10 great Christmas action films

With a moral message that invariably comes with a side order of syrup, you need a pretty sweet tooth to get through your average Christmas movie. With the blockbuster BFI season Art of Action in full swing in cinemas across the UK, we’ve put together a selection of alternative festive viewing: films that swap candy canes for shotguns, and wonderful lives for life on the edge.

It would be remiss of us not to begin any list of Christmas action flicks with the film that towers 35 stories over the competition. “We hadn’t intended it to be a Christmas movie,” said John McTiernan when asked for the 100th time to weigh in on whether his 1988 action masterpiece ought to be considered part of the Christmas-film canon. “Die Hard was a terrorist movie. It was about these horrible leftist terrorists who come in to the Valhalla of capitalism – Los Angeles – and they bring their guns and their evil ways and they shoot up on people just celebrating Christmas. It was really about the stern face of authority stepping in to put things right again.”

If McTiernan appears happy to embrace Die Hard as a perennial favourite, Jan de Bont – responsible for the film’s peerless cinematography – appears to have much stricter conditions for his festive viewing. “I’m not sure if the spirit of Christmas is fully embraced by that movie, to be honest,” he said. “To really call that a Christmas movie is a little far-fetched.”

Whichever side of the debate your snowflake falls, yuletide action doesn’t end with Die Hard. As the nights draw in and the festive season steps into gear, here are 10 more Christmas action greats for canonical consideration. Yippee ki yay, Father Christmas.

Director: William Witney

Christmas trees are big business in Glenn Rock, so much so that B-western legend Jack Holt – playing himself – has left pictures behind and chosen the town as the perfect spot to settle down and raise spruces. Of a mind that every family should be able to afford a tree, Holt sells them at cost, threatening the profits of a rival outfit, who set out to sabotage his attempts to get his firs to market.

Holt isn’t the star of this bafflingly-titled festive western. It’s Roy Rogers and Trigger – “the smartest horse in the movies” – who have their names above the title. A firm favourite of Quentin Tarantino, director William Witney made six films with Rogers in 1950 alone, stripping back the kitsch singalongs for which the star was known and amping up the action muscle. Stacking the film’s tight 67 minutes with chases, fist fights and fiery pandemonium, Witney orchestrates a strong balance of action and small-town Christmas spirit. A host of Republic Pictures’ western stars drop in ahead of the finale – a burning bridge across the Red River – before Rogers rides off into the freshly falling snow, his earlier musical number ‘Every Day Is Christmas in the West’ making a welcome return.

Director: Duccio Tessari

In the opening seconds of Duccio Tessari’s spaghetti western, two gunmen square off in the street, their fingers twitching above their respective holsters. It looks like it’s about to kick off, until one of them opens their mouth: “Merry Christmas, Johnny,” he says, before going about his day. The festive season is in full swing in the film’s unnamed border town, as the inhabitants place their pitiable spruces on the porch and collect gifts from the local store. “Only at Christmas do people exchange greetings,” the postmaster notes. “The rest of the time they shoot each other.”

The plot sees a group of bandits rob the local bank and hole up in a nearby farmstead, taking the inhabitants – which includes the sheriff’s fiancée – as hostages. Giuliano Gemma (or Montgomery Wood, to give him his terrific screen credit in the American cut) is the lone sharpshooter sent in to infiltrate the gang. Another rare example of a fully-fledged yuletide western, the film’s action is explicitly set over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and includes a climactic shoot-out that takes place inside a hacienda festooned with decorations.

Director: Peter Hunt

A Bond villain needs a Christmas tree that is commensurate with their self-ordained status: a towering, baubled folly to world-ending hubris. For Telly Savalas’s Blofeld – chief villain in this sixth entry in the 007 franchise – that means gold tinsel by the mile. Christmas chez Blofeld is a day like any other, with everything in service to the greater evil. Expect a Mickey slipped in the festive tipple, and a gift that benefits the giver more than the recipient.

Fortunately, an agent of her majesty’s government is on hand to upset festivities, leading a post-prandial chase down the slopes of the Swiss Alps. With Hammer stalwart Michael Reed on lensing duties, the skiing sequences supply some of the most gorgeous images in the Bond canon. An action-packed third act takes in an avalanche, a stock-car race on the ice, and a climactic bobsleigh run, but still makes time for a pitstop at a winter market that comes with its own Bond theme: the oh-so-60s ode to festive firs, ‘Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown?’

Director: Charles Band

“And what would you like Santa to bring you for Christmas this year?” asks Father Christmas of the young boy perched on his lap. Seconds later he’s smashing the place up, his face pustulating before he takes a bullet in the chest. This shopping-centre Saint Nick was a trancer – a zombie enslaved by the psychic power of a nefarious cult leader – shot dead by Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson), one of Angel City PD’s finest.

Deth (“a good cop, until a trancer killed his wife”) has travelled some 300 years back in time to 1985 Los Angeles, on the trail of one Martin Whistler, a megalomaniac intent on taking power by wiping out the ancestors of 23rd-century LA’s city council. Cheerfully ripping off both The Terminator (1984) and Blade Runner (1982), this resourcefully stylish B-movie features a pre-fame Helen Hunt getting her Sarah Connor on. Mark Ryder provides the tasty synth score, while fictional band The Buttheads take to the film’s club stage for a frenetic punk rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’.

Director: Clarence Fok

A Hong Kong action movie that’s equal parts Highlander (1986) and Demolition Man (1993), Clarence Fok’s high-octane Christmas cracker begins with Yuen Biao’s Ming-dynasty imperial guard in pursuit of a supervillain after the secret of ultimate enlightenment. A plummet off the side of a cliff sees the two frozen in ice and defrosted 300 years later in modern-day Kowloon, where only the Black Jade Buddha – soon to be exhibited in a museum – can transport them back to their own time. Move over, Eugene O’Neill.

