In Sabotage, Arnold Schwarzenegger leads a team of recognizable actors in a SWAT team that goes rogue and falls prey to paranoia and distrust. It’s a pretty good movie, but the characters are hardly what we’d call one of the best action movie teams in movie history.
So what are the best action movie teams in movie history? We’ve scoured our memory banks and massive DVD libraries to narrow down the list to 25 badass groups of crimefighters, rebels, adventurers and soldiers. From the genre’s groundbreaking origins in 1954 to the all-star reimaginings of the 1960s, to the deconstructionist 1980s to the unironic flamboyance of the 21st Century, these are the action movie teams that bust the most heads, spout the best dialogue, overcome the greatest odds and cemented their place in the cinematic firmament.
What qualifies as an “action movie team?” It’s simple really. It’s not just an action movie with a cool ensemble cast, it’s an action movie with an ensemble cast that identifies themselves as a unit. Maybe they’ve been assigned to work together, maybe they’re hired guns under the same employer, maybe they’re just crazy kids who gave their club a name before the shit hit the fan. But these are the action movie heroes and antiheroes who decided to work together come hell or high water, and who got the job done when nobody thought they could.
These are The Top 25 Action Movie Teams, courtesy of CraveOnline.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
The Top 25 Action Movie Teams
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25. The Monster Squad (1987)
Who could possibly take on Dracula and his all-star monster mash-up? The Monster Squad, the only team of do-gooders young enough to believe in monsters. Fred Dekker's pre-teens are surprisingly capable warriors, but impressively, you also never forget that they're just children. Plus: wolfman's got nards.
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24. The Guns of Navarone (1961)
Gregory Peck leads a team of commandos to bust an impregnable German fortress in World War II, saving hundreds of lives and probably sacrificing their own in the process. David Niven, Stanley Baker and Anthony Quinn round out an impressive who's who cast.
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23. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
One of the dumbest ideas ever committed to celluloid was actually a pretty good movie: relatively grounded (for a movie about mutant ninja turtles), full of teen-centric father issues and boasting a cast of colorful practical effects creations that spew catch phrases but experience real emotions when their father, a rat named Splinter, falls prey to the evil Shredder.
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22. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Steven Spielberg's influential World War II "men on a mission" movie stars Tom Hanks as an Army Rangers Captain assigned to rescue the elusive Private Ryan after every one of his brothers dies in battle. Tom Sizemore, Jeremy Davies, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi and Adam Goldberg and Vin Diesel each prove their mettle, whether they survive the mission or die en masse to save a single man.
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21. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
All of the Mission: Impossible movies place Tom Cruise at the head of an elite team of spies, but his co-stars in the fourth film are the best. Jeremy Renner plays an analyst who is not what he seems, Paula Patton's personal vendetta threatens to blow the whole game, and Simon Pegg graduates from techie to field agent in Brad Bird's crackerjack thriller.
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20. Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD) was pretty interesting in the first Hellboy, but Guillermo Del Toro's bigger, better sequel ditches the dead weight exposition guy Myers in favor of Johann Kraus, a snooty ectoplasmic being stuck in a full body suit, and a renewed focus on Hellboy, the amphibious Abe Sapien and the pyrokinetic Liz Sherman.
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19. 300 (2006)
Zack Snyder's deliriously overblown adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel tells the ancient story of 300 Spartan soldiers who held their ground against 300,000 invading Persian soldiers in 480 B.C. The team itself, besides a growling Gerard Butler as King Leonidas, doesn't make much of an impression, but their amazing accomplishments outweigh their lack of depth.
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18. The Warriors (1979)
Walter Hill's unforgettable cult classic finds a Coney Island street gang framed for the murder of a beloved leader who planned to unite all of New York's colorful criminals in harmony. The Warriors are forced to fight every gang in the city in order to get back to their territory, but although they perform great deeds, they remain unapologetic antiheroes: hapless thugs in way over their heads.
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17. The Goonies (1985)
Richard Donner's beloved family adventure stars Sean Astin as the idealistic leader of The Goonies, a group of suburban kids who go treasure hunting, piss off bank robbers, befriend a monster and survive one crazy death trap after another in order to save their families from economic ruin. Everybody has their favorite Goonie, but put them together and you have one of the best action movie teams in family movie history.
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16. Fast Five (2011)
The scattered cast of the first four Fast & Furious movies finally came together in Justin Lin's Fast Five, a corking heist thriller that brought every character together - well, almost - for the first time, and made them a family. The adventure continued in the equally fun but somewhat less polished Fast & Furious 6.
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15. Serenity (2005)
The witty cast of Joss Whedon's fan favorite but ratings-anemic TV series "Firefly" jumped to the big screen with all the one-liners and super-sincere melodrama intact. The film is a little impenetrable if you haven't seen the series, but it's still a movie, the crew of Serenity is a fantastic team, so it totally counts.
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14. Aliens (1986)
Sigourney Weaver barely survived a battle with one alien, so in James Cameron's sequel he teamed her up with a troop of heavily armed Colonial Marines to help her kick xenomorphic ass. Ironically, the iconic supporting cast of Aliens are writing check their training can't cash: despite their all their quotable bravado (and pervasive influence on space marines stories in every medium), the aliens make mincemeat of them all in a tragic metaphor for American military involvement in Vietnam.
