11. The Matrix – Morpheus/Neo Matchup

“Do you believe that my being stronger or faster has anything to do with my muscles in this place? You think that’s air you’re breathing now?”

It is the rare sequence that manages to combine exposition with action at all, much less do both well. But this scene from the Wachowski Bros. 1999 breakthrough meshes Hong Kong ethic with sci-fi-losophy to help explain the film’s premise. It also happens that another word for this mesh is gaming.

The timing of The Matrix could hardly have been more ideal. PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox were all within a year or two of release. Within three years, video game revenues would surpass those of theatrical release. Gaming was about to break. This is an action sequence for that generation.

Intellectually, the parallels are clear. Morpheus and Neo fight in a computer construct. Their agility and strength are based on mental, not physical parameters. Aurally, the techno in the sequence’s mid-section evokes fighting games. Visually the iconography is even more blatant. They are framed initially like they are in MortalVirtuaStreetKombat 3. All they’re missing are status bars above their heads.

(The rest of the photography goes light years beyond this device. Cinematographer Bill Pope combines gorgeous slo-mo shots with fluid Steadicam choreography, dancing with Morpeus and Neo as they spar.)

All this focus on video game imagery is not to say the filmmakers abandon that which makes a traditional action sequence great. You still have character revealed through combat. As they begin, the poses they strike tell you everything you need to know about their state of mind. Neo is cocky, full of excess motion. Morpheus is calm, stately.

The fight itself is unique in that, because of the context of the scene, few punches actually connect. Master Woo-ping Yuen manages to make choreography composed of blocks interesting. It doesn’t hurt that the context also allows him to make liberal use of wirework, with the Wachowskis providing license in the script, as gravity is a malleable concept in this universe.

In another nice character touch, Mouse manages to illicit the first moment of enthusiasm from the jaded crew by announcing who is fighting. This shows how you can enhance a sequence by giving it an audience especially when you show that audience, which has been phased by nothing else, is suddenly paying attention. It means we should be paying attention.

Again, we see the advantages of teaching your actors to fight, in this case, over 8 months of training. Keanu improvises a little nose rub move in the middle of the scene that just nails Neo’s attitude. This is what an actor can bring to a fight that a stuntman, because you really can’t see his face, cannot.

Of course, stuntmen would probably not bruise each other as much. Keanu and Laurence got pretty banged up.

See also: The rest of The Matrix, any fight in Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Rock bar fight in The Rundown.

Next: The final 10. Some are obvious. Others will probably piss you off.

12. The Untouchables – The Station Steps

“Take him.”

As with #29, the key to this pivotal sequence from Brian De Palma’s 1987 gangland epic is anticipation. He pulls a similar trick with a sequence at the Canadian border earlier in the film, but the payoff here is far more lyrical.

De Palma is the type of director to lovingly craft a sequence. He conducts this one like an opera. In fact, each scene in the film reaches beyond being connective tissue for the larger plot and survives on its own as a self-contained story, part of the reason this sequence achieves more than just being pretty gunplay.

It doesn’t hurt that the score for this opera is provided by the great Ennio Morricone. Building from an innocent lullaby to a chilling adagio, the music seems more fit for a horror film, but has the unexpected effect of imbuing the shootout with a certain poetry.

Part of what makes this scene so effective is the moment of release. After letting the tension build as we wait with Ness for the bad guys to arrive, De Palma gives us an angle on Ness’ priceless reaction to seeing broken-nose-guy, who he knows will recognize him. Costner puts on a flicker of panic that hardens into resolve before he wordlessly blows the guy away and starts the slo-mo shootout to end all slo-mo shootouts.

The sequence itself is a collection of tableaus as much as the film is a collection of vignettes. The composition of each shot in this sequence is some of the most sumptuous you’ll see in any set piece.

Part of the beauty of the composition is the sparseness of the station. This isn’t just a factor of the late-night setting. A deliberate choice was made to create sparse compositions throughout the film, to emphasize the smaller population and more open spaces of the period.

