Action Classics of the Silver Screen; alexdg1 Weighs In Aug 15 '04 (Updated Sep 03 '04)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Movies Under the Tuscan Sun From $9 Casablanca From $3 The Bottom Line From Indiana Jones to John McClane and then some, these action-adventure heroes and their films keep audiences coming back for more. 1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981): During a 1977 vacation in Hawaii, Star Wars creator George Lucas asked his friend Steven Spielberg what his post-Close Encounters of the Third Kind project was going to be. "I've always wanted to do a James Bond film," Spielberg replied. Lucas smiled and said, "I've got something better," then went on to describe archaeologist/adventurer Indiana Smith's raid on the Lost Ark of the Covenant. It was an homage to the old Republic serials of the Thirties and Forties, replete with loyal sidekick, feisty love interest, dastardly Nazis, a slimy rival, and 7,000 snakes. With a change of moniker to "Indiana Jones" and the casting of Harrison Ford, Raiders of the Lost Ark gave audiences a new hero and began a legendary film franchise which has been most imitated but never surpassed. 2. Die Hard(1988): John McTiernan (Predator) directed Jeb Stuart and Steven de Souza's adaptation of a novel by Roderick Thorp about a New York detective who is pitted against a team of well-financed, highly-motivated and heavily armed criminals in a Los Angeles skyscraper. Like Raiders of the Lost Ark, it's an action movie rooted in the traditions of the cliffhanger, but it also traces its origins to other genres as well, including police dramas, buddy pictures (Bruce Willis' John McClane, as brave as he is, would have been toast without Reginald VelJohnson's LAPD Sgt. Al Powell's assistance), and the all-American Western. For 132 heartstopping minutes, Die Hard takes audiences into stairwells, elevator shafts, unfinished office suites and a high-tech vault as McClane faces off against one of filmdom's best-written "bad guys," Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber, in an effort to foil the villains' plot and save 30 hostages, including McClane's estranged wife Holly (the wonderful Bonnie Bedelia.) Also like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Die Hard spawned off a successful franchise that made Bruce Willis an international movie star. It also inspired the genre of "lone hero vs. band of terrorists/highly efficient criminals in confined areas" that peaked in the mid-1990s (Speed, Under Siege) and petered out as audience interest waned and the quality of material declined. 3. Air Force One (1997): While on the surface this is a variation on the Die Hard formula, this Harrison Ford vehicle has a simple premise: After President James Marshall (Ford) assists the Russian President in a bid to remove a ruthless dictator from power in the former Soviet republic of Kazhakstan, Russian ultra-Communist terrorists led by Ivan Korshunov (Gary Oldman), take over the President's plane on its way back to the U.S. from Moscow. Marshall, who by happenstance is separated from his family and staff during the takeover, must use his military training (he's a former Air Force pilot) and his wits to regain control of Air Force One and rescue the hostages before the terrorists achieve their aims. Andrew Marlowe's intelligent screenplay, Wolgang Petersen's (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm) directing, and fine performances from Ford, Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson, Liesel Matthews, William H. Macy, and Dean Stockwell lift this exciting if at times implausible action-adventure film to the highest levels of the genre. (Also noteworthy is the late Jerry Goldsmith's stirring score.) 4. The Fugitive (1993): Director Andrew Davis' (Under Siege) feature film adaptation of the classic 1960s television series, was one of 1993's biggest hits, thanks to the talents of Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, who earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard. Ford plays Chicago surgeon Dr. Richard Kimble (the late David Janssen's TV role), whose life is turned upside down when he is falsely accused of murdering his wife Helen (the luminous Sela Ward). Taken to the Area Six police station, he undergoes the standard investigative process but can't convince the skeptical detectives that a one-armed intruder is the killer. Arrrested, convicted and sentenced to death, Kimble is given a sudden and unexpected reprieve when a failed escape attempt causes the prison bus he's aboard to run off the road and land on a railroad track -- and in the path of an oncoming train. Kimble escapes, and a classic chase is on. Actually, it's several chases, for as Kimble runs from Gerard, he heads toward Chicago on his own search for the true killer, no matter where -- or to who -- the path leads him. 5. The Great Escape (1963): James Clavell and W.R. Burnett fictionalized Paul Brickhill's non-fiction book about a daring escape