Alexander Skarsgård and Anya Taylor-Joy on horseback near the ocean in a scene from The Northman (2022)Image via Focus Features
By
Jeremy Urquhart
Published 59 minutes ago
Jeremy has more than 2100 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings).
When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account.
He is also currently in the process of trying to become a Stephen King expert by reading all 2397 novels written by the author.
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Action movies are pretty fun, right? They do what you'd expect them to do: provide action, you know, showing people chasing each other, punching/kicking each other, and maybe firing various weapons at each other, too. Even if an action movie is intense or sort of gritty, and perhaps not fun in the traditional sense, it can still end up not feeling too heavy if the heroes endure and secure some kind of victory (see the particularly tense and sometimes grisly Mad Max: Fury Road, for example).
What follows below is a rundown of some action movies that are genuinely pretty heavy-going, though. There might be some entertainment value to be found here, and parts of a movie can be thrilling alongside other parts that are miserable, but these films are interesting for disproving the (hopefully not too commonly thought) idea that action movies are all intended to be blockbuster/escapist sorts of affairs.
10 'Rolling Thunder' (1977)
William Devane as Charles Rane holding a rifle and looking back in 'Rolling Thunder'Image via American International Pictures
Like many thrillers from the 1970s, Rolling Thunder is unapologetically uneasy and tense, but unlike some of the thrillers from that time, it can also technically call itself an action movie. It’s about a veteran from the Vietnam War returning home to America, but struggling to settle in, with things falling apart and getting stomach-churning in a Taxi Driver-esque way… perhaps unsurprisingly, since Paul Schrader wrote both and this came out the year after Taxi Driver.
Even if there is a bit by way of violence and even action in Rolling Thunder, it’s of the more stomach-churning and despairing variety than what's seen in most action films.
Also, Rolling Thunder has one of Tommy Lee Jones’ earliest big roles, and the underrated William Devane is pretty great, too, in the lead role. Rolling Thunder is just very nihilistic and not all that fun, but by design, and so even if there is a bit by way of violence and even action, it’s of the more stomach-churning and despairing variety than most films that could be classified as action movies.
9 'Thriller: A Cruel Picture' (1973)
Christina Lindberg as Madeleine holding a gun while standing outside in Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973)Image via Europa Film
It rather flatly calls itself Thriller: A Cruel Picture, but even then, the word “Cruel” only goes so far, because this one is absolutely ruthless, and is more than just a “Thriller” too, really. Thriller: A Cruel Picture has some really sadistic violence early on that makes it feel like a horror movie, and the premise after the particularly nasty stuff mostly revolves around a quest for vengeance against people who more than had it coming.
It's a cycle of violence, and it’s all graphic enough that you can understand pretty well why Thriller: A Cruel Picture has been banned in a fair few territories (or at least was, upon its first release). You do need a strong stomach to get through this one, and the brutality of it all carries over and makes it further challenging to watch for the emotional exhaustion it inspires, too.
8 'Mandy' (2018)
Nicolas Cage standing outside with a cigarette in his mouth near the start of Mandy (2018)Image via RLJE Films
Mandy doesn’t have a lot to its narrative, at least on the surface, but when you're giving a summary of a movie’s plot, you can really only touch upon what’s on the surface. So… well, it’s hard not to ruin anything, because there’s not much to ruin. Maybe this much can be said about Mandy: it’s slow-going at first, and kind of ominous, and then at a point, it switches gears and becomes incredibly bloody, over-the-top, and nightmarish.
It's certainly a horror film, albeit a weird one, and doesn’t really have much action until its second half, but there is quite a bit of it once that aforementioned gear-switch happens. What matters most is that Mandy is the rare film that lets you see both sides of Nicolas Cage; his underrated knack for quieter performances, and his more bombastic side that’s more explosive than just about any other actor of his generation. It’s also an oddly somber and sometimes despairing film, but alongside being all those other things, too. It’s a wild ride, but a ride worth taking nonetheless.
7 'Killer Constable' (1980)
Image via Shaw Brothers
There were plenty of great martial arts movies released in the 1970s and 1980s, but few have action that’s quite as non-stop as Killer Constable does. This is so relentless, even by modern-day standards, with the fairly simple narrative involving a constable who’s tasked with retrieving a large amount of stolen gold at any cost, and so he sets out ruthlessly cutting through any and all adversaries to carry out his objective.
There’s a little more to it than that, but for as exciting and spectacular as it is, Killer Constable is also pretty damn dark, considering how ruthless its protagonist is, and the fact that he’s far from a hero. It’s a story with a bad guy trying to take down some other purportedly bad guys, and everyone kind of just bleeds and/or dies a lot. And it’s great.
6 'The Northman' (2022)
Amleth and Olga being taken in chains to Fjolnir's villageImage via Universal Pictures
Since it’s based on the legend of Amleth, which in turn inspired Hamlet, The Northman getting grim, bloody, and nihilistic ultimately isn't too surprising. Like a lot of dark action movies, revenge is a pivotal theme here, with the main character being a boy whose father is murdered, which upturns his whole life, and he grows into a man who seems unwilling to rest until he gets answers and vengeance for what happened.
It would be silly to expect fun action stuff out of this, but if you expected more traditional action movie conventions, you also might leave The Northman disappointed, since it’s very much a Robert Eggers movie and sees him making some fairly offbeat and unsettling creative decisions… though, admittedly, not to the same extent as he did with The Witch or The Lighthouse. It’s very good, sometimes quite spectacular and exciting, and all around a uniquely grim viewing experience, too.
5 'Oldboy' (2003)
Image via Show East
Like Thriller: A Cruel Picture and The Northman, Oldboy revolves around a quest for vengeance, and so it gets appropriately bloody and visceral at times, especially since the person after revenge feels they have so little to lose. He’s imprisoned out of nowhere, kept separate from everything and everyone he knows for 15 years, and then motivated purely by getting answers and/or vengeance once he’s suddenly released one day.
There is at least one stunning action sequence here, plus a few other bursts of energetic and uneasy violence found throughout Oldboy, but it’s probably the pacing and the intensity of the film as a thriller/mystery one that makes it feel a bit more action-packed than it really is. Still, it’s remarkable and harrowing in the end, mostly thanks to the unexpected turns it takes narratively as it progresses, with Oldboy living up to the lofty reputation it’s built up in 20+ years since its release.
4 'Ran' (1985)
Image via Toho
Yeah, so this one’s right on the line of being an “action movie” in the traditional sense, but Ran has action tagged as one of its genres on Letterboxd, so it’s going to slot in here. There are some grand and impressively staged battle sequences for sure, and there is a certain excitement and dread to some of those large-scale scenes, even if most of the film is more of a war/drama one.
The heaviness here is doing some of the, uh, heavy-lifting, because if Ran is called a semi-action movie by one reliable source, then it’s worth considering here because it really is about as heavy, bleak, and despairing as cinema gets. There’s a family conflict that explodes into a massive war, and very few people – if anyone – exits the movie in a better position than they were in right before the narrative got underway.
3 'Battle Royale' (2000)
A girl in a yellow tracksuit holding a knife in Battle RoyaleImage Via Toei Company
It’s easy to summarize what makes Battle Royale so intense and bleak, since it’s all about a group of teenagers being sent to an island and made to take part in a fight to the death. It’s something that happens to control the youth of a dystopian Japan, apparently, and it’s established very early on that it’s very much not a joke, or any kind of role-playing game, with the first instance of death being a shock to all the characters and the viewers alike.
From there, Battle Royale is always fairly thrilling, but it’s an upsetting kind of thrilling. In a sense, you're never bored, but you're also never at ease, and the film really does make you witness one brutal and upsetting death after another, never slowing down or easing up. Calling it visceral would certainly be an understatement, and though there are other stories/books/movies out there about young people being made to take part in horrifically deadly “games,” Battle Royale is probably the most harrowing.
2 'To Live and Die in L.A.' (1985)
There’s some living in To Live and Die in L.A., but more dying. This is a William Friedkin thriller, after all, and that guy didn’t mess around when it came time to make his audience anxious. Well, it’s a little more than a thriller, seeing as it’s also a very gritty crime film, and one that moves forward at a ferocious pace while also having quite a bit of action, including an incredible car chase that might well outdo the one Friedkin directed in The French Connection the previous decade.
Also, though it wasn’t the first movie with squibs, by any means, people bleed a lot when they're shot in To Live and Die in L.A., and some of the violence is startling and graphic enough to still feel shocking 40 years later. Also, though it’s kind of a “criminals vs. cops” story, there aren’t really any heroes on either side of the conflict, with the film painting a pretty bleak (and, again, death-filled) portrait of crime and “justice” in its titular city.
1 'The Sword of Doom' (1966)
Image via Toho
And then, like with Thriller: A Cruel Picture, The Sword of Doom lets you know things are going to be gloomy and emotionally hectic with the title, since it does feature the word “Doom” and all. Actually, to compare it to another previously mentioned film, it’s a little like Killer Constable in its portrait of a violent and ruthless man assigned with carrying out a bloody task, only this one is a little less action-packed, and even more disturbing.
As a samurai film, The Sword of Doom makes Harakiri look like The Hidden Fortress. It’s desolate, and not at all willing to give you catharsis, even at the very end of the film. It’s gripping, sure, but the level of despair is at an almost unthinkable height throughout all 122 minutes of The Sword of Doom, and it holds a certain power even though it originally came out many decades ago.
Like
The Sword of Doom
Not Rated
Action
Drama
Release Date
July 1, 1966
Runtime
120 Minutes
Director
Kihachi Okamoto
Writers
Shinobu Hashimoto, Kaizan Nakazato
Cast
See All-
Tatsuya Nakadai
-
Michiyo Aratama
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Yūzō Kayama
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Yôko Naitô
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The Northman
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