Cinematographer Stephen H. Burum decided to achieve this effect by emphasizing negative space, and you get plenty of that here – adding to the grand oil painting feel of each frame.

This is De Palma as a master of his camera. He even uses zooms effectively. By the late 80′s, no one knew how to use those anymore, or even bothered (today it’s only done ironically, unless you’re Sidney Lumet and you actually know what you’re doing). Here he uses the technique in a flawless reveal when Stone enters the fray.

Once again, the more expensive sequence would have been lamer. Originally, this whole thing was to unfold on a stopped train, but finding a period train proved to be cost-prohibitive.

All that being said, this is a straight-up rip-off of the Odessa steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin. There are segments that are practically shot for shot. And the sailors just hammer it home (it’s a Russian sailor rebellion that gets things going in Potemkin).

Is it fair to call it an homage as well? Little from column A, little from column B. It’s no different than De Palma’s relationship to Hitchcock. But, to be honest, I find this sequence more compelling, due respect to the co-inventor of the montage.

Maybe if Eisenstein had included a slo-mo gun toss.

See also: All of Battleship Potemkin, the climax of The Wild Bunch, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” sequence in Face/Off.

Next: Whoah.

13. Back to the Future – Back to the Future (yes, the chapter is actually called that)

“Time circuits on. Flux capacitor…fluxing.”

There is a type of action sequence that requires no violence, only problems. The climactic set piece of Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 classic sets a difficult, precise goal and then makes it increasingly harder for its heroes to achieve.

Never before has an action sequence been infused with such an intractable sense of urgency. It is the domain of time travel films to be centered around a particular event, but the moment here is so exact that it will literally never happen again.

This quality takes advantage of the film’s theme. The movie opens with the most tangible representation of time – clocks. Clocks appear in two crucial locations in this sequence. A big one with Doc Brown and a little one with Marty, tracking the parallel narratives of the piece.

There is a cohesion to all of this: clocks represent time, a precise moment in time (tied to and noted by a clock) is required for their plot to work. I’ve always found it ironic that action cinema rarely takes advantage of visual cues to punctuate theme, since it is, by its very nature, the most visual genre. But Back to the Future gets its visual motif on without hesitation.

On a gut level, the sequence works even without that artistry, since Zemeckis finds little touches to make a horrible situation even worse. Like the cable ripping through Doc Brown’s pants or the cord coming loose on the other end, even after Marty’s started his run and there couldn’t possibly be time for another obstacle. (See the “Are you fucking kidding me?” school of tension in #26.)

The musical cues also do their part. As Marty is driving up and we cut back and forth between him and Doc Brown, the music acts to hurry Brown on. The triumphant theme, by Alan Silvestri, keeps cutting out when the image cuts back to Brown, as if to say “ready yet?” with the silence answering “nope.”

This is a case where the budget forced a better concept. Originally, the sequence was supposed to take place at a bomb test site in Nevada, an atomic explosion being the only way to generate the necessary power.

That sequence was deemed too expensive, so Zemeckis and co-writer/producer Bob Gale came up with this instead. The only reference to the original plan can be seen in the marquee on the theater behind Doc Brown at the end advertising The Atomic Kid, a Mickey Rooney film that takes place on a nuclear test site.

Missing the beginning, but you get the point…

See also: The rest of Back to the Future, the end of Romancing the Stone, all of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (and, of course, Harold Lloyd in Safety Last! but we’ve mentioned that one already).

Next: 62 years is a long time to wait to rip off a classic.

14. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace – Duel of the Fates

“We’ll handle this.”

If you’re wondering whether or not someone is a bad-ass, try this little test demonstrated in George Lucas’ 1999 prequel. Send an assault force of twenty or so armed fighters against him. If, after just looking at the guy, they’re all like “Fuck this!” and go to fight an armed droid detail instead, he’s probably a bad-ass.

