He helped redefine the genre during his heyday, but what are Sylvester Stallone’s best action movies by decade? Alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone’s action movies changed the game during the 1980s. These movies emphasized the visuals, the setpieces and the bodycount – in addition to their leading men being improbably ripped.
Stallone’s blockbusters like the Rambo movies or Cobra helped set a new template, but by the late 1990s, VFX-heavy blockbusters like Independence Day set a new standard. Stallone briefly quit action following 1996’s Daylight, and while his career entered a fallow period in the 2000s, he eventually staged a comeback.
Stallone is now an official movie icon, having had number one movies across six decades. He’s busy as ever too, and is currently fronting the hit TV series Tulsa King. He’s produced an action gem in each decade of his career, too.
1970s: Death Race 2000
While it was tempting to put Rocky down as Stallone’s best 1970s actioner, it would be stretching the label since the movie is, at its core, a drama. That means Sly’s best action film of the decade falls to the cult favorite Death Race 2000, produced by the late, great Roger Corman.
This tongue-in-cheek dystopian action flick centers around the titular death sport. This involves drivers with themed cars driving across the country while either fighting each other or running over civilians for points. The film was controversial for its almost gleeful violence, but Death Race 2000 plays like a campy cartoon now.
Death Race 2000 is the rare film where Sylvester Stallone plays a character who gets killed, with the last notable example of this being 1978’s F.I.S.T.
It also cast Stallone in a rare villainous part as “Machine Gun” Joe, the rival of David Carradine’s mysterious “Frankenstein.” The actors did much of their own driving too, and while Machine Gun Joe isn’t Stallone’s most nuanced performance, he certainly leaves an impression.
1980s: First Blood
The evolution of action cinema through the 1980s can largely be traced back to the original Rambo film, First Blood. This cast Stallone as the title ex-soldier, whose abuse at the hands of a petty sheriff leads to him declaring war on the entire town.
First Blood is stripped to the bone, and there isn’t a single wasted scene. Stallone barely speaks after the opening ten minutes, instead using his body language to convey Rambo’s thoughts. It helps that the setpieces are staged with such a steady hand too.
The bike chase is a textbook example of how to film one, while Rambo ambushing the police with booby traps plays like a horror sequence. First Blood was also saved in editing, with Stallone revealing he was so horrified by the three-hour first cut that he offered to buy the film so he could destroy it.
They trimmed out many flashbacks and talky sequences to get to the end result. First Blood is loaded with action, but it all stems from the characters. While Stallone has many great actioners on his CV, this is his best work in the genre.
1990s: Cliffhanger
Stallone had a bad few years prior to Cliffhanger, thanks to a wrong turn into comedy with Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot and Oscar. 1993 marked a major comeback, thanks to Demolition Man and Cliffhanger. The latter is essentially “Die Hard on a Mountain,” and it milks that concept for all it’s worth.
While he still has the muscles, Cliffhanger cast Stallone in a more vulnerable role. He plays a mountain rescue ranger traumatized by his failure to save a friend’s lover in the harrowing opening scene. When he and said friend are later forced to help stranded thieves find their missing loot, it’s up to Stallone’s Gabe to save the day.
Cliffhanger feels like one of the last great action flicks from Stallone’s heyday. It’s got stunning setpieces, a great villain in John Lithgow’s sociopathic thief and a near total lack of CGI. It also allowed Stallone to dig deeper as a performer and not just play a glowering, monosyllabic death machine.
2000s: Rambo
It looked like Stallone’s leading man days were behind him moving into the 2000s. Movies like Get Carter and Stallone’s only slasher film D-Tox sank without a trace, and he was cast adrift. It was returning to his most popular characters that saved the day, with Rocky Balboa and Rambo reminding audiences why they loved him.
The Rambo from, ummm, Rambo feels much closer to the bitter killer from the First Blood novel. He’s exiled himself from America for decades and shuns personal relationships, but is given a new purpose in life when asked to rescue some missionaries from Burma.
Stallone also directed Rambo, and he infuses the film with a gory, visceral intensity. Bullets slam into bodies like cannonballs, and they often take a limb or head with them. Throats are ripped out, bodies are buried or eaten by pigs, and in general, it’s the darkest ride of Stallone’s career.
Rambo features the finest setpieces Sly has mounted as director too, including the jaw-dropping final battle. Sure, the editing and camerawork can be too frantic and the cinematography is often too murky, but it’s absolutely his finest action project of the 2000s.
2010s: The Expendables 2
The Expendables movies were designed as a greatest hits compilation of their leading men’s careers. In truth, none of the four films (to date) has been great, but The Expendables 2 is the most purely enjoyable. The opening 15 minutes alone are worth the price of admission, featuring multiple shootouts, fistfights and vehicular action.
The sequel gives Jean-Claude Van Damme a great role as the villain, too. Unfortunately, the sequel was originally shot with a PG-13 rating in mind due to Chuck Norris demanding one; it was later upgraded to an R thanks to some very obvious CGI blood splatters.
Still, for fans of Stallone, Arnie, Jason Statham, Jet Li, et al, it’s hard not to have fun with this 2012 follow-up. The cast bounce off each other nicely, the pace rarely lets up and the closing airport gun battle is the first (and sadly, only) time Sly, Bruce Willis and Arnie fought alongside one another.
2020s: The Suicide Squad
It has to be said that the 2020s have been a dire period for Stallone in terms of action movies. The Expendables 4 was an utter bomb, while his most recent films, Armor and Alarum, both received well-earned 0% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.
Thankfully, his voice role as King Shark in James Gunn’s sequel/soft reboot The Suicide Squad saves the day. This over-the-top, R-rated romp is what the original should have been, and teams a group of misfit convicts on a mission to stop a mysterious alien creature.
Sylvester Stallone may not appear on camera, but his vocal performance as a dimwitted but oddly well-meaning talking shark is hilarious. The Suicide Squad’s focus is largely on character and humor, but the action beats are solidly handled, and (thankfully) make good use of that R rating.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
