The 10 best opening action scenes of all time
Action movies don’t necessarily have to open with a showstopping sequence, but there are a few better ways with which to instantly captivate an audience and throw down a marker of what’s to come.
Of course, it’s not a pre-requisite, with the first minutes of Die Hard finding John McClane being urged to make fists with his toes, but many of the genre’s top-tier titles have nonetheless decided that opening with a bang was the best course of action.
It doesn’t have to be, but it’s regularly glorious when it is, although it sometimes proves tricky for the films in question to top themselves after kicking things off with such a dizzying high of kinetic carnage and masterful mayhem.
That being said, the following ten titles managed to maintain their momentum throughout, something that was far from guaranteed when each of them ignited in such inimitably spectacular style.
The 10 best opening action scenes:
10. True Lies (James Cameron, 1994)
It sounds scarcely believable today, but there was a time when James Cameron used to make movies on a regular basis, with his prolific early years drawing to a definitive close when True Lies – his sixth feature in 12 years – arrived to thrill audiences around the world in the summer of 1994.
He’s only directed three features in the 30 years since, but in terms of drawing a line under a period in his career defined by quantity and quality in equal measure, it was a hell of a way to go out. Backed by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best performance and Jamie Lee Curtis in Golden Globe-winning form, True Lies delivered heart, humour, wit, warmth, and spectacle of the highest degree.
Showcasing the film’s mischievous streak from the opening set piece, Cameron pays tribute to James Bond in his own inimitable way as Schwarzenegger’s Harry Tasker infiltrates a soiree, peeling off his wetsuit to reveal a pristine tuxedo underneath. Taking time to dance a remarkably accomplished tango, he then makes a suitably explosive getaway while being pursued by goons on skis and snowmobiles, attempting to thwart his escape. In the broadest sense of the term, it’s the most fun Cameron has ever been as a filmmaker.
9. Lethal Weapon 2 (Richard Donner, 1989)
Having set the template the entire buddy cop subgenre would follow – and continues to do to this day – Lethal Weapon 2 was obligated to raise the bar in terms of scope, bickering banter, and white-knuckle action compared to its predecessor.
Parachuting viewers right into the middle of a high-speed chase, Mel Gibson’s Martin Riggs and Danny Glover’s Roger Murtaugh are back doing what they do best by causing collateral damage and trading barbs while flouting traffic regulations to track down the bad guys.
Frequent cuts back to the police station add a human element to the duo’s madcap antics, as things continue escalating on the ground as Riggs decides to chase down a vehicle on foot, having wrecked the car of his best friend and partner’s wife, rounded out by a helicopter-assisted getaway and several fireballs shooting into the night sky.
8. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie, 2015)
Ever since Tom Cruise decided that the franchise obligated him to put his life on the line, the Mission: Impossible series has always tried to one-up itself when putting its star and producer directly into the line of fire.
While Ghost Protocol‘s jaw-dropping Burj Khalifa sequence is arguably the best, and Dead Reckoning‘s parachuting to safety after riding a motorcycle off a cliff is the most dangerous, Cruise holding onto the outside of a plane as it takes off remains the most impressive.
Above and beyond watching the biggest star in Hollywood clinging onto an aircraft as it takes to the skies, the scene itself does an impeccable job of setting the stage for what’s to come in Rogue Nation. It highlights Ethan Hunt, his team, and the lengths they’re willing to go to in order to get the job done, something that was a requisite when Sean Harris’ villainous Solomon Lane puts his plan into action.
7. GoldenEye (Martin Campbell, 1995)
James Bond is famed for his pre-credits feats of derring-do, but the beginning of Martin Campbell’s GoldenEye meant the most, at least in terms of how it applied to the franchise as a whole.
Returning after a six-year absence that marks the longest sabbatical in 007’s cinematic history, Pierce Brosnan’s debut as the iconic secret agent faced the tough task of wasting as little time as possible in reminding everyone that Bond was as relevant, exciting, and enthralling as ever.
A breathtaking bungee jump from the top of a dam brought the spy series back to screens in stunning style, before Brosnan’s assault on a Soviet chemical weapons facility allowed the new leading man to get to grips with Bond’s penchant for guns, gadgets, and quips, before even finding the time to set the plot in motion when Sean Bean’s Alec Trevelyan is captured and presumed dead.
6. The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
Sam Peckinpah’s classic western was heavily criticised at the time of its release for its excessive amount of on-screen violence, but in terms of setting out a stall for what was to come, the blood-soaked opening shootout of The Wild Bunch outlined the filmmaker’s desire to take a bold new approach to a genre that was in danger of descending into formula.