Enter Maggie Cheung as the vivacious sex worker who guides Yuen’s fish out of water through this unfamiliar world, putting him up in her flat that’s decorated like a Christmas grotto. But it’s Yuen Wah who steals the show as the sadistic baddie Fung San, surfing cars and flicking bullets with the power of a gun. It looks the business, with the ubiquitous festive lights casting everything in vivid tones. But the action is where it’s at, not least in a climactic horseback-jeep chase and a gorgeous rooftop sword fight by the airport.

Director: William Lustig

The seedy side of pre-gentrified New York gets into the Christmas spirit in this winningly indecent sequel to the 1988 cult classic. Kicking off with a replay of Maniac Cop’s final moments, part two sees the sicko tag-team of director William Lustig and writer-producer Larry Cohen temper the slasher-adjacent antics of the earlier film while amping up the action quota. Plot-wise, it’s business as usual, as Robert Z’Dar’s scar-faced monument to police brutality continues his campaign of vengeance against the city that sent him to prison.

As with the first film, the craft is impeccable, with Lustig proving himself as capable with a set-piece as he is with scuzzy atmospherics. Cohen’s keen satirical eye keeps sociopolitical frissons on the simmer, while the stunt team exceed all budgetary expectations – the runaway car sequence (with bonus chainsaw action) is worth the price of admission alone. It all comes to a head with a Terminator-riffing siege on the police precinct, in which our titular wrong ’un charges in to begin his assault with a Christmas wreath plastered to his face.

Director: Renny Harlin

“Mrs Claus is hot!” shouts a teenager at the Christmas parade in which Samantha Caine (Geena Davis) is decked out as Santa’s wife. Ever since she washed up on a beach eight years prior, this wholesome small-town homemaker has had total amnesia. When she hits a deer on the way home from a Christmas party, flashes of her past come flooding back, pointing to a previous life as a deadly assassin. With a little help from Samuel L. Jackson’s turtleneck-sporting shamus, she quickly finds out she’s as handy with a knife as she is with a rifle – and pretty good with a pair of ice skates too.

To quote Wesley Snipes’s John Cutter in Passenger 57 (1992), if you’re after some Christmas action, “always bet on Black”. The screenwriter and director Shane Black can’t seem to get enough of the holiday season. It was front and centre in Lethal Weapon (1987), his first produced screenplay, bubbling in the background of his script for The Last Boy Scout (1991), and it set the scene for his 2005 directorial debut Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Renny Harlin may be the director of The Long Kiss Goodnight, but Shane Black is its wisecracking auteur.

Director: Robert Butler

It’s Christmas Eve, and a flight from NYC is readying to depart for Los Angeles. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) is cued up for the in-flight movie. The few passengers are settling in, when in walk half a dozen of New York’s finest, accompanying a pair of prisoners. One, played by Brendan Gleeson, is a mouthy bank robber; the other – Ray Liotta, all wolfish charm and smiles – is a purported serial killer known as the Lonely Hearts Strangler.

Within 20 minutes, Gleeson’s crook has gone haywire, putting a bullet in the fuselage and a dozen more in the cops and pilots. A storm is approaching and the autopilot is soon on the blink, setting Liotta’s psychopath up for his time to shine. With the action taking place entirely aboard a plane decked out like a Christmas tree, Turbulence pits its villain against Lauren Holly’s unlucky-in-love flight attendant. But this is Liotta’s show, and the late actor is intent on making the most of it, dialling his maniacal performance all the way up for a thrilling festive hoot in the skies.

Directors: Johnnie To and Law Wing-cheong

The Christmas spirit seeps slowly into this wondrous genre-defying sequel from directors Johnnie To and Law Wing-cheong (the latter To’s assistant director on the first film). Decorations line the streets and café interiors, while a blast of ‘O Christmas Tree’ occasionally tinkles on the soundtrack. Lau Ching-wan – a To regular – is back as Inspector Ho of the Serious Crimes Unit, this time on the hunt for a self-styled magician with a penchant for smoke-bomb assisted disappearing acts. And a pet eagle.

Much like its predecessor, Running Out of Time 2 is a cat-and-mouse thriller, but, unlike the film’s villain, To is never a director to pull the same trick twice. Joyously eccentric, this sequel mostly recycles the earlier film’s template as a means to indulge in a parade of exuberant set pieces and poignant non sequiturs – the latter invariably revolving around Lam Suet’s helpless gambling addict. An action highlight sees a foot chase in the rain morph into a race on a pair of rattletrap bicycles, before an explosion of festive cheer in the film’s sumptuous final moments.

Director: John Woo

Following a decade spent bringing his singularly heightened brand of action to Hollywood with the likes of Hard Target (1993) and Face/Off (1997), Hong Kong maestro John Woo headed back East to diminishing returns. Twenty years later he marked his Stateside return with one of the best knock-offs to emerge in the wake of John Wick (2014).

Woo doesn’t waste any time setting up his high concept. Within the first five minutes, cars are flipping, heads are detached from necks, and Christmas-jumper-wearing leading man Joel Kinnaman takes a bullet in the throat, rendering him speechless. He’s in pursuit of the gangbangers who have killed his kid in a drive-by shooting. With his voice now gone, the rest of Silent Night plays out almost entirely dialogue-free, as Kinnaman gets himself into shape and marks the following Christmas Eve on his calendar as the deadline to “kill them all”. Woo certainly knows his way around a gunfight, and acquits himself admirably with his lowest budget in decades – not least in a gnarly, digitally-stitched long-take up the stairs of the villain’s lair.

Art of Action plays in cinemas across the UK and online on BFI Player from October to December 2024.