If you’re beating somebody up on Christmas you are either completely missing the point of the holiday, or you’re in an action movie. Hollywood has been using the wholesomeness of the yuletide season as an ironic backdrop for explosions and violence for decades now, creating a small but notable subgenre of Christmas action movies that are either the perfect counterpoint to the typical maudlin holiday favorites or, at the very least, a way for Grinches to get their jollies.
So if you’re looking for a macho film to watch while you chug your eggnog this year, these Christmas action movies will be right up your chimney. Some of them are already perennial favorites, while others are rarely even remembered as taking place in late December. But films will all kick your ass and take your name on their “naughty” list.
Related: Seven Christmas Movies That Will RUIN Your Christmas
Batman Returns (1992)
Warner Bros.
Christmas might not seem at the first glance like a perfect backdrop for Batman, until you remember that being melancholy about lost loved ones over the holidays is (sadly) a yuletide tradition all its own. That tonal contradiction blends tidily into the many themes of duality Tim Burton plays with in Batman Returns, a film about multiple personalities, parallel lives and penguins with rockets strapped to their backs.
Behind Enemy Lines (2001)
20th Century Fox
For no other reason than it’s hard to think of ten action movies that prominently feature Christmas, we present Behind Enemy Lines, a surprisingly competent attempt to turn Owen Wilson into a badass from way back in the early 2000s (i.e. when that seemed plausible). Wilson plays a Navy navigator shot down over Bosnia during the holiday season, who trudges through the snow to rescue himself from one impossible situation after another. Behind Enemy Lines was a moderate success that spawned three straight-t0-video sequels, and director John Moore eventually graduated to direct A Good Day to Die Hard, a sequel to the greatest christmas action movie ever. Speaking of which…
Die Hard (1988)
20th Century Fox
Die Hard wasn’t the first action movie set at Christmas, but John McTiernan’s taut and clever thriller effectively remade the holiday in its image. John McClane (Bruce Willis, iconic) is trapped in a building with heavily armed thieves who take hostages at a Christmas party, and only he can save the day. The poor bastard doesn’t even have shoes. McTiernan warps several Christmas clichés to make Die Hard the distinctive blockbuster we all know and love, from making “Ode to Joy” more joyous than ever and revealing nifty new uses for gift wrapping tape. And the family values inherent to the season are defended with a knockout punch to the face.
Die Hard 2 (1990)
20th Century Fox
“How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?” That’s a good question, John McClane, and it probably has everything to do with Die Hard being such a runaway hit that nobody wanted to screw with the formula for Die Hard 2, which was comically marketed as Die Harder. This time, mercenaries have hijacked an airport and are forcing all the inbound planes to stay in the air until their demands are met. Naturally, John McClane’s wife is in one of them, and it’s up to him to save the day once again. Bigger, dumber, wackier, Die Hard 2 has its own cult of fans by this point, but no matter how fun Renny Harlin’s film is, it’s such a blatant carbon copy of the original smash success that it never truly stands on its own.
Enemy of the State (1998)
Buena Vista Pictures
Tony Scott’s uncomfortably prescient 1998 thriller is all about a sinister NSA conspiracy to do exactly what the NSA ended up doing in real life: spying on American citizens on a massive scale. Will Smith plays a lawyer swept up in the conspiracy, and Gene Hackman – playing a contemporary version of his iconic surveillance expert from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation – is the paranoid former spook who reveals the depths of the government’s invasion of privacy. What seemed implausible in the 1990s is now a part of our daily lives, and that makes Enemy of the State pretty chilling, even though stylistically it is obviously a product of its time. Oh yes, and it all takes place at Christmas, for no particularly important reason.
Iron Man 3 (2013)
Marvel Studios
The prospect of Marvel Studios superhero movie set at Christmastime isn’t fully explored in Iron Man 3, and that’s a shame, because that’s a holiday special that everybody wants to see. (Thor learns the true meaning of Christmas? Ant-Man has to fill in when they can’t find the Joseph figure from the Nativity Scene? Who wouldn’t watch that?) But it’s a Shane Black film, and as you’ll see throughout this list, he thinks Christmas is the perfect time for explosions. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) endures post-traumatic stress, winds up stranded without his power armor, faces off against the Mandarin and buys Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) a comically over-sized bunny for the season in this underrated, subversive superhero hit.
Jurassic World (2015)
Universal Pictures
In a plot point that the movie brings up right at the beginning and then COMPLETELY ignores, Jurassic World actually takes place on Christmas. You would think that an amusement park would have been completely decked out for the holidays and promoting the hell out of their gift-giving opportunities, but instead it’s just business as usual at the high-tech island resort where dinosaurs entertain vacationers and never, ever, ever break out of their cages and kill everybody. Except that one time. And this time. It’s a capital letters BIG and undeniably goofy film, if you’re willing to forgive the constant fan service, silly twists and stock characters.
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Warner Bros.
Screenwriter Shane Black first married the holiday season with hitting stuff in this 1987 buddy cop blockbuster, which stars Danny Glover as a family man who gets stuck with a mentally unstable partner, played by Mel Gibson. The film opens with our handsome young hero in the middle of a suicide attempt, and the action-packed plot finds him more than happy to put himself in harm’s way in the line of duty. That smart and emotional idea takes the safety off of Richard Donner’s action classic, which boasts great lead performances and fun holiday-themed action sequences like a chase through a Christmas tree lot.
The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
New Line Cinema
Family values are put to the test in The Long Kiss Goodnight, an underrated and exciting team-up between Christmas filmmakers Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) and Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Iron Man 3). Geena Davis plays an amnesiac housewife who discovers over the holidays that she has deadly motor skills. With the help of a private investigator played by Samuel L. Jackson, she gradually discovers that she was a professional assassin who never completed her most important mission. But will her old life as a violent badass leave any room for motherhood?
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
MGM
James Bond’s arch-nemesis Blofeld (Telly Savalas) has taken over an allergy research institute, and he’s using it to brainwash nymphettes in a Christmasy bid to extort the world’s governments in the sixth movie in the hit series, and the only one to star George Lazenby as Bond. Somehow On Her Majesty’s Secret Service never seems quite as silly while you’re watching it as it does on paper; it probably has a lot to with Diana Rigg, who plays one of the all-time great James Bond ladies, awesome stunts and an unexpected conclusion that is – easily – the franchise’s best.
And hey, bonus points for trying to come up with a new Christmas standard, called “Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown?” It didn’t catch on, but we’ve heard worse:
Top Photo: Universal Pictures
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
