When it came to movies, few critics had as keen an eye and honest an opinion as Roger Ebert. For over four decades, Ebert gave us more than just film reviews. He shaped the very way we thought about cinema. His reviews were key to highlighting the hidden depth (or the lack thereof) in movies that were otherwise simply called either amazing or awful.
The action genre, particularly, was a fond landscape for Ebert. Movies like Judgement Day, Heat, Seven Samurai, and The Hunt for Red Octoberwere the critic’s favorites because they delivered style, thrills, and something meaningful to chew on. But sometimes, action movies rely solely on visuals. Ebert’s scathing reviews cut straight to the bone in calling them terrible.
Nowhere was Ebert’s criticism more obvious than in his reviews of the worst action movies. Movies that represent everything that’s wrong with relying on graphic, mindless violence in the name of spectacle instead of developing the story, characters, and societal themes. From bad plots to lousy acting to directors who failed, these are the 10 worst action movies, according to Roger Ebert.
10 Fantastic Four (2005)
Bringing the Marvel Comics superhero team to the screen in a “supposedly” grand fashion under direction from Tim Story, Fantastic Four revolves around a group of astronauts who embark on a mission to space. However, after being exposed to cosmic rays, they gain superpowers like invisibility, strength, and stretchiness. Using their newfound abilities, they must fight Victor Von Doom, an evil doctor who wants to destabilize the world.
A Terrible Missed Opportunity
Fantastic Four was a huge success at the box office, but it received negative reviews from critics. Playing out like a lame classroom project where the introductions and displays go on for a painfully long amount of time, it seems to lack vision and falls short on storytelling. Roger Ebert points it all out in his honest review and points out how it fails to capture the essence of the genre, which is to offer entertainment. He also adds:
“really good superhero movies like
Superman
,
Spider-Man 2
, and
Batman Begins,
leave
Fantastic Four
so far behind that the movie should almost be ashamed to show itself in the same theaters.”
9 Death Race (2008)
Featuring an ambitious premise for an action movie, Paul W. S. Anderson’s Death Race takes us into a dystopian world where the U.S. government has collapsed. Now, prisons, specifically the Terminal Island Penitentiary earn profit from organizing and broadcasting games, where inmates compete in armored and modified cars to gain freedom. Jenson Ames, a falsely convicted felon, is forced to participate by Warden Hennessey.
Endures Only Because of the Shock Value
Without ever delivering an interesting story or solid characters, Death Race is a movie that relies solely on violence and gore and cars roaring around and blasting each other. The direction focuses on elaborately choreographing the car crashes and loses sight of the plot in the process.
Of course, Jason Statham and Joan Allen are charming and sadistic in their respective roles, but for Ebert, the experience was the worst. And he expressed it by giving it half a star out of four and called Death Race“an assault on all senses, including common.”
8 Revolver (2005)
Another Jason Statham movie from the 2000s where he’s serving time in prison for a crime did not commit, Revolver centers around Jake Green, an incredibly skilled conman and chess player. After being released from prison, he seeks revenge against casino owner and crime boss Dorothy Macha, who set him up. Green uses his power of strategy and game of deception to win a fortune at the table and Macha orders to have him killed.
Confusing Rather Than Clever
Ebert gave Revolver half a star out of four and panned the film as a head-scratcher that tries too hard to dazzle the audiences with its narrative and mysteries without ever giving reason or explanations. Or even a satisfying conclusion.
Guy Richie’s trademark direction, as well as Statham and Ray Liotta’s performances, did not seem to impress Ebert either, who said the movie was “designed to punish the audience for buying tickets” and it “kept turning back on itself, biting its own tail, doubling back through scenes with less and less meaning and purpose.”
7 Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
Directed by Alexander Witt, Resident Evil: Apocalypse is the second movie in the Resident Evil film series, which is inspired by the video game series of the same name. Picking the story up from where it was left off in the first movie, we follow Alice, who survived the zombie outbreak in her city, now teaming up with other survivors and trying to escape Racoon City, which is a wasteland crawling with zombies and monsters.
A Dull Entry to the Zombie Genre
Roger Ebert calls the sequel “an utterly meaningless waste of time” that is also devoid of “interest, wit, imagination or even entertaining violence and special effects.” In his very elaborate review, he also points out that the movie throws away any semblance of a plot to focus too heavily on building a discord of loud action.
The characters are “spectacularly shallow” and the scenes seem to have been put randomly on-screen. Even on Rotten Tomatoes, Resident Evil: Apocalypse has the lowest score in the franchise.