And so begins the highest-ranking duel on our list, interspersed with three other far lamer action sequences. Even the music for this sequence stands out from the rest of the film. Williams’ “Duel of the Fates,” “O, Fortuna” rip that it is, is one of the few pieces of memorable score from the new trilogy that isn’t simply a reworking of themes from the original franchise.

One of the smart choices (maybe the only smart choice) Lucas made with the prequels was to infuse them with a Hong Kong action ethic. He already liked to make his action sequences fast, now he could make his fight scenes work that way, too. If you compare the lightsaber choreography in the prequels to that in the originals, the difference is clear. It’s Gene Kelly vs. your Uncle Roger at that wedding that one time. You know, when he mixed Glenlivit and Red Bull? Yeah.

The result is not only a faster action sequence but a more complete fighting style. When these Jedi do battle, they use their lightsabers (the blade and the hilt), their fists, their feet and, most importantly, THE FORCE! And unlike Vader vs. Luke in Empire (due respect) it isn’t something you incorporate when you interrupt the swordplay to throw machinery at your son. It’s part of a sequence, like the psychic punch Darth Maul uses to put Obi Wan down for the count.

Note how Maul uses the force to throw a piece of debris at a door to open it. Lucas doesn’t focus on these moves. They’re simply a part of the whole. I didn’t even notice that particular touch until the second or third time I watched the scene.

You also have, to a lesser extent, a revelation of character through action, although, for Darth Maul, that’s not saying much. He’s the most underdeveloped character in the Star Wars universe. I’ve seen Ewoks with more backstory. But Ray Park finds a way to infuse his character with little tweaks. For example, when’s the last time you saw him blink? Part of this is a function of those creepy contacts he wears, but part of it is Park’s choice to create a character who is always staring. It’s nice and unsettling.

A friend of mine once met Park and told him how, when Maul and Qui-Gon are separated by the Laser Walls of Plot Contrivance, Maul seemed like a lion in a cage, pacing back and forth. Park said that’s exactly what he was going for. Maul is just watching the meditating Qui-Gon, waiting to devour him. Those two different choices of behavior when the characters are momentarily unable to fight reveal volumes.

When he finally does kill Qui-Gon, it’s almost an afterthought. He isn’t even looking at him. This adds far more impact than if it had seemed to require any effort.

And, of course, a double-bladed lightsaber may very well be the coolest. weapon. ever.

Ultimately, the beauty of the choreography in this sequence is its own reward. I saw Menace on opening night at the Senator Theater in Baltimore. The crowd was obviously jazzed, but it’s the first time I’ve seen a series of moves get a round of applause all on its own. It happens just after Obi-Wan is released from the laser walls and attacks Maul. They have a series of incredible parries and blows and then pause with a flourish like they’re in West End Story. Nobody had won. The crowd was just applauding an exceptional performance.

Someone was nice enough to cut together the entire duel, skipping past Jake Lloyd and Jar Jar.

See also: Vader vs. Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, Anakin & Obi-Wan vs. Count Dooku (double-fisting lightsabers!) in Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan vs. General Grievous in Revenge of the Sith.

Next: The movie that taught us what “giga” means.

15. The Princess Bride – The Chatty Duelists

“You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.”

Never before has an action sequence relied so squarely on excellent dialogue as the initial swordfight in Rob Reiner’s classic 1987 William Goldman adaptation. The scene wastes no time using that dialogue to infuse its action with character, as Inigo helps enemy-soon-to-become-ally Westley up a cliffside because Inigo’s impatient to start the fight.

If #37 introduces how to reveal character through action, this is that scene on crack. Before the fight even begins, we learn the codes of honor by which these duelists operate, a civility that carries over into the actual swordplay. We get the backstory on Inigo and hear, for the first time in the film, the movie’s most famous line.

Once the fight begins, we see how equally matched they are not only through their swordplay, but by how they talk about it, name-checking famous fencing strategies (actual period maneuvers researched by Goldman), a rare instance where showing AND telling pays off, because it lets us know these are the type of people to talk about their chess game while they play it.

