Best action film EVER?

[defy-one]

HEAT ..... Best film. The bank scene and shoot out, the final chase. Pure class from 2 of the very best actors!

 

[slowmotion]

Cliffhanger! Utter tosh but great fun. A wonderful English villain too.

 

[StuAff]

Cliffhanger! Utter tosh but great fun. A wonderful English villain too.

John Lithgow is not English. Craig Fairbrass was one of the cronies though (certainly not counting him as wonderful).

 

[slowmotion]

Well I never knew that. I was convinced he was a Brit. Thanks.

 

[StuAff]

My list- in no order of preference
Heat
Die Hard. The ne plus ultra of preposterous high-concept action movies.
Kill Bill Pt 1
Zatoichi (the only film in this list to feature tap dancing).
Das Boot (any version, though my favourite's the full fat TV edit).
Aliens SE
Starship Troopers
The Wild Bunch
Hard Boiled

 

[dellzeqq]

here's a quiz question - which high speed car sequence got the director arrested after the first screening?

 

[slowmotion]

French Connection? Didn't they shoot it without closing the roads to public traffic or something?

 

[dellzeqq]

I think French Connection was filmed legally. I've read that the chase in To Live and Die in LA was filmed on the fly, but that's not true either - they did some stuff at LAX airport on the fly and got told off good and proper

the film in question is a short called 'C'etait un Rendezvous', which, according to no less an authority than Jeremy Clarkson makes Bullitt look like a cartoon. It is completely mad. The director, Claude Lelouch, put a camera on the front of his own Mercedes and drove across Paris at over 100mph.

Unfortunately it's now owned by some dopey outfit called Spirit Level who go around removing all the pirate copies. There are a whole host of re-makes, but the original is something else.

And, apparently, Lelouch was arrested at the first screening. Which, if you've seen the film, is not surprising.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

I actually love Apolo 13 and the HBO series 'From The Earth To The Moon'.

It might be action, but its action in an entirely different way....... Actually, it would be more 'Real Life Action Thriller'.

A lot is made of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon with only a small amount of fuel left, but to me, he was ALWAYS going to land it, and if he wasn't, he would have waited until the last possible second to abort. This is what I wrote previously:

But that is what they were trained to do, they were test pilots, they were the very best of the best and they knew how to fly things like an acclaimed actor knows how to perform on cue. These guys were chosen becuase they would keep cool under the most tremendous of circumstances and they knew it!

Whats more, they knew their spacecrafts inside out and back to front, and you can bet that Armstrong would have known *exactly* what he could do with it when he was landing on the moon, even when the 1202 alarm sounded. A lesser man might have aborted, but he knew and trusted his craft implicitly, knew what its strengths and weaknesses were, how to get the best out of it, every amp every gram of fuel every extra square foot, he knew, knew its character, probably even knew its name if it was a person, knew instinctively and treated it like his lover, flew it like nothing else existed in the whole universe but himself, Buzz, his craft and the landing site, flew it like it was an extension of himself, flew it 'in the zone'!

Sorry, but that's better than any fictional action film.


Doug, who's specialised subject on Mastermind would be manned space flight from 1961 - c.1972 (i.e. the space race)..... Along with the other different subjects if I got past the first round of course!


I still wink at the moon by the way....

 

[threebikesmcginty]

The director, Claude Lelouch, put a camera on the front of his own Mercedes and drove across Paris at over 100mph.

I thought everyone in Paris drove at over 100mph!

 

[PaulB]

We went to see Mission Impossible 4: The Ghost Protocol and it was a terrific experience; mind you, it was enhanced enormously by being shown on an i-max so you feel you are actually IN the film. Watching it at home on a considerably smaller screen had us change our minds about just how good it was. It's all about context, I suppose. The viewing medium, your mood at the time, your state of inebriation, that sort of thing.

 

[asterix]

Well it has to be something by Charlie Chaplin, obviously.

 

[TheLondonCyclist]

I watched Expendables 2 last night and I must say it was filled with action but the story was so boring!

 

[StuAff]

I think French Connection was filmed legally. I've read that the chase in To Live and Die in LA was filmed on the fly, but that's not true either - they did some stuff at LAX airport on the fly and got told off good and proper

the film in question is a short called 'C'etait un Rendezvous', which, according to no less an authority than Jeremy Clarkson makes Bullitt look like a cartoon. It is completely mad. The director, Claude Lelouch, put a camera on the front of his own Mercedes and drove across Paris at over 100mph.

Unfortunately it's now owned by some dopey outfit called Spirit Level who go around removing all the pirate copies. There are a whole host of re-makes, but the original is something else.

And, apparently, Lelouch was arrested at the first screening. Which, if you've seen the film, is not surprising.

Rented it on DVD...it's absolutely nuts indeed. So many near misses!

 

[dellzeqq]

Rented it on DVD...it's absolutely nuts indeed. So many near misses!

where did you rent it, Stu?