by Allied POWs from a high-security Stalag for producer-director John Sturges' now-classic action-adventure film. Although it starred several American big-name actors of the era (Charles Bronson, James Coburn, James Garner, and Steve McQueen) along with a top-notch British cast, no American officers actually escaped in the real-life attempt. The film's producers, to their credit, acknowledge this with a "card" that states that the characters are all composites and that certain events were condensed, but that the details of the escape were accurate. The film is not only a fine (albeit fictionalized) recreation of an ambitious plan to get over 200 Allied prisoners out of a Luftwaffe prison near the Polish border, but it is a great action-adventure movie that features one of the most exciting -- and most famous -- motorcycle chases in movie history as Steve McQueen makes a hell-for-leather dash to the Swiss border on a Nazi courier's two-wheeled machine. 6. The Naked Prey (1966): Cornel Wilde starred, wrote, and directed this tour de force about a European explorer who, along with a comrade, crosses paths with a hostile African tribe. Captured and witness to his friend's murder, the explorer escapes into the jungle, where he must not only evade the persistent tribesmen in this variation on the classic story "The Most Dangerous Game," but he also learns to use his wits and physical stamina to "outrun, outwit, and outlast" everything nature and man throws in his path. 7. The Flight of the Phoenix (1965): A twist on the plane-crashes-somewhere-remote-survivors-must-figure-how-to-get-back-to-civilization, this mid-1960s film features James Stewart as the not-so-perfect pilot of what looks like an old C-119 Flying Boxcar and a cast of international stars (Richard Attenborough, Hardy Kruger, and Ernest Borgnine, just to name a few) who must figure out a way to survive after their plane crashes in the desert. As much a character study as it is an action picture, it overcomes its melodramatic cliches by coming up with an inventive -- if somewhat risky -- solution to the situation. 8. The Hunt for Red October (1990): John McTiernan followed up his success with 1988's Die Hard by directing this taut adaptation of Tom Clancy's first Jack Ryan novel about a Soviet sub commander and a select group of officers who commandeer -- subtly -- the Red Navy's newest ballistic missile sub and attempts a westward underwater run to the East Coast of the United States. When the Soviet Navy gives chase, it's up to CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) to figure out what Captain First Rank Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) intends to do before a crisis starts and inadvertently starts World War III. 9. Jaws (1975): Most people would place this film in the Horror category, but although this Peter Benchley-Carl Gottlieb adaptation of Benchley's best-selling beach novel about a white shark terrorizing a coastal tourist town during the summer season is more a man vs. nature adventure film than a true "creature feature" like The Beast, which is about a gargantuan squid that attacks humans off the coast of California. Yes, the Benchley-Gottlieb screenplay has its share of truly scary moments, but when Chief Brody (Roy Scheider), Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and veteran sea captain Quint (Robert Shaw) head out to sea aboard the Orca to hunt down the great white shark, director Steven Spielberg takes his characters and the audience on an exciting and heart-stopping pursuit, where the hunters become the hunted and the hero (Brody) must find the courage to overcome the relentless force of nature that is embodied by the great white shark. Sadly, the movie's finer qualities have been overshadowed by a fixation on the box office gross (it became the first "blockbuster" of the modern era, earning over $100,000,000 in its first run) and by the three sequels (none of which were directed by or otherwise connected to Spielberg) a money-hungry MCA-Universal put out over the next decade. 10. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989): Although 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the second installment of the "Raiders" series, was well-done and had more than its share of exciting action sequences replete with stunts and gags, it was too dark and off-putting for some viewers. (Even producer George Lucas admitted that it became much darker than he'd intended.) It wasn't until 1989, when Steven Spielberg, Lucas, and series star Harrison Ford joined forces for this more lively chapter that centers on the search for the Holy Grail...and the more interesting father-and-son relationship between Indy and Professor Henry Jones (Sean Connery). The screenplay by Jeffrey Boam (based on a story by Lucas and Menno Meyjes) recaptured the sense of fun and tongue-in-cheek wit of Larry Kasdan's Raiders script while adding a bit more depth to Indiana Jones' character.

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