But even if they were more about consequence-free fun, the Bond movies really have cast a shadow over the genre for as long as the genre has existed.Īs silly as the Bond movies could get-and they could get very silly-they’ve always been good for at least one absolutely breathtaking action scene. The thrills of the Bond movies were the Saturday-morning serial types: How will our hero get out of this jam? I tend to prefer the Bullitt take on the genre: The stoic intensity, the white-knuckle action scenes, the sense that people could really get hurt at any moment. The Bond movies essentially turned the action movie into a formula before it was even really a genre: An aspirational larger-than-life hero, a comic-book villain, a few showstopping set pieces, a couple of chuckles. But a strong case-maybe a stronger case-could also be made that the genre starts with 1962’s Dr.
When I started this column, I decided that the modern action movie began with Bullittin 1968.
