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DILLON ON FILM
My Ten Favourite Action Thrillers
A personal selection of top-notch, high-octane cinematic spectacle
With The Equalizer 3 currently in cinemas, this seems an opportune moment to discuss my favourite action thrillers. As I recently explained in my ten favourite adventure films article, I believe the action thriller exists apart from the adventure genre in ways that are slippery and difficult to define, with obvious overlap at times. “Action” and “adventure” may seem interchangeable genre terms, but there are key differences.
To reiterate what I said in my earlier article, the adventure film typically centres around hidden treasures, quests, survivalist peril, or exploration and discovery. Action thrillers rather focus on protagonists in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught by circumstance, or often by cops and suchlike simply doing their job. The feel of each genre is distinct and different (for example, Raiders of the Lost Ark feels very different to something like John Wick).
There are other differences, and because adventure can blend with so many other genres (sci-fi and fantasy, for example) it becomes harder still to nail in its purest form. The action thriller is slightly easier to pin down, but there is still some overlap. Unlike my adventure list, which I kept…