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13. The Expendables (2010)
After years of fanboys hoping for an all-star action team up of badass actors from the 1980s, Sylvester Stallone finally made it a reality in The Expendables, which teamed Stallone with Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke and many more against bad guys Steve Austin, Gary Daniels and, well, many more. The plot was stupid, the action hard to follow, the characters thin, but the stunt casting and the testosterone energy makes The Expendables an historically significant and mostly solid action team-up.
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12. X-Men: First Class (2011)
Any of the X-Men movies arguably belong on our list, but X-Men: First Class stands out as a superior ensemble, mostly because it's the only X-Men movie that isn't overtly or covertly just a Wolverine movie with a big supporting cast. X-Men: First Class plays like a classic 1960s men on a mission movie, with not one but two leaders who eventually turn on each other and split the team in half right when it matters.
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11. Predator (1987)
A year after Aliens came out, John McTiernan released his own deconstruction of then-modern machismo starring a team of kickass commandos who get their asses kicked by an alien menace. Unlike the Colonial Marines in Aliens, however, Predator kicks off with a spectacular rescue mission that show off just how good Arnold Schwarzenegger's team really is, so that when the Predator starts killing them, it comes across like even more of an accomplishment.
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10. Tombstone (1993)
George P. Cosmatos's most popular film stars Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton and a particularly unforgettable Val Kilmer (playing Wild West legend Doc Holliday) as his posse. The film revolves around the events leading up to an immediately following the Shootout at the O.K. Corral, and tests the impressive cast's honor, loyalty and gunfighting skills at every turn.
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9. Star Wars: Episode VI - The Return of the Jedi (1983)
The first three Star Wars movies are all pretty great, but the Rebel Alliance never started actiing like a proper team until the third installment, which opens with a well-planned rescue of Han Solo from Jabba's palace and concludes with a well-coordinated final assault on the second Death Star. The first Star Wars brought them together, the second forced them apart, but Return of the Jedi finally proved how great Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, R2-D2 and even C-3PO really are when they work together.
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8. The Avengers (2012)
They said it couldn't be done. They were wrong. Joss Whedon's The Avengers combined multiple superhero franchises into a single film, keeping the wit and wonder of each series alive and distinctive, and although Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and The Hulk spend most of the film fighting each other, that just makes their inevitable reconciliation and the final, bravura action sequence that much more exciting.
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7. The Magnificent Seven (1960)
John Sturges' spot-on remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai starred seven beloved actors (and a young Horst Bucholz, whom the studio thought highly of at the time) as western mercenaries who agree to protect a small town from bandits in exchange for almost nothing. A charismatic cast, classic scenes and a timeless story make The Magnificent Seven one of the best action movie teams in history. Almost as great as...
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6. Seven Samurai (1954)
There's no substitute for the original. Seven Samurai is the original, the film that established the team genre and set the ground rules that all action movies follow to this very day. A masterful film filled with unique characters and bold, exciting samurai fight sequences. Team dynamics may have changed over the years, leading to some arguably better teams, but Seven Samurai is undoubtedly the best movie on our list.
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5. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The first installment of Peter Jackson's ambitious and wildly successful adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novels teamed a quartet of innocent hobbits with a reluctant king, a corrupted war hero, a boastful dwarf, a self-important elf and an enigmatic wizard on a gorgeous sightseeing tour of Middle Earth, peppered with one action extravaganza after another. The cast is superb, their chemistry impeccable, their accomplishments legendary.
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4. The Dirty Dozen (1967)
Robert Aldrich's beloved macho classic The Dirty Dozen stars Lee Marvin as an OSS officer who enlists convicted criminals for a suicide mission. The first 2/3's of the film whips the antiheroes into a capable fighting unit, the last act shows how they either fall victim to or overcome their own antisocial natures.
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3. The Incredibles (2004)
Pixar's family of superheroes spends most of their film fighting to conceal their identities, literally and figuratively, as the world turns its back on idealistic heroism. But Brad Bird's smart, funny and thoroughly exciting The Incredibles eventually finds them coming together as a family and a crackerjack team of crimefighteres in a near-perfect metaphor combination of family bonding and blockbuster action.
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2. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Most of the Star Trek movies feature a perfectly cast team of spacefaring heroes overcoming the odds and affirming strong moral values, but the fourth film - though light on action - keeps them all together, makes the best use of their individual skills and personalities, and tells a corking tale of time travelling whale rescue. If Star Trek IV isn't your cup of tea, pick any other film in the franchise. Except the fifth one. Or the ninth.
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1. The Wild Bunch (1969)
Sam Peckinpah redefined action movie violence and cinematic antiheroes with The Wild Bunch, still one of the most exciting and brutal westerns ever made. William Holden leads a team of murderous bastards who steal from the good guys, sell to the bad guys, and ultimately decide to follow their own code of honor. It gets all of them in deep, deep trouble. The Wild Bunch is the greatest action movie team of them all: rebellious, resourceful, dastardly and, in their own very unusual way, a special breed of heroes.
