and being a man that has seen almost all of the big rated R action flicks with all the gunfights, car chases, fight scenes, blood, exploding people, tits and ass I could get since I was seven, I can analyze them better than anybody.

However by reading most critics reviews and listen to what’s going on in popular culture a lot of these flicks aren’t getting the attention and recognition they should really deserve. Some are just absolutely hated by people when in reality they’re not bad. If you go around all the time walking around with “The Serious Stick” shoved up your ass then you’re not gonna enjoy anything. Rotten Tomato’s is a perfect example, out of all of my favorite action films, they don’t like a damn one and it’s really pathetic. So I’ve compiled a list and description of action films that will help you snooty idiots out there to wake up and realize that there’s great stuff out there, you just gotta realize it.

Plus I urge all you Spill members, and I really hope the Spill Crew is listening too, to REALLY tell me what you think. And help me out on not just under seen action films but under seen great movies too. (And yes, I have seen “Black Book”). So here we go:

End of Days

This is one of the more darker action films I’ve seen. Arnold is my hero, he always has been and once you’ve beaten the devil you can’t get any more bad ass then that! Basic premise is that Satan must make love to a chosen woman who will bear him his son on the hour before the new millennium so that he can then destroy the Earth, and Arnold is all that stands in his way. The special effects in this when it was made were state of the art and even ten years later they still look fantastic. Especially at the end when the church crumbles apart and you see the Devil’s true form and he looks scary! You actually feel sorry for Schwarzenegger’s character because he followed all the right rules and in the end his family was stolen from him. That will cause anyone to lose their faith and in his case it led him to be suicidal and he forged a dark heart. It was absolutely hated by critics and got several Razzie Awards, personally I hate the Razzies they serve no real purpose and many times they give them to really good movies. Rambo: First Blood Part II is a perfect example, almost everyone then and now still love that movie.

Executive Decision

This is one of my favorite thrillers, and now you’re really gonna have to let your imagination run wild with this one. The film includes an all star cast that includes Kurt Russell, Steven Seagal, Halle Berry, John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, and David Suchet. Plot is pretty exciting and with today’s military technology, it’s actually very convincing. A middle east terrorist group has hijacked a 747 on its route from Greece to the U.S. and unless Washington meets to their demands they will crash the plane. The only problem is that the plane is loaded with a bomb containing a large amount of nerve gas and the terrorists have intentionally made a one way trip. So how do we stop this? We take the plane back! How? By flying a modified F-117 Nighthawk under the plane and delivering a Special Ops Unit led by Seagal with Russell as an expert on the terrorist leader, Suchet. However the plane comes apart after hitting some big turbulence and most of the team is killed before they all get on the plane. This is also the only movie in which Steven Seagal’s character dies which was a real shocker to me when I first saw this. The movie is tense all the way through because the Spec Ops Unit can’t seem to find a perfect way to stop the terrorists and keep the plane in the air at the same time. The all star cast also does not trip over each other or steal scenes from one another. It’s a very nerve rattling film.

The Forbidden Kingdom

Now before anyone gets any ideas, yes some of you may be thinking “Wait that is already a good action film!” it is. But there will ALWAYS some people going “What the hell is this?” or “What was that and why should I care?” and to them I say “Shut the hell up! You missed the point of why movies are supposed to be fun and to get away from reality!” But anyway, I sadly have not seen any of the Shaw Brothers movies but I have heard many good things about them especially from the Spill Crew, big thanks to you guys on that. If this is any good as the original Shaw Brothers films I will defiantly enjoy them. Jackie Chan and Jet Li are awesome it this and that fight scene with the two of them was fantastic, it will be extraordinarily difficult to top this fight in the future. And the idea for the film is standard but a classic way of starting fantasy, guy trips a falls down, wakes up in a different world, destined to be a hero, blah blah blah. But in all things serious, its pretty good fantasy and I especially like movies that take stuff out of mythology and experiment with it because mythology is not fact.

The Mummy Trilogy

Now I know the Spill Crew didn’t like the last one but I dug the hell out of it, it was a good fun popcorn chomper nothing more. Even though some of the dialogue was very novice, a lot of the scenes made me laugh, some were intentional and some weren’t. But I dug this trilogy, the action is over the top and crazy. I love action movies that don’t play with a big reference on rules and what makes them so much more fun, for me at least. My favorite is the first because it has the most story and the way the mummy kills people is just nasty when he sucks the life out of them and he’s also a neat freak cause whenever he leaves a room by filling it to the brim with sand he always takes every grain with him. But saying to you guys saying that this trilogy was very novice in its making was a little harsh I mean it’s suppose to be an enjoyable over the top flick that’s supposed to be watched with very loud surround sound.

