Movies That Were Probably Made By a Spasm of Six Year-Olds on Acid: The Top 75 Action Films Poll Results Thread

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#9

LÉON: THE PROFESSIONAL

Luc Besson
1994
United States/France
(510 points, 16 votes)

One of the best movies in the "melancholy assassin" genre, and an amazing performance by Jean Reno.

― Tuomas

Cool story all the way out, then the last 30 minutes, pfft.

― Nichole Graham

What, you mean the fucking incredible action climax!? Increasingly over-the-top action, when well done (the professional, time and tide, the long kiss goodnight) has been the best thing about the movies in the last 40 or so years.

― Dan I.

Syd Mead's proto paintings that are featured in the DVD doc are just your proper actual most-breath-taking-movie-set-design ever. just gorgeous stuff that barely anyone saw for 20 odd years.

I probably need to see Blade Runner again. I've only seen it once, but, aside from the visuals, I was totally underwhelmed. Is there a particular version among the fifteen in circulation that stands out from the pack?

the ilx version

We should have a melancholy assassin poll for the benefit of those who will bemoan that Leon didn't place higher.

that Blade Runner doc is actually kind of heartbreaking as a farewell to practical effects

Leon, hell yeah! It's a great example of how a flick can be both an impressive character study and a thrilling action movie.

ya right leon the professional is better than like 90% of the movies that have already placed

xp yeah the 'Final Cut' is your man. it's basically the Director's Cut from 1992 with extra bits/effects/violence then added and the whole thing tarted up some more. makes the Director's Cut redundant. no voice over though and some people like that (i do too but not THAT much).

We should have a melancholy assassin poll for the benefit of those who will bemoan that Leon didn't place higher.

― Unleash the Chang (he did what!) (Austerity Ponies), Monday, February 20, 2012 11:53 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

there's a thread for this iirc

If anyone wants to use the fact that I left The French Connection, Blade Runner and Leon off my speculation list to ignore anything I have to say ever again, I'm okay with that.

* extra bits put back in i should say not 'added' (although there is a tiny bit of that too i guess; effects made better etc).

the Final Cut is where it's at, for sure

I love Leon, but ... too high.

Wtf, looks like that for some reason I forgot Seven Samurai from my ballot. That one would've definitely been in my top 10.

Even though Blade Runner ends with an epic action scene, the rest of the movie is so non-actiony I never even considered voting for it. And even that final action scene ends with pacifism triumphant.

Tuomas, I think you will agree that the story of Leon could have been told without action sequences. Plus, the plot was resolved with an orphan planting a houseplant.

kinda agree on the ending of leon not really fitting, tbh

Blade Runner is perfect, and prob even actiony enough (if only just)

Hahaha!

(x-post)

Tuomas! You're short-changing things again. I don't think of it as an action film, but the film opens with a shooting, has a chase scene and shooting followed by a second shooting, an assault/eye gouging, and then FINALLY that long action end.

I love the ending of Leon.

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#8

HEAT

Michael Mann
1995
United States
(527 points, 15 votes, 1 first place)

In the big heist-gone-wrong scene at the end, the automatic fire sounds like you imagine it should--big, flat, booming staccato echoing around all the canyons formed by those corporate towers--instead of like gunfights in movies usually sound. There are a lot of silly things about that film, Pacino's performance chief among them, but it did sweat the details.

Perhaps Pacino was going for the poetry with that turn. Consider his reading of "Cause she's got a GRRREAT ASSSSS . . . andyou'vegotyourheadallthewayUPit!"

― Lee G

i think this film has much more classical restraint than it gets credit for, despite all the longeurs and pacino's very unclassical overacting (which i like here, usually, and anyway i think pacino has a clause built into his contract that allows him to scream at least twice in every film). in a way it seems like one of the few true inheritors of something like "anatomy of a murder," one of those long, intricate, extremely ambitious and relentlessly objective (which is to say morally complex) preminger films.

― amateur!st

heat is totally rocking the wild-bunch thing. i mean i read deniro's choice at the end as sort of a statement that he really doesn't want to leave the life behind and get away at all. i mean, the point of the film is really two guys more in love with one another than with anyone else in their lives, and neither of whom wants to see a moment when it will end. the parallelism between the fantastic "we just got made" scene and the scene where they end up in the diner is sorta similar, like a mutual flirtation.

the other thing i like is how the "just one last thing, then i'm out" here carries with it this sense of history, like everyone knows that's what you're supposed to do, and it never works, and you might as well go through with it anyway. unlike, say carlito's way or any other flik where you really have this sense the main character is being delusionally stupid, there's a sense of purpose and deliberation that's pulled off almost just by deniro's acting.