This choice is important because it reveals the joy they take in swordplay for its own pleasure, and that joy infects the audience. You get the sense that even if Westley didn’t need to get past Inigo to save Buttercup, they’d spar anyway for fun, or go looking for a pick-up duel.

Another near-revolutionary aspect of this sequence is its post-modernism. Before there was Shrek, there was The Princess Bride. What Scream would become to horror, The Princess Bride already was to fairy tales almost ten years earlier. Creating a work that at once satirizes and exemplifies a genre is no mean feat, and there’s hardly been better before or since.

This sequence exemplifies that balance, with self-commentary (the aforementioned swordplay analysis and Inigo’s crack about there being little money in revenge) and action both ridiculous (the needless flips and swordcatching) and sublime (that hand-switching move Westley does right before he defeats Inigo is straight-up bad-ass). The pinnacle of this combo, of course, comes when Westley reveals that he, too, is not left-handed. When I saw this moment for the first time in a sneak preview (having no idea what the film was), the audience burst into applause.

Another revolution predicted by this sequence is the age of the stunt double-less fight scene (at least in America – in Hong Kong, that was already standard). After The Matrix, it became de riguer for actors to spend months training with some Wuxia artist to master all sorts of sweet Kung Fu moves or learn how to fence, but Mandy Patinkin and Cary Elwes were spending the better part of a year learning their moves a decade before it was cool. The only stuntmen in this sequence are the ones doing the flips. (If you think about it, that means the actors had to learn how to swordfight ambidextrously. Damn.)

In the screenplay, William Goldman describes this sequence as the “second greatest swordfight in film history,” following that with “the first comes later.” For Rob Reiner’s money (and mine, too) the better one comes first.

Contains more than you need, but you get the point.

See also: The rest of The Princess Bride, Erroll Flynn provides the template for Westley in The Adventures of Robin Hood, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. performs “the most thrilling swordfight ever filmed” (at least according to the tagline) in The Prisoner of Zenda.

Next: A horrible movie spawns our highest-rated duel.

16. Lethal Weapon 4 – Unwelcome Guests

“Hey, Bruce. Nice pajamas.”

There are some action scenes that surpass the films that spawn them. Richard Donner’s 1998 final (?) installment of the seminal buddy cop franchise isn’t the best action film you’ll ever see nor is it the worst (it actually has some of the best set pieces of the series). But what it does have is one of the most important moments in chop-sockey history:

The American introduction of Jet Motherfucking Li.

You know how I know Jet Li is a bad-ass? While Mel and Danny are taking out his entire strike force, he just stands at the top of the stairs. Watching. Waiting. Smiling. He’s probably not even planning strategy at all. He’s done that already. He’s probably wondering if he left the stove on. Or if he remembered to TiVo Battlestar Galactica.

The last thing he’s thinking is, “Oh, shit. They’re taking out my crack tactical assault squad and I’ll have to fight them both myself.” He’s probably thinking, “I sure hope they take out my crack tactical assault squad so I get to fight them both myself. And then I’ll have to figure out what to do with the rest of my day because that will only take 40 seconds.”

That is exactly how long it takes him to smack down three armed police officers.

When Mel goes for the gun, it’s all over. Jet Li gets this look on his face like, “Jet don’t play that gun shit,” and jumps down one story and disarms Mel with his legs. You could have cut off Jet’s arms and he STILL would have disarmed Mel.

(By the way, he really don’t play that gun shit. During the entire course of the film, he never once fires a weapon. He pistol-whips some punks with an automatic rifle and he dodges a bullet, but he never shoots.)

Before we go any further, let’s step back and appreciate that Richard Donner had to take Jet Li aside and say, “Jet, baby. Love the kick-ass moves and the whole hardly-speaking thing, but my camera can only capture 30 frames per second so could you, you know, slow it down a bit?”

That’s right. His moves are so fast that even if you watch them 1/30th of a second at a time, you will still miss them.

