27 Action Scenes We Love

Crop Duster Scene (North by Northwest, 1959)

The setting: a remote Indiana crossroads.

The time: the middle of the day.

The build-up: endlessly tense.

Clay Enos/Warner Bros.; Andrew Cooper/Miramax; Warner Bros.; Everett Collection; Helen Sloan/HBO

Its a rare moment when a Grant character looked shaken and stirred.

The result: pure Hollywood and arguably the most kinetic cinematic spectacle of the 20th century.

With every high-speed jump and hubcap that goes flying off, you feel weightless.

Everett Collection

Gene Hackmans facial expressions (and a mother with a baby carriage) sell the danger.

With this moment, a singular action heroine (and inspiration to generations of women) is born.

But this truck chase is pure classic Western with Indy giving chase on horseback.

Everett Collection

Plus, theres that totally gnarly scene of Legolas shield surfing.

All together now: That escalated quickly."

Eric King

Zero-G Hallway Fight (Inception,2010)

Here’s that Nolan again.

Everett Collection

He spent two weeks training for the scene, which was filmed in of course an actual giant centrifuge.

Its as dizzying and mind-bending as anything else in the film, and thats saying something.

As he himself puts it to Frank Grillos traitorous Crossbones it feels personal.

20th Century Fox/Everett Collection

Youll never look at Mr. Darcy the same way again.

Lucasfilm

Everett Collection

Everett Collection

Tom Cruise in ‘Mission: Impossible’.Everett Collection

Keanu Reeves' Neo in the famous bullet time sequence from ‘The Matrix’.Warner Bros.

20th Century Fox

Pierre Vinet/New Line

Chan Kam Chuen/Sony Pictures Classics

Andrew Cooper/Miramax

Everett Collection

Jay Maidment/Columbia

Focus Features

Warner Bros.

Stephen Vaughan/Warner Bros.

Universal

20th Century FOX

Alan Markfield/20th Century Fox

Summit Entertainment/

Warner Bros.

20th Century Fox

![GOT609_092515_HS_DSC_86891

Helen Sloan/HBO

Clay Enos/Warner Bros.