The titular band of outlaws descend on a small town with the intent to carry out their latest bank job, all while the Temperance Union lines the rooftops awaiting the sextet of anti-heroes, confident in the belief they’ve got the firepower to see them off.
Of course, they don’t, with a cacophony of bullets ricocheting across the screen as the bodies drop with reckless and regular abandon. It’s far from a decisive victory given the heavy losses on both sides, but it nonetheless laid the table for The Wild Bunch to revolutionise cinema through the multi-camera setups, rapid-fire editing, and slow motion that would define its set pieces.
5. Blade (Stephen Norrington, 1998)
Thanks almost entirely to Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, superheroes were a million miles away from being considered cool when Stephen Norrington’s Blade came to cinemas in 1998. However, that perception had shifted entirely by the end of the opening scene.
An unwitting partygoer gets hoodwinked into joining an underground rave, only to discover he’s the meal ticket for a cabal of bloodthirsty vampires. Just when he thinks the end is nigh, he crawls towards a pair of heavy-duty boots before the camera pans up to reveal Wesley Snipes’ title hero in all of his glory.
From there, Blade cuts a swathe through the hordes of the undead, with the leading man oozing cool and charisma as he unleashes his impeccable martial arts ability and handiness with a sword. Just like that, the comic book genre wasn’t quite so dead and buried after all.
4. The Matrix (The Wachowskis, 1999)
Nobody was quite sure what to expect from The Matrix when it first came to the big screen, but by the end of its opening action scene, everybody knew they were in the midst of a game-changer.
Trinity’s brawl with the Agents has been parodied so often that it’s easy to forget just how monumental a moment it truly was, with the leather-clad badass jumping into the air as the cameras balletically swooped around her in bullet time to signal a breath of fresh air blowing through action cinema.
Coupled with the precision-engineered fight choreography and neon-drenched atmosphere, by the time Trinity dove from one building and crashed through the window of another, jaws were being picked up from the floor as The Matrix signalled that the medium would never be the same again.
3. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
A self-contained heist thriller opening a blockbuster comic book adaptation, by the time Heath Ledger’s Joker had even shown his face for the first time in The Dark Knight, his take on the Clown Prince of Crime was already a force to be reckoned with.
Spoken of in hushed tones by his cohorts to establish him as an almost-mythical figure, his penchant for chaos and unpredictability saw his fellow thieves pick each other off one by one under his orders, while the decision to brazenly rob a mob-connected establishment underlined that he had no fear of Gotham City’s criminal underworld.
All that, and he casually escapes on a school bus he’d planned to crash into the building with inch-perfect timing to facilitate his getaway, cementing Ledger’s Joker as iconic by the time his first contribution to the film had even ended in earnest. One of the best scenes in any superhero film ever, and Batman’s presence wasn’t even required.
2. Hard Boiled (John Woo, 1992)
Smooth jazz and extreme violence are two of John Woo’s favourite cinematic toys to play with, and never have they worked in better synchronicity than the opening stretch of the action maestro’s masterpiece Hard Boiled.
Leaning heavily into slow motion as the bodies are splayed in all directions, Chow Yun-fat’s renegade Inspector Tequila soars through the air with the greatest of ease during the teahouse shootout and even slides down an entire railing while firing a pistol in each hand once his undercover operation goes awry.
Hard Boiled boasts the highest body count of any action movie ever made, and Woo sets out that stall from the very beginning by unleashing a cavalcade of bullet-riddled excess that somehow conspires to grow ever more grandiose throughout the rest of the film as the set pieces become even bigger and more bombastic.
1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
It’s a risky gamble for any movie to operate under the assumption its hero is going to become an icon before the end of their very first scene, but Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had repeatedly changed the face of cinema in the years before Raiders of the Lost Ark, so it’s not as if they didn’t know what they were doing.
Introduced in silhouette, Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones is presented as mysterious, charismatic, charming, intrepid, resourceful, and relatable, all in the space of the opening scene. He might have made his way into an ancient temple and grabbed its prized artifact, but he’s also not above running for his life and screaming when a giant boulder threatens to render him as a two-dimensional paste.
Both the coolest cat on the planet and somebody who isn’t above letting their emotions get the better of them under the circumstances, Raiders did a seminal job of introducing a brand new hero to the masses, played to perfection by an actor who wasn’t even the first choice for the role.
