HEAT 2 Is Getting Made! Why? Because She's Got A GREAT ASS!

And you got your head all up in it.

Not the actual poster..

October 8, 2025: HEAT 2 is happening!

It’s real! I HAD COFFEE WITH MCCAULLEY HALF AN HOUR AGO!

To celebrate the news that Warner Bros. let UA pick up Michael Mann’s long-awaited sequel to his 1995 classic, I am re-upping part of this ranking of the best action films ever made that it took me hours to compile in 2023. The original was the top 50, but it was a jillion words long.

Here are the top 10.

10) Lethal Weapon

Lethal Weapon was my favorite movie as a child. I could watch it on repeat every single day for the rest of my life. I have seen it hundreds of times. It is poetry in motion. Richard Donner’s direction is perfect. Shane Black’s script is perfect. Garey Busey’s villain is perfect. Danny Glover’s “too old for this shit” performance is perfect. But let’s be totally real: the reason this movie is such a song is Mel Gibson. Riggs is such a great character, and Mel Gibson jumps into the role and takes it to the moon. I’m paraphrasing, but someone once described the magic of Lethal Weapon as a serious cop movie that was invaded by a Looney Tunes character. And that is exactly right.

In real life, Danny Glover is like a socialist, and Mel Gibson is like a fascist, and I just couldn’t give a shit. I would watch them play these two roles every day for the rest of my life, and I’d be happy. I didn’t include the third and fourth LWs on this list because I thought it would get a little boring and though the third is basically fine, the fourth one especially is sort of meh, but in all seriousness, I would happily watch all four of these movies in a row at a moment’s notice anywhere anyplace anytime.

9) Kill Bill

Rolling Stone put these together as one movie since that is how Tarantino conceived them. I think it’s sort of cheating but since I’m really struggling with my own space problems, I’m going to do it too. The first half is good and fine and fun. But the second Kill Bill is when this really becomes next level. The whole package is a beautiful homage to one of our most interesting director’s favorite genre flicks. Of all the movies in the top ten here, Kill Bill I have seen the fewest times, and I’ve probably seen it 20 times.

8) First Blood

A lot of people who love First Blood will argue that it isn’t an action film. They will argue that because they say the sequels are action films, and they are haters of action films and think it is a compliment to say First Blood is not an action film. I don’t give a shit what you call First Blood. It seems like an action movie to me. Whatever you call it, it’s a wonderful film. After Rocky, it’s probably Stallone’s best performance. He’s an anguished vet suffering from PTSD who gets shit on by these hillbilly cops, and eventually goes to war with the worst pig in the town, a sheriff played with disturbing charm by Brian Dennehy.

If First Blood isn’t on your list of best action films, it is because you are prejudiced against action films! You have decided that action films can’t be powerful. You’ve decided they can’t speak to realities of the soul or issues of national importance. And you’re wrong.

7) Die Hard With A Vengeance

The third Die Hard. It was originally written to be a standalone cop film called Simon Says and then Fox decided to turn it into a Die Hard film. I don’t know how the original version would have turned out. I’m sure I would have liked it a lot. On the DVD commentary, the screenwriter says that the first hour is basically word for word what he had written for Simon Says. Regardless, DHWAV is a perfect action film. Not only do you have Bruce Willis turning in a wonderful version of his most famous character, but he is joined by Samuel L Jackson showing that Pulp Fiction wasn’t a one-off. I don’t think anyone could do Zeus Carver as well as Jackson does him. The back-and-forth he has with McLane should be taught in schools.

And Jeremy Irons! Jeremy Irons turns in one of the great villain performances.

Most of the sequels on this list are reruns of the first film. Die Hard With A Vengeance is not. Everything is different except the character (and the tone, carried over by John McTiernan who sat out the second film but came back for this.) It is its own thing. That is amazing.

I saw this movie so many times in the theater when it came out, that when it was leaving theaters, the owner of the theater gave me the 10-foot-tall poster that had been in the lobby. (A few years later, Bruce moved next door to us in Sun Valley and came over one time, and I had to awkwardly explain that I wasn’t a psychotic stalker.)

6) 48 Hrs

It is not an exaggeration to say that 48 Hrs created the modern buddy cop film. Nick Nolte is the racist, drunken screwup cop who pulls Eddie Murphy out of prison to help him hunt down two very bad men. 48 Hrs gets passed over on a lot of lists because the racial politics of it have “not aged well,” but what made 48 Hrs so special was that it disucssed these issues at all.

There has perhaps never been a better “I am a movie star, you are watching a movie star” scene than the scene in 48 Hrs where Eddie Murphy dominates all the rednecks in a cowboy bar.

Directed by Walter Hill, it’s also a much more bloody buddy cop film than will become standard. The early sequence in the hotel when Nick Nolte confronts James Remar for the first time is Sam Peckinpah shit.

The sequel wasn’t very good, but in reality, it deserves credit for a whole slew of classic films that would follow.

