Action film

Action films are built around chase scenes, fights, gunfights, explosions, and stunt work. Since the 1980s, scholars have debated what exactly defines the genre. Some, like David Bordwell, argue these movies prioritize spectacle over story, while others, like Geoff King, contend that the spectacle can actually serve the narrative. Action films frequently blend with other genres, appearing as comedies, science fiction, or horror.

The term "action film" or "action-adventure film" dates back to the 1910s, but the modern understanding of the genre emerged with New Hollywood and the anti-heroes of late-1960s and 1970s American cinema, drawing from war films, crime films, and Westerns. The 1980s are considered the "classical period" of action films. The post-classical era saw American action films influenced by Hong Kong action cinema and the rise of computer-generated imagery. After the September 11 attacks, a return to earlier genre forms appeared with films like Kill Bill and The Expendables.

Reception

In 2008, Scott Higgins noted in Cinema Journal that action films are both widely popular and widely criticized, often lambasted for favoring spectacle over narrative. Bordwell echoed this, calling the genre "the emblem of what Hollywood does worst." Lennart Soberson wrote in the Journal of Film and Video that repeated genre traits include chases, fights, shootouts, explosions, and stunts, while other scholars look for deeper defining traits. Wheeler Winston Dixon described these films as typified by "excessive spectacle" masking a lack of content, while Geoff King argued spectacle can be a vehicle for narrative.

Characteristics

Harvey O'Brien offered what Soberson called the most convincing understanding: the action film is "best understood as a fusion of form and content," where action, agitation, and movement are paramount. O'Brien also distinguished between films that are merely a series of action sequences and true action films, contrasting Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Die Hard (1988). Yvonne Tasker noted that action films lack clear, consistent iconography or settings, but broadly share themes of a hero seeking freedom from oppression through physical conflict.

By the late 2010s, genre analysis often replaced the term "genre" with "mode" or "narrative form," used interchangeably. Johan Höglund and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet explained that genre is tied to specific historical moments, while mode or form spans wider cultural fields. In Action Cinema Since 2000 (2024), Tasker, Lisa Purse, and Chris Holmlund suggested thinking of action as a mode is more helpful than as a genre, noting that websites like IMDb and Wikipedia rarely label films by a single genre, and streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix further blur what is marketed and received as action.

History

Transnationally, two major trends dominate: Hollywood action films imitated worldwide, and Chinese-language martial arts films. The roots of action films go back to cinema's beginnings, but the genre only became recognizable in the mid-20th century, distinct from Westerns, swashbucklers, or adventure films. Films were called "action" or "action-adventure" as early as the 1910s, but only in the 1980s did the term become routine in promotion and reviews. The first Chinese-language martial arts films appeared in Shanghai cinema in the late 1920s, making up nearly 60% of Chinese films at the time.