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

xpost to some dude- I was in high school when this came out and yeah, among my friends and I at least, it was "no way, this guy looks like an idiot." But a buddy went to see it and came back ecstatic, the rest followed suit. Funny, the debate with us then was whether the best movie that year was Die Hard or Young Guns.

i think one of the reasons Die Hard works so well is that, despite the action-hero status he would immediately attain afterward, Bruce Willis sort of translates as a 'regular workaday dude' a lot more of aptly than say Schwarzanegger or Stallone would have - and that kind of persona is sorta essential to the film's efficacy.

that said, I could maybe see Harrison Ford having pulled it off tho.

i'll take y'alls word for it, i was really young at the time so my earliest childhood memories are of willis as the unstoppable action star/blues singer

i think one of the reasons Die Hard works so well is that, despite the action-hero status he would immediately attain afterward, Bruce Willis sort of translates as a 'regular workaday dude' a lot more of aptly than say Schwarzanegger or Stallone would have - and that kind of persona is sorta essential to the film's efficacy.

that said, I could maybe see Harrison Ford having pulled it off tho.

― Jurgis Rudkus // Dick Butkus (Pillbox), Wednesday, February 29, 2012 3:30 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this

Scharzanegger, for example, never could have fit into that air vent.

It's funny, I have a friend who's a couple years younger and probably only ever knew of Bruce Willis's action roles and it was a hard sell trying to convince her that he's done good non-action work!

willis' regular dude thing is essential to this, i mean he spends most of the movie in terror and on the run.

WELCOME TO THE PARTY PAL

god i love die hard

The bit toward the beginning where the guy with a gun is doing the "hah, you're a cop, you wouldn't hurt me like that" bit and McClane responds with a line about how his boss keeps trying to tell him that

Harrison Ford did it pretty well in the Clancy one with the Irish terrorists laying siege to his vacation home. I think that was a movie. Patriot Games? Also, he was President Bruce WIllis in "Air Force One."

ford's more of a righteous angry guy who sticks his finger in your face. i couldnt imagine him wearing a tanktop and making fists with his toes

you need to watch Hollywood Homicide

was it that much of a hard sell? i mean he was kind of a raffish tough guy even in Moonlighting, and that was a pretty popular action movie leading man template already at the time with Harrison Ford, etc.

I remember there was an early series of teaser poster that didn't feature Willis at all, only a picture of an empty theater seat and tag copy that promised to "blow you through the back wall of the theater"

bruce willis will blow you in the back of the theater

http://robotmantheblog.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/reluctanthero2.jpg

I actually just sat and watched Die Hard (rather than just seeing bits and pieces of it in passing) for the first time the other day.

Damn. Y'all were OTMFM.

Downside: after the first half, it was kind of just a ride.

but...

the best ride EVER

but....

this time he has SHOES

tried watching die hard the other night, fell asleep after 20 minutes and woke up for the last hour. well done but not really my thing. too much buddy movie bullshit and crowd pleasing antics. I guess I like my action a lot darker, or with robots.

also watched blade runner again. I love a lot of things about it, but if that's an action movie so is aquirre wrath of god. pace is glacial and the fight scenes are anticlimactic. final battle w/ batty is entertaining but mainly because of hauer's taunting teutonic steez. how that guy didn't become an intl superstar is beyond me.

in my head he did?

I still think he should have been the real villain in the next Batman film

xxpost Huh - I don't normally get into bro-down movies, and I sort of have Die Hard in my head as the buddy movie bullshit movie that even buddy movie bullshit haters love. But YMMV! I feel like you missed the best parts of the movie - the last chunk has most of the action and the crowd-pleasing payoffs but the middle is where the movie earns that, with Willis running scared and throwing around what bravado he's got just to keep from freaking out. And the buddy-movie connection with VelJohnson grows out of that really perfectly - they just kind of find each other on the radio, they're both powerless in the situation, but Powell is the steady shoulder McClane needs.

Without all that stuff it'd actually be a pretty boring movie, IMO, just a tough guy in air-ducts killing off faceless bad guys.

Not trying to convince you to watch it again of course, just working out as I'm typing why I love this movie so much. It's like Lean On Me: The Movie.

Even more like Lean on Me: The Movie than Lean on Me, the movie?

http://i1.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/250/draft_lens18403549module152800599photo_1314623406lean_on_me_morgan_freeman

Just watched Bridge on the River Kwai last night for the first time.

O

M

G

so KLASSIK

love that movie!

