The Unlikely Monikered Mr. Jackson

Stealing a good idea from Jaquandor (since that's what blogs are for), I present here my ten favorite action sequences, in (after the first, that is) no particular order:

1. The Truck Chase--Raiders of the Lost Ark
Since seeing this film I've seen longer chase scenes, chase scenes with more stunts, chase scenes that are much faster, and chase scenes with much bigger explosions, but I've never seen a better one. The acting is what really sells this here; throughout the entire sequence Ford (nor his stuntmen) never stops being Indiana Jones, from the way he takes a punch, to the way he throws a punch, to the way he tumbles across the hood of a truck. And the elegant way he snatches victory from the jaws of defeat, by scuttling underneath the truck after being thrown in front of it, is a marvel of economic characterization.

2. The Dangling RV Sequence--The Lost World
I get the sense that there's a lot of ill-will towards this film out there, but I always liked it. Sure, it's a bit less brainy than its predecessor but still; re-watch the original and you'll realize that it's not the brainiest film in the first place. In any case, this tension-fraught sequence, in which our heroes' RV is suspended off of a cliff, is a classic. The bit with Julianne Moore crashing onto the windshield, and then trying to climb up the interior as the glass spiderwebs below her, is Hithcockian in its assured wielding of suspense. And, come on, Toby is the hero, sacrificing himself to save the day.

3. Boromir's Last Stand--The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The whole sequence is one of my favorites from the trilogy, nicely low-scale and personal, a kind of apertif before the grand-scale battles the next two films will be filled with. Sean Bean does a fine job of portraying Boromir's struggle to make reparations for his attempt to take the ring; this is a prime example of an action sequence that tells us a lot about a character, indeed, that through action shows us the character's growth and the ultimate change he undergoes.

4. The Opening Sequence--Saving Private Ryan
I didn't see this film until a while after its release. Given that my wife was not interested in seeing it, I watched it on DVD one night after she had gone to sleep. We lived at the time in a small ranch, with our bedroom not 10 feet from the TV. So my first exposure to this celebrated sequence was not with Dolby sound in front of a big screen, but on a 19-inch TV with the sound turned very low. And after it, I still felt as if I had been through a battle; it still viscerally moved me even under those less-than-ideal conditions. Remarkable stuff.

5. Anakin vs. Obi-Wan--Star Wars--Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
There have been more visually interesting and acrobatic saber fights in the Star Wars films, but none with the storytelling power of this final one. Williams' score for the fight, the Battle of the Heroes theme, is amazing in its ability to underline the emotions in the fight. Never again, I suspect, will a film fight be able to bring to it so many years of anticipation and tension.

6. Spider-Man vs. The Green Goblin--Spider-Man
The brutality was questionable for a character that for so long has been aimed at eight year-olds, but so right for the film. After a movie's worth of time devoted to Parker getting used to his powers, we see him really unleash in probably the best superhero fight ever put to film.

7. The Battle of Stirling--Braveheart
Braveheart is one of my all-time favorite films, and this battle is a highlight. Gibson has received far too little credit for the closely shot, order-out-of-chaos, "realistic" style he employed here, a style copied in many films since without the clear sense of place that Gibson was able to convey here. That is, throughout the chaos of the battle we always have a clear sense of what's going on, where our key players are, and how the battle is going--not something you can say about subsequent similar cinematic battles.

8. The "Elephant" Sequence--The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Just when we think the stakes can't be raised anymore, they are, with this final sequence from the epic penultimate battle in the third film. The sheer audacity of the invention at hand is what makes this special: witness Legolas' just-this-side-of-believable take-down of one of the gargantuan "elephants" for proof.

9. The Opening Chase--The Matrix
The action in the sequels, especially, but even in this first film, got a little excessive, with too much happening to really take stock of, resulting in nothing but an overload of explosions and punches and crashes and kicks and far too many gunshots. But this first taste of the style the Wachowski's was going for hit the balance perfectly, with fight choreography and filming techniques we hadn't seen before married to a clear narrative--will Trinity escape?

10. Dash's Dash--The Incredibles
Again, great action inexorably married to real character development. The amount of story that's wrapped into this one sequence--Dash and Violet really learning how to exploit their powers, the family coming together to fight as a unit--is remarkable.

Until Whenever