― Sterling Clover

mann is very much one of the architects of a certain look, for better or worse--tony scott and ridley scott too. mann tends to be much, much more clever that either (and especially than tony) in his staging and patterns of close-ups, long shots, etc. for someone who spent much of his career working in TV and who has been accused of bringing a TV aesthetic to the cinema, his films are remarkably fluid, and rigorously balanced ("ali" wasn't as well balanced, so it felt like a film whose parts were greater than the whole).

i guess what i react to with skepticism is the idea of mann as a stylist in the european auteur mode, where some french critics and some american critics have placed him, using catchwords like "minimalism" etc. i think they focus exclusively on where mann seems to part from his contemporaries, which misses, i think, mann's achievement (or a big part of it), which is using a very contemporary style in unusually expressive and concentrated ways.

i don't really like al pacino very much in general, but he works perfectly in this film even while playing "al pacino."

― amateur!st

Heat -- the epic poem of heist films?

I think we can all agree Michael Mann has the best gun sounds

so tuomas you're saying that you didn't vote for blade runner because the plot of the film is resolved through action?

this run has been a+

and yes michael mann has the best gun sounds

We should have a melancholy assassin poll for the benefit of those who will bemoan that Leon didn't place higher.

― Unleash the Chang (he did what!) (Austerity Ponies), Monday, February 20, 2012 11:53 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

there's a thread for this iirc

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (dayo), Monday, February 20, 2012 11:55 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

assassins slowly crumbling

I just rickroll'd myself

prob time to retire that joke then dude

Its Deniro and Pacino! In the same scene!!

Meh...

it's a protest

True to form with ILX film polls, it looks like I'm gonna find the bulk of the top fifteen pretty underwhelming.

there's LOADS of action in Blade Runner! gun battles, shootouts, chases, etc

Man, Heat is so good. Such a melancholy ending, great use of Moby. Great score, period. Street gun battle all time, and the list of character actors in this thing is legion!

.. plus Henry Rollins and Tone Loc!

I mean, Ton Loc is in this!

jinx!

hahaha

it's a good point though, really

arf!

Anyone besides me have the incredible FX Feeney Michael Mann coffee table book?

I didn't vote for Heat, but I'm v glad it placed.

In the big heist-gone-wrong scene at the end, the automatic fire sounds like you imagine it should--big, flat, booming staccato echoing around all the canyons formed by those corporate towers--instead of like gunfights in movies usually sound.

best gun sounds yup

Deniro and Pacino in the same scene is kinda meh, but I usually don't judge my movies by the marketing or buzz. i.e. Matrix: I don't care that it blew some stoners' minds with weak philosophy 101, or that some educators rallied around it. What does that have to do with me watching some badass shit that was fun for a couple hours?

i remember seeing it and liking it, revisiting it and not feeling it, then watching it again a few years ago and it became one of my favorites. every night after work i drive down 'heat shootout alley'!

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#7

RONIN

John Frankenheimer
1998
United States
(560 points, 17 votes, 2 first place)

there's an essential seriousness to the violence: bullets are tiny little things but they'll cut right into your fucking body. the guns sound like guns (ie, like fake guns! pop pop). even hoary old movie tropes like a car chase through some cafe tables looks really awful -- i think the movie is edited really well, it lingers for an extra beat on the collateral.

― gff

The masculine hyper-competence is so goddamn well done, communication by eyeblink and barely visible curl of lip. Reno is, in a way, DeNiro's second but there's no lack of status for him, he's cool, he's got nothing to prove anymore.

― Laurel

if there is any doubt, there is no doubt.

― That one guy that hit it and quit it

Draw it again. Draw it again. You're the ace field man, draw it again. It's a simple diagram, just draw it again. Draw what you say! Draw it again! Draw it again!! Two shooters, car comes through here, shooters across from each other kill each other dead. Oh my? Where'd you learn that?

― omar little

you think i'm reluctant because i'm happy?

― s1ocki

i am such a sucker for oblique never-explained references to events outside movies

― max

ha, ditto

god this movie is so fucking good

― itdn put butt in the display name (gbx)

mcelhone is so great--"i trust we wont have to tell you to forget us. we wont forget you." or whatever.

― max

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RONIN directed by john frankenheimer written by david mamet and starring robert deniro

woah there's a Michael Mann coffee table book??

would display michael mann coffee table book

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41tkbm5g7yL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

i am such a sucker for oblique never-explained references to events outside movies

― max

very 'max' sentiment at the mo

It's really quite good, with interviews, sketches and all sorts of stuff throughout.

lol. blade runner and ronin are like my favorite movies of all time so

is ronin canon outside of ilx yet?

Man, you guys love Ronin.