Missing in Action

I am a tremendous Chuck Norris fan and he’s made so many good action flicks that aren’t on regular TV anymore or even the premium plus channels and he deserves so much from his fans and regular people in general. But this is one of his best, top three at least. The first of three films Norris plays James Braddock, a Vietnam War vet that was trapped in Vietnam as one of the many MIA’s after the war ended. He escaped after being held for seven years after the war ended and in this so called alternate time frame the U.S. and Vietnam are in severe political tension and unless the U.S. gets proof that the Vietnamese are holding more MIA’s the U.S. will lose their lost soldiers forever. This is essentially Rambo II if Rambo II took itself extra seriously but it works and considering the amount of action that’s in it and how well it was done it was made quite cheaply. About $2.5 million to be exact and that’s loose change compared today’s action flicks. Even though this one’s my favorite there is one scene in the third movie I love and it’s my favorite scene out of any movie. These soldiers are holding a bunch of children hostage. One of them takes a teenage girl into one of the cells above the kidnapped children and begins to rape her. All of a sudden Chuck appears and kicks the dude in the face across the room. Then a second guard comes it and Norris and blasts him with his BIG ASS gun. Then the child molester tries to take him out but Norris grabs his hand just as he pulls his pistol and the dudes struggling with it and Norris is holding him with just one hand. Then Chuck takes his gun and flips out a switchblade bayonet and stabs the guy in the gut. But then he cocks the grenade launcher underneath and you see the look on the bad guys face just as Norris blasts him through a door and the molester explodes in fireball.

The Resident Evil Series

Now as a video game fanatic I will be the first to admit that video games don’t do very well but this series is an exception. Unlike other video game movies it takes its own twist while keeping the good things from the game, most obviously the zombies. And I love looking at Milla Jovovich, out of any woman I’ve seen she has THE most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen on girl I mean they are perfect. All are pretty much B Movies but luckily they make the second two work while the first one seemed very standard in sci-fi horror. A lot of critics and people really hated the second one but I watched it on mass over and over again. The zombies look cool, the explosions are big, and the cast are total bad asses. The sound actually is pretty impressive because they used the actual sounds from the blanks on the set instead of the constantly used over gunshots from numerous action films thereby making the guns feel powerful. And unlike many zombie films they make a pretty convincing story on where the zombies came from instead of them just appearing out of nowhere like in many other zombie flicks. The third is the best of the three and that kick ass scene of the zombie crows are pretty cool and the last monster is ugly as shit and the makeup is actually a lot better than the Nemesis in the second one but they had to make it a guy in a suit because they actually wanted to show Milla fighting this guy instead of inserting a CG monster. Anyway it’s a standard Sci-fi horror action monster flick with a lot more flavor but there’s no need to hate it because it’s a video game movie and that they have a bad rep.

Windtalkers

Nicholas Cage has not had a good string of movies for a while now but let us fly back to the days where he was pretty good. Now some of you guys say that when John Woo came to the U.S. he made crap but you know that’s not true, Face Off was off the hook and he saved Tom Cruise by making him cool in Mission Impossible II. This is another one of the exceptions, it didn’t make its money back at the box office because it played too little on the Navajo Code Talkers and was just crazy with violence but it is a cool war film and it is EPIC. Cage plays Joe Enders, a marine who lost his entire platoon and most of his friends after he and his men were led into a trap and he alone came out alive but both physically and mentally scared. He is then paired with Ben Yahzee, played by Adam Beach, a code talker who he must protect. Now for those of you who haven’t seen this I will not spoil anything too big because it is a good dramatic war film and John Woo peppers it up with huge battle sequences especially at the beginning plus this HAS to be watched as the director’s cut because it’s that much better. For those of you that remember the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, take that times three. There are literally thousands of Marines and Japanese fighting each other on a beach and the only thing that was CG were the planes in the air and the ships at sea. It’s one of the more under appreciate war films and I’d really like everyone’s opinion on this one, this is one of the key movies that are ignored.

