"Action films are baked into the film medium's soft, celluloid tissue. Why was the movie camera invented? To watch things move. And nothing moves like a great action movie. Heck, every take starts with someone shouting, 'Action!' But what makes an action movie great? The genre is already quite subjective. Steven E. de Souza, writer of multiple films venerated below, didn't hear action identified as a distinct genre until the mid-1980s. Before then, it was scattered amongst westerns, war films, martial arts flicks, and police procedurals. Today, action films have re-diversified into superhero soaps and every other type of effect-addled blockbuster — it's hard not to find an action flick at the local multiplex. As such, for the sake of nailing down true greatness, this list includes a little of all the above."
But how does "Hard Boiled" stack up against "The Lord of the Rings"? There's apples to oranges, and then there's Jackie Chan to Arnold Schwarzengger. Seeking out the definitive, a