A great way to establish someone, especially a villain, as a bad-ass is to make them better at something the hero is already good at. The first three Lethal Weapons establish Mel’s character as an adept martial artist. Here, he doesn’t get in a single punch. It’s a straight-up spanking.

It’s practically to the point where you have to ask yourself the same question you ask about the T-1000. You can’t shoot him. You can’t kick his ass. How are you going to stop him?

This scene builds to two Holy Shit moments. The first is what I call The Move. Jet does a brief hand-stand and, while inverted, kicks Danny in the chest and grabs a gun. (I think all I could accomplish while inverted would be to think, “I’m going to fall down.”) He comes back up into a three-way Mexican standoff. The music, very wisely, stops.

This all happens in about two seconds.

This is the kind of move that shocks the audience into a stunned silence minus the one guy in the back yelling “Whoo!” (literally what happened when I first saw this film). This is also the kind of move that Donner had to slow down artificially (note the semi-slow-mo) just to make it coherent. Also note that, during the standoff, Jet’s the only one not breathing hard.

Which brings us to the second Holy Shit moment. Normally, at this point, our villain would be down for the count. Two guns on him at point blank range. He only has one, which he drops. But then he flashes that “You don’t know it, but I’m about to fuck you up” smile and we have what I call The Other Move in which he not only disarms Mel and Danny, but takes Mel’s gun apart.

Let me say that again. He takes the gun apart. And it’s not like he sits down with a screwdriver and shit. No. In the course of doing other things like kicking both of them unconscious and knocking the other gun out of Danny’s hand and I think doing his taxes, he takes the gun apart.

(This move, apparently, is totally doable with that model of gun, but a couple of steps were removed to make it a little more jaw-dropping.)

Now do you understand why I say this?

Finally, as an afterthought, he knocks out armed Renee Russo without even looking.

The role of Wah Sing Ku was originally offered to Jackie Chan, but he refused because he doesn’t play bad guys. Truth be told, Jet brings a completely different vibe, and makes for a more formidable adversary. If Chan is the more slapstick, Chaplinesque martial artist, Li is the more deadpan Keatonesque performer.

Donner’s take on Li in this scene? “He’s only in first gear.”

See also: The rest of Lethal Weapon 4, all of Fist of Legend, all of Romeo Must Die.

Next: As we’ve already seen on this list, sometimes it’s best when the good guys fight each other.

17. The French Connection – The Chase

“Police emergency. I need your car.”

The signature sequence of William Friedkin’s 1971 procedural-to-end-all-procedurals begins with a little bit of foreshadowing – a shot of an elevated train. The entire premise of this chase is based on the fact that it lives in the shadow of Bullitt. Friedkin had been given a mandate to outdo that film’s seminal car chase, at that point only three years old. After walking for 55 blocks through New York with his producer, Philip D’Antoni, it occurred to him their edge could be the city’s elevated train system. What the Bullitt chase is to San Francisco (hills and open spaces), the French Connection chase is to New York (flat and enclosed), and that opening-shot train makes all the difference.

Before we even get to the train, Friedkin begins crafting a masterpiece of action. The sniper shot that kills a woman pushing her baby in a stroller right next to our anti-hero, Popeye Doyle, comes out of nowhere. These days, we’re used to the mundane visual (somebody buying groceries, for example) being the prelude to Something Bad happening, and in a sense, this is no different. Doyle has just been kicked off the case and now he’s walking home. Why are we watching that if Shit isn’t about to Go Down? (Seriously, can you watch a passenger’s-eye-view shot a driver anymore and NOT expect a semi to plow into them?)

And yet the shot still surprises us, and launches us into one of the best cinéma-vérité-style action sequences ever conceived. Part of the effectiveness of this style stems from how it suggests that anyone could go out and shoot this. That had you been there, with a camera in your hand, this is the footage you would have got. In other words, You. Are. There.