Rambo

Now I already know that the Carlyle and the Spill Crew gave this a full price but there are some of those clowns out there that are going “Oh Stallone is too old” or they just didn’t see this because it because of Stallone. But this is a bloody as shit action movie and with a very dark twist. Its Rambo running around killing people, it don’t get much better than that. Plus Stallone said that he wanted to make a movie about a war that no one is paying attention to, The Myanmar Civil war. Some may think that the violence is way too over the top but I got news for ya, shit like that is actually happening in Myanmar. That lunatic Than Shwe and his thugs kill anyone that gets in their way and they don’t give a damn about their own people even. That was proven when they accepted no outside aid after that cyclone hit their country last year, tens of thousands of people died in the aftermath. The one thing that makes this movie really stand out was that it boosted the morale of the Karen people, one of the oppressed groups in Myanmar. The use this phrase “Live for nothing, or die for something” as a rally and a battle cry. If that ain’t inspiration I don’t know what is.

True Lies

This is one of Arnold’s slightly silly but ridiculous, bigger than life, action films. It has its funny moments but only a few and this is one of the few times that Arnold is actually up against a bad guy that might actually beat him. He plays a top secret agent who after being married to Jaime Lee Curtis for fifteen years has kept his job secret from her and his daughter. Main plot is that Arnold is tracking down a terrorist that has stolen four nuclear warheads and has smuggled them over to the US. It seems like a pretty simple plot but the action is so over the top as Arnold takes on dozens of bad guys and they stand no chance. Plus you get that super hot scene with Jamie Lee Curtis doin that striptease in front of Arnold and I’m goin “DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN!” The one part that goes WAY over the top is when Arnold fights the chief bad guy on a Harrier II while trying to keep his daughter safe. I won’t mention how it ends though but that amount of action could only be matched when John McClane fought and beat that F-35 Raptor in Live Free or Die Hard.

The Underworld Trilogy

Now don’t get me wrong I didn’t put this one up just to talk about Kate Beckensale in skintight leather jumping around, shooting guns, performing those high kicks, that fierce look on her face when her eyes turn blue, that soft smooth skin of hers during that love making scene. My God that is a mother of two how in the world can she look that good?! DAH! OK! OK! Maybe I did! But screw everyone that said that this was boring or stupid. As I said earlier, mythology is cool to work with in film because it is not actual fact. Things can be taken out and new stuff can be put in and can be made more interesting. The first one was the most dramatic and I will admit it was a little boring but the other two greatly made up for it. I especially love the scene where that vampire explodes into bloody bits when he hits that helicopter blade. And the story behind on how the war between the Vampires and Lycans began and goes is pretty interesting and it sounds believable. The third is very, very cool there are massive swarms of Lycans when they attack, huge environments, people getting killed in brutal ways like getting their faces chewed off and impaled with huge arrows, and that way over the top love scene with Michael Sheen and Rhona Mitra having sex and the edge of a freaking canyon! But what made these movies work the most were directors Len Wiseman and Patrick Tuttapolis. Wiseman can direct action flawlessly and Tuttapolis was the visual director for all three movies and even Independence Day. So it goes to show ya that good directors can make great stuff out of not so great material.

Transformers

Now were gonna get into some controversial stuff here and like I said before I don’t hate any of these films. Transformers is one of the extraordinarily few films I really regret not seeing in theaters, I really should have went. But since I’ve seen it on TV a bajillion times I can actually play it in my head from front to back. Michael Bay takes a simple toy and turns it into two hours of super ass kickory, giant explosions, and cool as hell robots. He also makes a great idea which is hard to do in most films which was make four different stories based on the entire plot of the movie and connecting them all at the end. Of course by the four stories I mean how Sam Witwicky is caught up in the Transformers war, the soldiers who were first attacked by the Decepticons, the analysts who were trying to find out what the Decepticons signal was, and of course the Autobots looking for the All Spark. It is such a fun film to watch but you have those dumbass bloggers who are total buzz kills who think this is just stupid and not really think it through on why it’s stupid. YOU know who you are too! All those ones that put out the crappy gay jokes and toilet humor and I mean “The Love Guru” type of bad. Most clearly the ones who got the new Transformers on bootleg, they hate those reviews because of that (I won’t spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t read them yet). But you guys are use all those little things to berate the movie? I mean come on, you have to look at the entire thing, not base the whole thing on the stuff that was too silly. And it was the same thing with the first one. For example, Leonard Maltin called Megan Fox a candidate for the Pussycat Dolls in his 2009 movie guide but at least he said it was a fun film.