Huh - I don't normally get into bro-down movies, and I sort of have Die Hard in my head as the buddy movie bullshit movie that even buddy movie bullshit haters love. But YMMV! I feel like you missed the best parts of the movie - the last chunk has most of the action and the crowd-pleasing payoffs but the middle is where the movie earns that, with Willis running scared and throwing around what bravado he's got just to keep from freaking out. And the buddy-movie connection with VelJohnson grows out of that really perfectly - they just kind of find each other on the radio, they're both powerless in the situation, but Powell is the steady shoulder McClane needs.

yeah it's kinda unfair to judge a movie having missed a chunk of it, but I woke up right when veljohnson showed up on the scene so I caught that whole character arc. the movie's pitch perfect in its execution but the stock characters piled up so quickly I couldn't get engaged. figured I must have missed the hooker with the heart of gold while I was asleep.

hahaha, okay, fair enough. I guess I'm a sucker for genre work that's well-executed with a couple of twists on the formula. Like, I don't mind that the Wrong-Headed Commanding Officer, for example, is a total off-the-shelf element, because he's easily the best Wrong-Headed Commanding Officer I've ever seen in a movie. Plus there's that one moment when he's totally blase about the FBI guys getting blown up that kind of makes him suddenly relatable. It reminds me of when some ILXor praised Marge Simpson joining in on the "you don't win friends with salad" chant - just instantly humanizes the character. Superficial humanization, yes, cheap crowd-pleasing humanization, sure, but hey, it's a popcorn movie and it delivers the goods.

I think the only thing I really don't like about the movie is the extended mano-a-mano with Godunov - that seems faceless, generic, and also a bit grimmer than the rest of the show.

otm. it's weird 'cause I watch all sorts of grubby violent movies but earnestly cheery sadism like in the willis/gudunov fight, that macho joy of dominance, is a turn off. schwarzenegger could've made it work but he then again he wouldn't have been able to fit in the air shafts so I guess it's a wash.

xpost Rutger Hauer was an international superstar. It was movies like "Blade Runner" that brought him to America and, thus, made him international.

watched Ip Man last night on netflix. i don't know how japanese people feel about that movie, but the fight scenes were suitably, uh, endless. so there is that. i dug it.

I meant leading man superstar, like he should've been on par with harrison ford, stallone, schwarzenegger, etc. but he never found the right vehicle and was stuck in b-movie direct-to-video hell by the 90s.

xp

i should have voted for blind fury. and the hitcher. NOT the ostermann weekend though.

rutger was already in his 50's by the 90's. maybe action fame came too late. kinda crazy that a senior citizen would make hobo with a shotgun. but everyone has bills to pay. and i'm glad he made it.

love how this has its own wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_in_rain_soliloquy

it is super heavy. i always tear up. i dunno what ridley scott was thinkin with the dove though.

Hauer described this as "opera talk" and "hi-tech speech" with no bearing on the rest of the film, so he "put a knife in it" the night before filming, without Scott's knowledge.[7] In interview with Dan Jolin, Hauer said that these final lines showed that Batty wanted to "make his mark on existence ... the robot in the final scene, by dying, shows Deckard what a real man is made of."[8]

When Hauer performed the scene, the film crew applauded and some even cried. This was due to the power of the dying speech coming at the end of an exhausting shoot.[9]

damn, rutger

This was due to the power of the dying speech coming at the end of an exhausting shoot.[9]

The Power of The Dying Speech Coming At The End of An Exhausting Shoot is actually pretty underrated as far as e6 records go, honestly

see, dude had instincts. coulda been one of the all-time greats.

watching it the other night I noticed for the first time how "time to die" echoes leon and batty saying the same thing to deckard earlier in the film.

also never noticed how terrible the music in blade runner is, ridley scott should've hired popol vuh

time to die

time to die

time to....

die.

also never noticed how terrible the music in blade runner is, ridley scott should've hired popol vuh

― I GUESS THAT CINNABON GETTIN EATEN (Edward III), Thursday, March 1, 2012 12:58 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yo what

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/426451_10150654202347137_686202136_9265254_189122235_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/422009_10150654204937137_686202136_9265259_1211813738_n.jpg

c'mon dude you're really gonna rep for this skinemax quality doo doo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9KAqhbIZ7o

xp

blade runner is perfect. i'm banning you. where the hell is that button...

yeah man absolutely!

blade runner OST is probly the best vangelis album of all time!