From the bouncer brawlerRoad Houseto the high-octane spy caperTrue Lies, there are plenty of great mindless action movies out there forFast & Furiousfans to enjoy. What makestheFast & Furiousmoviesso much fun is that they allow the audience to switch off their brain. They flagrantly defy the laws of physics with their absurd action set-pieces. James Bond movies tend to have complicated plots and theBournemovies deal with heavy themes, but theFast & Furioussaga doesn’t strive to do anything more than entertain.
There are plenty of other great action movies that fall into this category. Directors like Michael Bay and stars like Jason Statham have made a career out of action movies that stimulate the audience’s adrenaline while giving their intellect some much-needed rest. There are action movies with ridiculous premises that make no sense, like the face-swapping plot ofFace/Off, and action movies that prioritize testosterone-fueled bromance over logic and reason, likePoint Break. There are a ton of delightfully ludicrous action movies to check out in betweenrewatches of theFast & Furiousfranchise.
10The Rock
Michael Bay is one of the first names in the kind of mindless action thatFast & Furiouspeddles in. The pinnacle of Bay’s particular brand of explosive cinematic spectacle — often dubbed “Bayhem” — is the gloriously bonkers Alcatraz actionerThe Rock. When a group of rogue Marines take hostages on Alcatraz Island and threaten to release a lethal toxin into the air, it’s up to Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery to save the day.
After establishing his penchant for stunning action scenes inBad Boys, Bay was granted a much higher budget for his sophomore effort.The Rockis a bigger, bolder, and wilder movie in every way, and a precursor toFast & Furious. Cage and Connery are well-matched as a nerdy FBI chemist and what isessentially an older version of James Bond, respectively; their bickering dynamic is endlessly watchable.
9Speed
Six years after doing the cinematography forDie Hard, Jan de Bont made his directorial debut by transplanting theDie Hardformula onto a bus. Keanu Reeves stars inSpeedas a cop who ends up on a bus that’s been rigged with a bomb that will explode if the bus’ speed drops below 50mph. Sandra Bullock plays the put-upon passenger tasked with keeping the speed above 50 and Dennis Hopper plays the sadistic terrorist who planted the bomb.
The bus action inSpeedis befitting of aFast & Furiousfilm. The scene in which the bus jumps over an incomplete stretch of highway certainly wouldn’t be out of place in aFast & Furiousmovie.Speedis more than justaDie Hardripoff; Reeves’ Jack Traven is more straitlaced than John McClane, and the fast-moving action brings a whole new angle to the story.
Part of the absurdist fun of theFast & Furiousfranchise is that it turns a bunch of mechanics and street racers into international mercenaries working for a shady government agency. Rowdy Herrington’sRoad Housedoes something similar: it turns a bouncer at a rural nightclub into John Wick.Patrick Swayze’s James Daltonis the most badass bouncer in America; he can kill a man with his bare hands.
Although it’s best remembered as a running joke onFamily Guy,Road Houseis a beloved classic of the action genre. Swayze is believably badass enough to play this part, and he’s more than charming enough to get the audience to go along for the ride. If theFast & Furiousmovies swapped out street races for bar brawls, it would look something likeRoad House.
7Con Air
Simon West’sCon Airis a ridiculous premise wrapped in a great movie. Nicolas Cage stars as a Desert Storm war hero who was imprisoned for accidentally killing a man in self-defense. Upon his release, he’s put aboard a JPATS aircraft, where most of the passengers are high-risk convicts being transferred to a supermax prison. During the flight, these convicts stage a prison break and take the plane hostage, leaving it up to Cage to save the day.
It’s easy to root for Cage, because he just wants to reunite with his wife and kid after eight long years behind bars. The ensemble cast is rounded out by some of the finest actors in the world — John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames — and despite the nature of the movie, none of them phone it in.Con Airis a mindless movie with mindful performances.
6The Expendables
Sylvester Stallone assembled an all-star cast of old-school action heroes to round out his titular merc squad inThe Expendables. He’s joined by Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and Mickey Rourke, with cameo appearances by Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The cast is just as stacked with action stars as any of the laterFast & Furioussequels.