Including…

5) Beverly Hills Cop

The first installment of BHC was an idea that was passed around a bunch of different actors. Stallone’s version turned into Cobra. Eddie Murphy, who had just recently become a movie star, became ana ll time great with this. Most of the films on this list needed two stars at least to sing. Not BHC. The supporting cast is great, but this is Eddie Murphy doing the Eddie Murphy show. Martin Breast is a fine and able director who is also capable of making total garbage. He doesn’t really do anything here to stand out above replacement-level directors. It’s just all Eddie. And that is so good!

4) Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark

The best Indy movie. Possibly the best adventure film of all time. Maybe the best film about Nazis of all time. Han Solo as a treasure hunter in a race against the Nazis. Steven Spielberg is the greatest director of all time. George Lucas came up with the idea and played a huge role in it, obviously, but Lucas actually isn’t that great a director. Spielberg is the best that will ever live. Lawrence Kazdan turns the script into magic. The whole thing is a rollicking good time from start to finish.

There are some millennials who argue that Last Crusade is the best Indy film. I also am a millenial and so also saw Last Crusade in theaters and have a soft spot for it. Last Crusade is great. And it enjoys the second heat of Sean Connery. But come on. Raiders is special.

The scene in the market with the swordsman is a perfect example of how an action scene actually doesn’t need to have that much action in it.

3) Terminator 2

I don’t think Terminator 2 is necessarily better than all the other films on this list. But as an action film? As an action film, it’s breathtaking. James Cameron shows why studio executives should just get out of the way and pay whatever bills he sends them. Arnold at the top of his game.

In the first one, Linda Hamilton is a traditional damsel in distress. Yes, she kills the first Terminator in the end, but barely. Michael Biehn is the action protagonist who really handles most of it. But cut to 7 years later, and Hamilton has transformed herself into the baddest bitch on Earth. Ellen Ripley shit.

The villain, Mr Melting Metal? Mind-blowing! Liquid Metal Man was so iconic that it basically set an impossible standard for the sequels that they’ve never been able to live up to.

Edward Furlong had some child star troubles after this and never really worked again, but he was perfect as the troubled son who carries the weight of the future on his shoulders.

There are so many elements of this film that elevate it above the first one. The first one is a great chase movie. A lot of nice ideas and set pieces. But the sequel gives you a robot who learns, if not how to love, what humans mean when we say the word! A mother who has ended up in an insane asylum because she knows what no one else could know and has made the mistake of trying to tell them about it. Joe Morton as Miles Dyson! My god. I can still hear his breath clicking as he holds the grenade in the office.

2) Heat

Michael Mann’s Heat has risen in esteem considerably since it was first released. No one doesn’t like Heat. Everyone likes Heat.

Heat is an action film.

It has lots of action! It has lots of action set pieces! It has two stars—perhaps the two most important actors of the last 50 years—going head to head. It is a sprawling, beautiful modern epic. Al Pacino find in Detective Vincent Hanna the perfect character for his post-Scent of a Woman acting style He lets it rip with abandon and thank god for it. How many moments in this movie are memes because of him? Half the valuation of The Ringer is because of Chris Ryan doing his Al Pacino impression from this film.

And the other side of that coin? Robert De Niro cold as ice.

The final bank robbery scene is so good that even if it was just a ten-minute short film it would belong somewhere on this list.

Michael Mann was working on the idea for Heat for so long that he actually made a version of it a decade before for TV and you can find it on Youtube. It’s a perfectly fine TV movie. But it is so much worse than Heat. It’s wonderful that it exists because it allows you to see just how much of a difference movie stars and big budget production values bring to a story.

Is Heat an action film? Hell yeah. Do you know why? Because the action IS the juice.

THE TOP ACTION FILM OF ALL TIME IS…

1) Die Hard

Yippee-Ki Yay, motherfucker.

I mean, what is there to even say about Die Hard? It was born fully formed from Zeus’ head. Bruce Willis is perfectly cast as a NYC cop who is not really a superhero. (Yet. In the later sequels, he sort of becomes a superhero.) Alan Rickman’s performance as Hans Gruber is the number one villain performance of the entire genre. Often imitated, never matched.

A lot of movies suffer the trap of becoming one note for the flaw of having too few games. Another word for game might be gimmick. Die Hard has brilliant gimmicks. The concept is a gimmick—so successful that it obviously created a whole genre of just Die Hard on a blah blah blah—but forget about that for a second. Think of the more minor games. He is barefoot. The terrorists aren’t terrorists at all and are robbing bearer bonds. They need the FBI to cut the power to get the safe open. McLane is alone basically the entire film and can only talk on the radio to Seargent Al Powell. The detonators are a brilliant side mission that pushes this thing forward. And Christmas.

Ho ho ho now I have a machine gun.

The setting itself is so perfect. While contained, it is actually large enough to allow for a whole bunch of different environments. Offices, floors under construction, the lobby, the roof, the elevator shafts, the air ducts, the parking garage, and the bathrooms. John McTiernan gets so much variety out of this. He turns the building into a whole universe.

I almost put Heat at one just to be different than Rolling Stone but I can’t do it. This one they got right. Die Hard is the best action film of all time.

You can read the rest of the list here: