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

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'!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/ronin.jpg

#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

http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x89/edwardbayntun/gifs/dramatic-looks-in-ronin.gif

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.

(Which answers the question: no, it's not)

nonin

i've no idea why i've never seen that. i bet it never came out in the UK maybe. Taschen too.. man.

i've never heard anyone non ILX rave about Ronin much.

I really just like it for the scene where sean bean gets coffee spilled on him

sean 'coffee' bean

actually ronin is kind of interesting because a great deal of the "never-explained" references aren't about made-up space wars, theyre about actual real geopolitical conflicts. its a sort of reverse move -- in blade runner the obliqueness of the references gives the universe weight and heft, but in ronin that same obliqueness kind of abstracts the real world out into these gangs of pseudonymous ex-spooks stealing empty briefcases. what do they call the cold war? "recent troubles"?

if I had voted I woulda added a #1, I'm too lazy to make lists anymore tho

man i would love a coffee table book about the coffee ambush scene in ronin

actually ronin is kind of interesting because a great deal of the "never-explained" references aren't about made-up space wars, theyre about actual real geopolitical conflicts. its a sort of reverse move -- in blade runner the obliqueness of the references gives the universe weight and heft, but in ronin that same obliqueness kind of abstracts the real world out into these gangs of pseudonymous ex-spooks stealing empty briefcases. what do they call the cold war? "recent troubles"?

― max, Monday, February 20, 2012 12:17 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is kind of a spy movie thing i feel

cryptic allusions & raised eyebrows

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

― max

yup

man i would love a coffee table book about the coffee ambush scene in ronin

― omar little, Monday, February 20, 2012 12:18 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just tried fruitlessly to find the lego playset somebody made of that scene

I spent some of the movie trying to figure out how Sean Bean would come back, what his angle really was - he's one of the big name stars, surely that wasn't just it?

Pretty okay with both the DeNiros being outside the top 5 - resigned to Inception not showing up - curious as to whether it'll be Children of Men or Lethal Weapon.

i've never heard anyone non ILX rave about Ronin much.

Robert De Niro, action man

6. Iron Eagle

I would totally stab someone for The Good Thief.

Robert De Niro, action man

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, February 20, 2012 12:20 PM (41 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://calitreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/DeNiro-Gun-Taxi-Driver.jpg

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/dn.jpg

yeah ilx totally turned me onto the Miami Vice film in the Mann poll, when everyone else still seemed to hate it. since then though a lotta folk have jumped on board and recognised how amazing it is.

RONIN!!!!! :D

That fucking car chase owns me. And I love that this movie holds up to regular rewatching. It's got a really raw, naturalistic, almost 70's quality to it, that so much of it's intensity is just story + character

Man today's list is giving me a sugar rush like a kid at a birthday party.

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTQ2NzQ0MzgwMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTAzMjEzMQ@@._V1._SY317_CR6,0,214,317_.jpg

yes, watched Miami Vice last night, finally. thx ilx boosters, it was great.

fwiw there is a chance top 5 will have to wail til tomorrow. will let you folks know later~~

#6 shortly...

<3 Omar thank you!!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/childrenmen.png

#6

CHILDREN OF MEN

Alfonso Cuarón
2006
United Kingdom/United States
(628 points, 20 votes)

"Harrowing" is the best word to describe those action sequences. Plus, I love how arbitrary the series of events are: companions you think are going to help Owen are rubbed off sudddenly, wrenchingly, while characters you assume are peripheral suddenly step in. I also admire how Owen isn't given any cute character tags other than that he once had a kid who died young: he's a smarter-than-average guy suddenly thrust into a situation beyond his control.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn

the long tracking shots are unreal. the action sequences are great because, while they owe a slight debt to Saving Private Ryan, they aren't indulgent; they aren't Michael Bay'd to death.

― don weiner

It has a badass opening (EXPLOSION! GO BOOM!) And all the action is pretty awesome: the ambush in the car, the refugee camp. At one point there is blood on the lens which isn't new but it's still a cool device (for me). The thing that works in it's favor the most is that no one spends any time languishing over the deaths of everyone. It could have been one I-will-always-miss-you scene one after another but instead it opts to distract me with more violence.

― earinfections (Nick Twisp)

i loved this but my audience was TERRIBLE - laughing at any halfway funny or surprising line, APPLAUDING when anything bad happens to anybody in the second half like its some fuckin die hard type action/revenge flick, and one frat-lookin dude started laughing really hard during the long awful shot of clive owen in the building, when dude was running up the stairs, and when his girlfriend gave him a wtf look he said as explanation 'there was chickens'

― and what

'Children of Men', the new Alfonso Cuaron sci-fi flick

terrific movie.

still waiting for him to make that gravity flick