The plot ofThe Expendablesconcerns the eponymous group being sent to overthrow a Latin American dictator. However, they quickly find that he’s just a puppet being controlled by a crooked ex-CIA agent. But the plot isn’t the reasonto watchThe Expendables— or any of its sequels, for that matter. The selling point of this franchise is having all the world’s biggest action stars sharing the screen, trading quippy banter, and that alone makes them worth watching.
5Shoot ‘Em Up
The fact thatShoot ‘Em Upis named after a video game genre should give some idea as to the kind of movie it is. Clive Owen stars as a drifter and former black-ops killer who saves a newborn baby from being murdered by an assassin, then has to protect the baby from the assassin’s goons as he tries to get to the bottom of the conspiracy. It stretches the maternity ward shootout fromHard Boiledinto its own feature-length movie.
Michael Davis’ riveting action direction ensures thatShoot ‘Em Uplives up to its title. It may have usedHard Boiledas a jumping-off point, but it makesHard Boiledlook understated by comparison.Shoot ‘Em Upoffers audiences a glimpse at how Owen might play Bond if he was given the role: a stone-cold badass.
4Face/Off
Fast & Furiousis a franchise in which a car was sent into space and a car swung through a jungle like Tarzan — and it still hasn’t done anything as ludicrous as the plot of John Woo’sFace/Off. John Travolta plays an FBI agent and Nicolas Cage plays the notorious terrorist who killed his son. The FBI agent undergoes a secret experiment to switch faces with the terrorist, so he can assume his identity, and it only gets crazier from there.
Face/Offis far better than it has any right to be. Havingan action movie maestro like Wooin the director’s chair ensures thatFace/Offisn’t just one of the most ridiculous stories ever told; it’s also one of the most exhilarating action movies ever produced. Travolta and Cage have a ton of fun playing into each other’s mannerisms after they switch places.
3The Transporter
There’s a reason why Jason Statham was such a natural fit when he joined the ensemble of theFast & Furiousfranchise: he’d been making those kinds of mindless action movies for years. Statham’s first major action starring vehicle wasThe Transporter. He plays Frank Martin, a chauffeur who will transport anyone and anything, no questions asked, for the right price. He’s not just a great driver; he’s a jack of all badass trades.
Frank became the defining role of Statham’s career: he’s stoic, capable, and effortlessly charismatic. He proved to be so popular that he became the star of a blockbuster franchise with two sequels, a TV spinoff, and a reboot.The Transporterhas thrilling fight scenesand intense car chases, and much like theFast & Furiousfranchise, it throws logic out of the car window at a breakneck speed.
2True Lies
Before he exclusively madeAvatarmovies, James Cameron helmed the big-budget spy actionerTrue Lies.True Liesessentially imagines what a James Bond movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger might look like, but it’s even more bonkers than any of the Bond films.True Liescombines a spy thriller with a family sitcom as Schwarzenegger’s hero tries to balance his messy double life as a suave secret agent and a suburban husband and father.
The action sequences inTrue Liesare so ludicrous that they makeFast & Furiouslook tame by comparison. A horse chase takes Schwarzenegger into an elevator and onto the roof of a skyscraper. An Uzi gets dropped down a staircase, keeps firing, and wipes out all the bad guys.True Liesis the mindless action movie to end all mindless action movies.
1Point Break
The Fast and the Furiousis essentially a soft remake ofPoint Breakthat swaps out surfing bank robbers for illegal street racers. The central dynamic between Patrick Swayze’s Bodhi and Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Utah is practically identical to Dom Toretto’s relationship with Brian O’Conner. Utah is an FBI agent sent in to take down Bodhi’s criminal enterprise, but he ends up becoming such good friends with him that he doesn’t want to turn him in.
Point Breakcreated the template for theFast & Furiousfranchise, and Kathryn Bigelow’s energetic direction proved that mindless action and great filmmaking don’t have to be mutually exclusive.Point Breakdoesn’t have skydiving cars, but it does have skydiving humans. It doesn’t have a car chase with a bank vault attached to the bumper, but it does have one of the greatest foot chases ever committed to film.
