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Debate of the Issue: Action Movies

Comedy movies are almost always entertaining and predictably funny, but what they aren’t is great, because the great movies are action movies. I’m talking the true classics, the sort of movies that people put in their “best movies of all time” lists. Those films aren’t comedy movies; those movies are action movies.

When I think of a starting five of the best action movies ever made, I’m literally just looking at a list of the five best movies ever made. Down in the post at power forward and center I’ve got my Twin Towers of the Lord of The Rings and Star Wars series, although, to be exact, LOTR is Olajuwon and the Star Wars movies are Ralph Sampson. At small forward I’m thinking of putting probably my best all around player, Die Hard. I mean, that movie’s got it all — explosions, famous quotes (yippie-ki-yay….), riveting plot. Die Hard’s the sort of movie that I might just have run point in a crunch time situation, but can also bang with the bigs down low and get me some crucial rebounds. True versatility. To fill out my five is an excruciatingly tough task considering the depth of incredible options, but I’d probably end up going with the Dark Knight trilogy and The Matrix. That leaves a downright filthy bench made up of some of my personal favorite movies of all time like the Bourne trilogy (forget about the newest one), The Italian Job (both the original and the Marky-Mark version), all the Avengers movies, Inception, Ocean’s Eleven, and the Bond flicks, along with some legendary films such as the Indiana Jones movies, Top Gun, Terminator 1 and 2, all of the Mission Impossibles and Star Treks, Gladiator, and Jurassic Park. I’m genuinely not sure that more than 2 or 3 comedy movies would even manage to make the practice squad of this incredible team.

What’s more, when you begin to expand the definition of the “action movie” to include some movies that ride the tight line between action and drama, you pick up some more of the greatest flicks of all time, including The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather, Forrest Gump, Rocky, and Goodfellas. On the other hand, when you try to expand the definition of the “comedy movie” you generally just end up with action comedies, which, of course, shouldn’t count towards either side in this debate (sorry The Princess Bride).

The word “count” now looms ominously in on me as I finish this article and if you could see me right now, you’d see a man who’s visibly shaken because there are so many great action movies that I wasn’t able to mention throughout the course of this article. I only included a single Brad Pitt film, while all of Denzel Washington’s had to be left off. Some of the action greats like Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger only managed one mentioned movie apiece! No Chuck Norris, no Jackie Chan, no Liam Neeson, no Nicolas Cage! Jay you don’t stand a chance against this pedigree of movies! Action movies must take the cake and thus I entrust the voting to you Belmont Hill students and faculty… Make the right choice. Chuck Norris will be watching you.

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