Bad Boys II

THIS IS one of my favorite films of all time. It’s far superior to the first one by the amount of action that was going on. It’s so over the top that you can’t help but love it. Each gunfight feels hard and nasty and it has a good body count. The car chase/shootout with the Haitian Gang is phenomenal. The women are SCALDING HOT and they should be because it wouldn’t be Miami if they weren’t! The way the drug dealer smuggles his product is just nasty and no doubt taken from the ideas of real life drug dealers. Martin Lawrence and Will Smith are the ultimate bad ass duo as Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowery and they eat up each scene when they both argue with each other. However when this film came out it received terrible reviews from critics while the public loved the hell out of it. Critics were call the film a glorification of violence, misogynistic views of women, tasteless jokes, too much foul language, and just plain dumb. And I say to them “And your point is!?” That’s why Michael Bay made this, he wanted to make something that was so bigger than life that people HAD to see it. I loved every second of it and the hell with anyone who bashes this movie cause it is that good.

Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull

Now this is something I REALLY wanted to discuss for a while. I personally want to kick the ass of everyone who keeps crying out “RAPE” about this movie. I mean for God’s sake this movie WAS NOT BAD IN THE LEAST!!! Your sphincter was not violated at all so stop crying like a bunch of little bitches and just enjoy the movie. And if Matt Stone and Trey Parker are reading this then they can both suck my unit! They haven’t done any good South Park episodes in a while anyway so to hell with them. When I was six I watched all three Indy films over and over again and I was just mesmerized by the sheer amount of adventure and I wanted to be Indiana Jones and the newest one is just as good. The stunt scenes were terrific and the jungle car chase was nuts! Of course the one thing that everyone knows that was so extraordinarily over the top was Indy surviving an atomic explosion by hiding in a lead lined refrigerator. But you have to remember that he also was dragged behind a truck at 40 mph, out ran a giant boulder, used a raft for a parachute to escape a plane, jumped 30 stories down a building by using soft canopy’s to cushion his fall, hang on to and fight on a rope bridge after he cut it in half, and go one on one against a tank on horseback. This stuff also happens when the movie starts and if you can accept that and what he’s done in the past then the sky’s the limit. The most important thing is that there is something fascinating and also magical in which Spielberg can do movies and he’s done it his entire career. SO WAKE UP AND FACE REALITY AND IF I HERE SOMEONE CRY RAPE I’LL GO POSTAL! This was a great film.

Tears of The Sun

Not this is one of the movies in which I really want to hear about from my fellow Spill members cause this is not only one of my favorite action films but one of my top five films in general that I truly love. This will also be spoiler free so that anyone who hasn’t seen it can enjoy it surprised, moved, and shocked. Tears of the Sun has to be watch as a director’s cut because it greatly expands the story. Directed by Antoine Fuqua the movie follows a team of Navy SEALs led by Bruce Willis to rescue an American doctor, played by Monica Bellucci, in Nigeria which has just broken out into a bloody civil war. As Willis team leads the doctor to safety he begins to question himself about his duty to the mission or his personal feelings. And even though it looks like that Willis has a stone face you can see that he’s really trying to hold back his emotions as he watches the horrors around him. Now this movie is incredibly difficult to watch in some parts because what Fuqua wanted to do was show the horrors of genocide that have been going on in Africa for almost half a century now. Some of the Africans that starred in it were also actual refugees from African nations torn apart by war. They include Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Sierra Leone, and even Rawanda and if anyone has studied world events then those are some very familiar names of places. As stated in the DVD extras Willis said that it is the most primitive form of warfare, meaning keep killing everyone on the other side until there’s nobody left. Fuqua said that the world has turned a totally blind eye to what’s been going on in Africa and how not only does he want to make a film about it but make it extraordinarily entertaining as well. You also get a lot of good character development in everyone and I mean everyone, the SEAL team, Bellucci, and the refugees. What I love the most about this film is that you get the tremendous satisfaction of some truly evil people getting killed. Before filming started, Willis and his team were trained in actual tactics used by real SEALs so that they moved and fought as real as possible. So after a while you don’t see Bruce Willis and a team of actors, you see a SEAL team. Now when this first came out it was said that this was some “John Wayne” style movie with fictional atrocities, an American prevalence flick, or too one dimensional. To them I say “Sit on it and rotate! You missed the point on why this was made!” To sum it up, this is a great drama, this is a well made action film, it’s the study about the horrors of war, and a man caught up in his emotion’s to do what he knows is right. This is a fantastic film and a definite buy if you ever come across it.