10. East Berlin Escape – “Atomic Blonde”
We have to say, when “Atomic Blonde” dropped to mostly pleased reviews, we were a bit stunned. Team Playlist were excited as anyone about the idea of an 80s-set Cold War actioner starring Charlize Theron from a co-director of “John Wick,” but we all found the final product deeply disappointing, a rather grim, joyless, substance-over-style, dimly-scripted thriller that never added up to more than the sum of its parts. But you can’t fault the film’s action choreography: director David Leitch (doing “Deadpool 2” next) knows what to do there, and the frequent hand-to-hand combat scenes are all thrillingly put together. While the punch-up amusingly set to “Father Figure” is a winner, the big third-act sequence, depicted as one continuous take (though there’s obviously some stitching together being done), as Theron’s heroine tries to escape from East Berlin with a defector (Eddie Marsan), is a hugely impressive feat. Clocking in at ten minutes, the choreography is truly bruising (and unusually for an action movie, really takes its toll), the camerawork deft, and the film’s occasional tendency to shout ‘WELL KNOWN 80S MUSIC’ over every scene toned down for once.
9. World War One Battle – “Wonder Woman”
You don’t have to be wholly on board the “Wonder Woman” train to be glad that Patty Jenkins’ movie exists and that it’s been such a roaring success. And you don’t have to have loved the whole film to admire the sheer, rousingly cinematic pleasure of this scene as Diana (Gal Gadot), being no man, gets to cross the no man’s land between the entrenched British and German forces en route to saving a village full of innocents — which is itself a very exciting and fluidly shot action scene. But this earlier section has a level of iconic memorability that can’t be bested — it’s also the moment she reveals her true abilities to Steve (Chris Pine) who gets the witty reaction moments throughout this sequence that help to ground its dafter aspects. And while there’s the same worship of physicality that superhero stories all display, and we get to ogle her calves, her thighs, her decolletage, somehow it doesn’t objectify or overtly sexualize her. It is about grace and strength, and not only do we get Diana in classic hero pose, leaning in to her shield as an increasing barrage of bullets pings off it, we get an interesting moral from this sequence too: this is not her singlehandedly taking on the entire German army, but her using her powers to give all the soldiers behind her the opportunity to find their own heroism too.
8. The Escape – “War For The Planet Of The Apes”
Capping off the ‘Apes’ trilogy and cementing it as one of the unlikeliest successes in terms of franchise reboots of all time, ‘War’ provided an appropriately epic grace note to a series about talking simians that actually is one of the best commentaries on power, oppression, rebellion and revenge of this century — and this century needs it. The grand, extended escape sequence, however, refers to a lot of the touchpoints of 20th century filmmaking, from “The Great Escape” to “Apocalypse Now” even to “Gone With The Wind” and “The Ten Commandments.” It’s a testament to the fluidity and flexibility of Matt Reeves‘ filmmaking that one long set piece can encompass the massive, as in avalanches and machine-gun massacres and columns of refugee chimps snaking along snowy hilltops, to the tiny, as in cute baby apes nimbly clambering along a high-wire and the changing expression on Caesar’s face (best-ever mo-capped Andy Serkis). There are emotive reunions, mischievous strategems and huge bombastic moments like a death-defying tumble down a burning Stars and Stripes: it’s magnificently unsubtle, which is part of its greatness, because these are not subtle times.
7. The Art Gallery Battle – “John Wick: Chapter Two”
While one half of the duo that lit a fire under the action movie with “John Wick” disappointed a bit with “Atomic Blonde,” his former partner Chad Stahelski more than delivered with the superb sequel to the Keanu Reeves actioner. Even more so than the original, “John Wick: Chapter Two” is stuffed with gorgeously-shot (courtesy of Guillermo Del Toro DP Dan Lausten), immaculately choreographed shootouts, and picking just one for this list was a tough task. We could have gone for the automobile-aided take downs in the opening, the bloody, super-extended Rome shootout, equal parts Dario Argento and Paolo Sorrentino, or the wryly funny square-off between our vengeful hero and respectful fellow pro Common, taking potshots at each other while commuters go about their business. But the real culmination of the film’s neon arthouse bullet-ballet pleasures comes at the very end, as our trigger-happy dog-loving hero tracks down Eurotrash slimeball villain Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) to an art gallery, blasting his way through an army of bodyguards before facing Ares (Ruby Rose) in a high-tech hall of mirrors installation for a set piece that nods to Orson Welles’ “The Lady From Shanghai.”
6. Motorcycle Fight – “The Villainess”
“I don’t understand how hundreds of people aren’t dead,” Steven Soderbergh said this year about the production of “Mad Max: Fury Road.” We have to say, after seeing batshit Korean action movie “The Villainess,” we had much the same reaction. A sort of spin on the “La Femme Nikita” set-up, it’s a little too convoluted and overstuffed to truly satisfy as a whole, but Jung Byung-gil’s action sequences are some of the most thrilling and inventive fight scenes since “The Raid.” Right from the off — a brutal first-person sequence that totally outdoes whatever that terrible Sharlto Copley movie was called — the film constantly evokes a feeling of how-the-fuck-did-they-do-that, which peaks with a truly insane moment as our anti-heroine Sook-hee (Kim Ok-bin) fights pursuing bad guys with swords WHILE THEY’RE ALL ON MOTORCYCLES SPEEDING THROUGH A TUNNEL. Jung’s camera thrilling dives towards every slice and blow, leaving you in genuine fear for the lives of everyone, cameraman included. You can guarantee that every action director in Hollywood will be going frame-by-frame through the whole thing (and the later, equally great bus sequence) to work out how it was done.
