Movies The Gentlemen, The Man From UNCLE, Jack Reacher, Bourne Trilogy, The Guest etc.
Just good action, good acting and little downtime from the action/suspense. Need something to pass the time.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is the king of this genre of movie.
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The Running Man, based on a Stephen King book that is pretty good and could've arguably predicted reality TV. It's hilarious from the outfits to the one liners.
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Commando, more hilarious Arnie stuff. This movie has a lot of his original one liners in it and is funny as hell with it's acting.
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End of Days. This was meant to be a serious horror/action film using religious themes and the apocalypse. It's so bad, both Arnie and Gabriel Byrne are on a quest to overact each other.
Does Predator count? It's got very little downtime, I watched it silent in a bar once and ignored my friends for like an hour I was so invested.
I thought Predator was one of his better movies like Terminator, not so much in the 'it's so good, it's bad' category.
Arnie movies are hilarious. Kindergarten Cop is probably my favorite for the sheer number of lines that went into soundboards for prank calling.
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Mad Max: Fury Road is not dumb, it is an excellently crafted piece of film. Telling a story and hitting emotional beats with car chases is exactly what Fast and the Furious tries to do, but fails. Fury Road is a technical masterpiece. No I will not be taking questions.
True but if you aren't into all that you can still easily enjoy it for its non-stop action.
hell yeah. this is my favorite genre. i think of it as "Bro Lit". there's always just enough emotional tension for me, a bored idiot, to buy in to the necessity of some asses getting kicked. before COVID i was hoping to start a movie series with a small group of friends to share and watch the shit out of these movies, later discussing their commonalities and divergences. there is a lot to make fun of in this broad genre, but there is something especially appealing about a good one.
gonna have to check out The Gentlemen and The Guest.
this list isn't comprehensive... it just has ones i could think of that i don't see elsewhere in here, and not all of them are "dumb", but none of them require much brain to stick with.
evil government/corporate conspiracy
- Bourne Legacy (2012)
- American Ultra (2015)
- Haywire (2011)
- Shooter (2007)
- Lethal Weapon 1
- Die Hard 2
- The Hunted (2003)
this predatory crime syndicate is going DOWN
- Homefront (2013)
- Payback (1999)
- Man on Fire (2004)
- The Equalizer (2014)
- Get Carter (2000)
- Lucy (2014)
- Next of Kin (1989)
- Taken (2008)
- Roadhouse (1989)
- The Punisher (2004)
ultimo hombre, against the odds
- The Fugitive (1993)
- The Grey (2012)
this terrorism will not stand, man
- The Jackal (1997)
- Under Siege (1992)
culture clashing for personal enrichment
- The 13th Warrior (1999)
Awesome list. The Gentlemen if you liked Snatch, RocknRolla and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The Guest if you want a ever so slightly slower movie that could be considered a classic.
The Rock (1996) gets my vote. Had a movie night with the friends a few months back and threw it on after watching something else, none of us had seen it before.
None of us were ready.
More personally, The Mummy, Face/Off and The Fifth Element are comfort watches for me in the same vein.
I always did have a soft spot for TimeCop
Especially how the villain eats it in the end
"The same matter can't occupy the same space or whatever." - Albert Einstein
......Red Dawn :/
Also Equilibrium but I will defend that movie with my life
Comedy action with Russel Crow and Ryan Gosling.
Incompetent private eye gets caught up in stuff outside of his abilities and gets constantly bailed out by his daughter and a local man who moonlights as a hired thug.
Its not constant action but the action scenes are enjoyable, decent plot movement, jokes and darkly funny things going on in the background.
Loved the Nice Guys, genuinely a great movie to just veg out to after you've seen it for the first time.
Pacific Rim.
It's so dumb, but Charlie Day carries most of the dumb parts and the big robot action is really well done robot action. Go to the bathroom during the Charlie Huffman scenes tho.
Dredd (2012) and its chronologically adjacent mirror The Raid: Redemption (2011). Both are pure, perfect distillations of action that contain constant action and absolutely no deviation from the plot for the sake a b plot or some such contrivance.
I nominate for Shoot-em-up as the best pure distillate of action-movie shlock.
