Allow me to pre-empt you. No Face/Off? No The Great Escape? No Bourne? Nothing from Bruckheimer and/or Simpson? Call this an action list?
Xan Brooks wrote on Sunday that "most films are crime films". Well, even more of them are action films, which means defining an action film is a near-impossible task, especially as what constitutes an action film has changed dramatically in the past 40 or 50 years. Action used to mean adventure, meaning a task to be achieved against seemingly insuperable odds, in the face of physical danger – that's the action of The Great Escape, or the great 30s and 40s swashbucklers, or the classic Hitchcock actioners. You could go through a two-hour action movie without once seeing a notable landmark destroyed. Nowadays, action means an explosion every five minutes, collateral damage, and no heed paid to consequences (I sometimes find myself watching modern action films and wondering: If this were real life, who would be liable for all this damage? How many years would the insurance and reinsurance lawsuits drag on for?).
The perfect action film should set the heart racing while still giving some food for thought – which is why Where Eagles Dare is, for me, the greatest movie in the genre. When it was made, in 1968, its stunts were as sophisticated and dangerous as anything that had been seen on screen – that jump from the cable car into the frozen river is real people, jumping from a real cable car, into a real frozen river; its twists were as ingeniously preposterous as anyone could want; and in Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood it had stars with charisma to spare, unaccompanied by the brassy self-aggrandisement modern action roles seem to demand.
So what films hit you like a bullet to the gut, a kick to the head or a tonne of TNT in the basement of your metaphorical skyscraper? Do you go for gritty realism, or for pyrotechnics? For odd couples or lone gunmen? Let us know.