The reason it feels like they just grabbed a bunch of cameras and shot this shit is because they just grabbed a bunch of cameras and shot this shit. No planning. No permits. Just do it. The guerrilla-style filmmaking that would become a hallmark of 90′s independent cinema was the Best Picture big-studio filmmaking of 1971. Narc, among other films, would inherit this intensity – note that #22 also uses heavy breathing as a soundtrack. But the execution of that guerrilla stye, however, gets very sketchy, very quickly.

To this day, Friedkin and company freely admit that they sent a stunt driver (the same one from Bullitt, actually) down 26 blocks of uncontrolled New York traffic with nothing but a fake siren on the roof to encourage people to get out of the way. At 90 mph. And did I mention they didn’t warn anybody?

Today, Friedkin describes the choice as the act of a “callow heedless youth” and concludes that he would not make the same choice now. At best, it’s irresponsible and at worst it’s criminally negligent. There was an accident (besides several stunt cars getting banged up) in which the unsuspecting vehicle only got grazed. But it could very easily have been one of those stories of a tragic on-set death you hear about in Hollywood lore given a split second one way or the other.

(I could go on to scold Friedkin for some of the shit he pulled on the set of The Exorcist, but here I am praising his action sequence, so I’m kind of conflicted here.)

Putting aside, for a moment, the question of the end justifying the means (it doesn’t), in terms of accomplishing the goal of outdoing Bullitt, I think Friedkin more than pulls it off. Frankly, I wasn’t that impressed by the Bullitt chase to begin with, so I am a little predisposed to give plaudits elsewhere. But this sequence scoops up the intensity that I felt was lacking in Bullitt.

And as reprehensible as the surrounding circumstances are, the simple act of placing that camera on the grill of that car puts this sequence light years ahead of most chases that came before. The lack of music is another point in the sequence’s favor. (Note to future filmmakers: Vast epics like Ben-Hur and gritty thrillers like The French Connection both know when not to use music, so the genre doesn’t necessarily dictate the score, or lack thereof.)

Once again going back to the old revealing-character-through-action chestnut, here it’s Doyle’s obsessiveness that’s on display. He will do anything, including endagering innocent lives, to get his man. And by man, I mean shot. And by Doyle, I mean Friedkin. All right. I’ll stop now.

A note on performance: In a car chase, an actor has very little to work with to emote. Hands at ten and two, mister! So he or she pretty much has to rely on their face. Hackman’s face works wonders here in this department, and Friedkin’s smart enough to cut to it aplenty. Doyle’s becomes the visage of all road rage.

Finally, Friedkin concludes the sequence with one of the most 70′s anti-hero endings to an action scene you could hope for: The good guy shoots the bad guy in the back in an act of cold-blooded murder. Nice.

Missing the beginning and end, but you get the point…

See also: Roger Moore chases down an assassin on the streets of Paris in A View to a Kill, Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson cab it through Central Park to beat a train in Die Hard: With a Vengeance, pretty much any car chase in Ronin.

Next: You better have more than a gun if you’re gonna take on Jet Li. Or, like, three guns, actually.

18. Superman II – Battle of Titans

“Come to me, son of Jor-El. Kneel before Zod!”

The title fight between Superman and three escaped Kryptonian convicts in Richard Donner/Lester’s (more on that later) 1980 sequel offers a lesson in conscientious superherodom. When your average superheroes fight in a populated area, it’s similar to when Godzilla fights one of his detractors – no regard for property damage. Or, more to the point, the people in that property. When Superman fights, you bet your ass he keeps an eye out for the little guy.

In a prime example of revealing character through action, Superman spends half of this sequence where he’s supposed to be fighting other specially-abled individuals rescuing us normal folks who are too stupid to get out of the way of falling shit. Really, it’s an extension of what he does most of the time anyway, fighting natural disasters and accidents. In this case, the natural disaster is Zod and the Zodettes (seriously, do you see how much lipstick Non is wearing?).

He’s like the Jimmy Stewart of superheroes, always clamoring “What about the peeee-puuullll!” Which is why, ultimately, he breaks off the fight. I gotta admit, that’s pretty stand-up of him, because it makes him look like a punk. I especially like the two little kids who are all, “Superman didn’t do nothing” and then leave dejected. You expect their next line to be, “Let’s go join a gang!”

If this sequence had nothing more than some good old-fashioned revelation of character through kick-assery that would be one thing, but the real reason this appears so high on the list is because it is the granddaddy of all super-throwdowns. That hurling people through buildings bit? They’re still doing that today.

I highly recommend watching the Richard Donner cut of this sequence. It eliminates the wacky that Richard Lester tried to bring once he took over for the unceremoniously fired Donner. Take, for example, the phone booth gag that occurs when Zod and the gang use their superbreath to stop a riot (that’s how we quell dissent on Krypton, bitch!). It’s funny because the guy keeps talking even after the phone booth and he are blown away. Ha ha ha! They’re all going to die!

By the way, I realize that most riots aren’t all that well thought out, but any course of action that starts out with the premise, “They killed Superman. Let’s go get ‘em,” scores well below “shitty” on the planning aptitude test. Here are some more rational follow-up statements to “They killed Superman.”:

“Run!”

“Let’s all hide under that overturned bus.”

“Seriously, dude. Run!”

“Maybe we can buy their love with candy.”

“Why are we still standing here? Ru-fucking-un!”

“Anybody got some kryptonite? Anybody?”

And much as I prefer the Donner cut of this sequence, it still doesn’t explain what the Statue of Liberty is doing in Metropolis.

See also: Mystique vs. Wolverine in X-Men, Doc Oc vs. Spidey – rounds one and two in Spider-Man 2, Godzilla and Jet Jaguar vs. Megalon and Gigan in Godzilla vs. Megalon.

Next: The most morally reprehensible sequence on this list. And, no, it doesn’t involve Michael Bay.

19. Ben-Hur – Chariot Race

“God forgive me for seeking vengeance. But my path is set.”

If Charlton Heston can play a Mexican, what’s to stop him from playing a Jew? (It’s a little known secret that the original title of Ben-Hur was, in fact, Bad-Ass Jew.) One of the many ways in which this classic scene from William Wyler’s 1959 epic distinguishes itself is that it is, to my knowledge, the only action sequence that begins with the hero being given the Star of David (by an Arab, no less). And we think today’s action cinema is progressive.

Wyler makes you a part of this sequence by taking you through it in almost painstaking (if not historically accurate) detail. We see the chariots line up “backstage.” We see the procession before the race (which required the crew to sweep all that sand after every take).

It’s a good ten minutes before the sequence begins for real. Wyler makes you a spectator, experiencing the race “in real time” as you would if you were attending it. There’s not even any added music aside from the fanfare you would have heard if you were actually there (no sound at all, actually – it was filmed without sound and the crowd noise, hoof-beats and all that jazz were added later).

Then Wyler launches you from the stands to the track, using every camera angle and move possible to capture the action. Even with the sound added later, in combination with the trembling camera, you’re given a real sense of the power of these horses and the danger the chariots pose.

This is also an exercise in perception. Several different camera speeds were used to sell the illusion of a constant (and blistering) chariot speed among all those different camera angles, since we perceive speed differently depending upon our perspective. That means, of course, that editing this was no picnic. Ralph Winter spent three months on this sequence alone (and won an Oscar for his trouble).

In good guy/bad guy language, the sequence couldn’t be simpler. Ben-Hur’s horses are white. His rival Messala’s are black. Messala uses Greek wheels (you know, like that one guy’s razor rims in Grease) and whips his horses to get them up to speed. Heston just uses the power of his rock hard abs. And Heston’s the only competitor bad-ass enough to not need a helmet. (The other secret title of Ben-Hur? Helmets Are for Pussies.)

