The 80s is best known for big hair, big shoulders, and big colors, but it was also a decade that boasted some big action movies. The 80s saw numerous huge and long-running action franchises launch, but it also saw some great one-off and standalone movies.
The 80s were all about big guys, big guns, and big explosions with Schwarzenegger and Stallone battling it out on cinema screens for who had the biggest muscles. With the flood of action movies that came out of the 80s many of them haven't stood up to scrutiny decades later, however, some became instant classics.
RoboCop
1987 cybernetic cop revenge movie stars Peter Weller as Murphy, a new transfer to Metro West police precinct. While pursuing career criminals, Murphy and his new partner Anne Lewis are separated and the gang brutally murders Murphy. However, his body is recovered by the company Omni Consumer Products and is turned into the cyborg crime fighter now known as RoboCop.
Despite them erasing his memories, Murphy begins to remember snippets of his past life, including the gang who killed him, and embarks on a one cyborg revenge mission. What ensues is a non-stop fire fight, with gruesome kills, frantic car chases, and an evil corporation subplot wrapped up in a commentary on policing that is still relevant today.
Predator
In Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger heads an elite team of paramilitary soldiers on a rescue mission in a Central American rainforest. Looking for hostages the team instead comes up against the Predator, a highly skilled, bloodthirsty hunter alien that can cloak itself and hunt them using thermal imaging. The alien is armed with plasma cannons, and traps and is only interested in one thing: the hunt.
Predator began a franchise that endures today and the first entry made its way into the annuls of history for the inventive design of the Predator itself and the ridiculous male comradery in the film. It also has some of the most quoted lines in movie history with "Dillon! You son of a b****!" and of course "Get to the chopper!"
Big Trouble In Little China
Helmed by legendary director John Carpenter, Big Trouble in Little China is an oddball action film starring Kurt Russell as Jack Burton, a put upon truck driver who gets drawn into the underworld of Chinatown when his friend Wang Chi's fiancée Miao Yin is kidnaped by the Lords of Death gang. From there the movie goes to some very strange places. An ancient cursed sorcerer called Lo Pan, played by the legendary James Hong needs Miao Yin as a sacrifice to break his curse, only she can be the sacrifice due to her green eyes.
The movie features magic, martial arts, and madness in equal measure with crazy special effects. A wise-cracking Kurt Russell is an easy leading man, at once exasperated and determined to help his friend, and the visuals of the film still make it unique to this day. While it was initially a box office failure, Big Trouble in Little China has rightfully gained a cult following and more than deserves a second viewing.
Raiders of The Lost Ark
Another initial entry in a now long-running and beloved franchise, Raiders of The Lost Ark saw the first adventures of archeologist/professor/treasure hunter Indiana Jones. Set in the 1930s, Jones is in a battle to get to the Ark of The Covenant before the Nazis. Harrison Ford plays the adventuring professor as he races against the enemy to claim the historical artifact.
Taking place across Egypt, Jones is accompanied by Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) who come up against a series of skirmishes and sticky situations as they try to get the clues they need to find the location of the Ark. Featuring a charismatic performance by Ford, a rip-roaring adventure plot and Nazis getting their faces melted off, Raiders of The Lost Ark continues to be a rousing watch today.
Die Hard
Starring Bruce Willis as New York cop John McClane, Die Hard is the quintessential action film that is also a Christmas movie. Taking place on Christmas Eve, McClane is arriving at Nakatomi Plaza to hopefully reconcile with his estranged wife. What he doesn't know is that Hans Gruber played perfectly by Alan Rickman, and his team of heavily armed goons are about to take everyone in the building hostage.
The definitive "I wasn't even supposed to be here today" movie, Die Hard mixes humor, action, and bloodshed deftly as McClane worms his way through the ventilation system, complaining and taking out terrorists as he goes. The supporting characters, especially Officer Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson), are great and do an excellent job of humanizing and grounding what is going on in the building to the outside world.