Credit 2nd unit director and stuntman legend Yakima Canutt with turning Heston into that bad-ass. Canutt did everything from training Heston to designing the rig that allowed four horses to be controlled with two reigns. And Canutt’s son stood in for Heston, and created one of the most memorable moments in the sequence by accident.

While stunt-doubling Heston in the moment where Ben-Hur’s chariot has to jump over a fallen chariot, Canutt (who, for some reason, had not chained himself into the chariot as his father had advised) flipped out of the chariot and did a handstand before jumping clear (you can see the beginning of this accident in the finished film). Wyler saw this in dailies and said “We gotta have that,” and revised the scene so that they cut to Heston landing on the other side of the chariot and climbing back in.

And then you have the stuff that was planned out a little further in advance. Today, those giant statues in the center of the stadium and the crowds would be CG. Then, they took three months to build the thirty story props, and filled the stands with thousands of extras. I’m not saying I would have noticed the difference, but damn.

The crowd reaction at the end, at least, you couldn’t get from a computer, as their leaping to their feet was spontaneous. And that one guy grabbing Messala’s helmet at the end with an “I’m selling this shit on E-bay” look of triumph was totally improvising.

And yes, Lucas based his Phantom Menace pod race on this sequence and, no, it doesn’t even come close.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

See also: Russel Crowe takes on some chariots in Gladiator, Speeder bike chase in Return of the Jedi, Motorcycle chase in The Great Escape.

Next: Kneel before the comedy stylings of Richard Lester.

20. Blade Runner – Time to Die

“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.”

In our last entry, I talked about how production design contributes to action. Here, forget about it. The production design in Ridley Scott’s 1982 adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? makes the production design in Aliens (or pretty much any other film) look like it was put together by third graders with papier-maché. If kick-ass lighting and a brilliant use of the Bradbury building were all this sequence had going for it, that would be plenty, but that’s only the beginning.

Blade Runner often gets noted for its many levels. It effuses subtext more than just about any film of its ilk. Note the dolls in the room where Deckard finds Pris. Note the way in which Batty taunts Deckard throughout, telling him “That’s the spirit!” when he fights back. He’s teaching him about raging against the dying of the light. He’s saying “Welcome to my world.”

The action sequence as object lesson is fairly rare, but here it works wonders.

It doesn’t hurt that Roy Batty is one of the best villains in movie history. One of the things that makes a great villain is empathy. If you can feel a villain’s plight, relate to the problem they’re trying to solve, they suddenly become much more compelling. You find yourself questioning your own sympathies and judgments.

Here, Roy Batty simply wants to live. That he cannot, in spite of his great strength and intelligence, is the central tragedy and theme of the film. Because, in fact, none of us, regardless of strength or intelligence, can escape his fight. And neither can Deckard, but that’s another kettle of synthetic fish.

The suggestions that Deckard is [spoiler] are scattered throughout the film but appear at least twice here. In an oblique sense as Scott juxtaposes the Deckard and Batty repairing their hands, and in a slightly more direct moment when Lt. Castillo tells him that he’s done “a man’s job.”

But back to Batty and his awesomeness for a moment. After he breaks two of Deckard’s fingers, he gives him back his gun. He’s that kind of motherfucker. Later, out of nowhere, he grabs a dove. Who does that!?! And is there any other character who could end an action sequence with a soliloquy?

Finally, if the action-film-as-art-film motif weren’t apparent enough, you’ve got Vangelis bringing it home (for the second time on this list).

By the way, if you’ve got the good guy trapped between your knees and you’re ready to deliver your killing blow, don’t drop him and run across the room just so you can do a bunch of flips before you hit him again. That’s, like, in the henchwoman faq.

Just the last little bit, but it includes the monologue that Rutger Hauer (partly) improvised.

See also: The rest of Blade Runner, David Lean lenses action-as-art in the attack on the train in Lawrence of Arabia, Kurosawa does it in the attack on the red castle in Ran.

Next: Even unarmed, Charlton Heston is a bad motherfucker.