6 Cannonball Run II (1984)
A sequel to the 1981 movie, which was, in turn, a remake of the 1976 action comedy starring David Carradine, Cannonball Run II follows a sheik sponsoring an outrageous cross-country road race in order to win and impress his father. J.J. McLure and his friend Victor also compete for the prize – $1 million. But when the sheik gets kidnapped, the competitors leave their quest for glory behind and team up to save him.
A Deceptive and Jumbled Parody
Ebert gave both Cannonball Run and Cannonball Run II half-star reviews. While the first was still a mild success in its screwball comedy, the sequel is simply a series of self-referential jokes made with arrogance. Ebert praises the actors, Burt Reynolds and Shirley MacLaine, but not for their performances in the movie. Overall, the cash-grab movie, for Ebert, was “one of the laziest insults to the intelligence of moviegoers that [he] can remember.”
5 Armageddon (1998)
One of the highest-grossing movies of 1998, Armageddon starts with an asteroid the size of Texas discovered to be on a collision course with Earth and expected to hit in 18 days. NASA comes up with a plan – to land on the rocky surface of the asteroid, drill a hole into it, insert a nuclear bomb, and detonate it. They hire Harry Stamper, a veteran oil driller, for the job.
Filled With Major Plot Holes
Armageddon finds a spot on Roger Ebert’s most hated movies of all time. In his review, he states it’s “an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained.” The characters are paper-thin, he says, and the plot is hard to swallow. The dialogue, which reportedly took nine writers to write, apparently “didn’t need any.” The movie also struggled with clichéd romance and unintelligent saves.
4 The Exterminator (1980)
In The Exterminator, Robert Ginty plays John Eastland, who became close friends with Michael Jefferson, portrayed by Steve James, after the latter saved his life in Vietnam. Back home in New York, the veterans are adjusting to life when Eastland finds out that his friend has been murdered by street gangs. Consumed by rage, he snaps and begins ruthlessly killing everyone he suspects is involved, soon becoming the most wanted man in the city.
No Style and No Substance
A vigilante action movie written and directed by James Glickenhaus, The Exterminator relishes in graphic violence without catharsis. Its plot lands somewhere between tragic and foolish and suffers from predictability because of how often it has been used before. For Ebert, the movie was nothing more than a “direct rip-off” of 1974’s Death Wish. He slammed it as “a sick example of the almost unbelievable descent into gruesome savagery in American movies.”
3 Mad Dog Time (1996)
Larry Bishop’s ensemble crime thriller centers around Vic, a formidable mob boss, who gets released from a psychiatric facility and returns to his nightclub business to find it turned upside down as his temporary replacement, Mickey Holliday, was busy romancing sisters Grace and Rita. As Vic tries to bring everything back in order, vicious rival mobsters threaten to take his place and rule the mysterious underworld of nightclubs.
Earns Its Zero-Star Rating
Despite being notable for featuring several cameo appearances, including Christopher Jones, Mad Dog Time was a mess that tried (and terribly failed) to balance the swanky darkness of its plot with gritty elements of the crime genre.
Roger Ebert gave it a rare zero-star rating and noted that watching the movie was “like waiting for the bus in a city where you’re not sure they have a bus line.” Clearly, the movie wastes the potential of its all-star cast, which includes Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, Diane Lane, and a surprisingly unhinged Richard Dreyfuss.
2 Death Wish 2 (1982)
Charles Brosnan reprised his role as Paul Kersey in the sequel to his 1974 movie, which is set around eight years after the events of the first. Death Wish 2 sees him living a normal life as a freelance architect in Los Angeles. But after his daughter is violently attacked and murdered, Kersey is once again fueled by rage. And once again, he goes on a vigilante crusade against the gangs responsible.
Does Violence Really Solve All Problems?
Where the original intrigued as a thriller and was highly regarded by both fans and critics, the sequel drowned in its own exploration of violence without ever considering the law, ethics, or individual responsibility. Ebert called Michael Winner’s direction “slick” but the movie a “disaster by comparison” and also marked Brosnan’s “need for vengeance” as “just a series of dumb killings.” His zero-star rating feels deserved.
1 From Ten to Midnight (1983)
Blending elements of neo-noir and horror into an unusual action-movie plot, From Ten to Midnight follows Warren Stacy, a young office equipment repairman with serial killer tendencies. His victims, however, are only women who reject his sexual advances. The more women he selects and stakes, the higher his body count rises. Chasing him, despite his strong alibis, are LA detectives, Leo Kessler and his partner Paul McAnn.
Not Everybody’s Cup of Tea
The 1980s were an exciting time for the slasher genre, but even the decade couldn’t make From Ten to Midnight work because of how derivative, graphic, and messed up it was. Sure, the plot is promising if not meaningful, and the execution is fascinating as per B-movie standards, but the movie fails to deliver any substance.
“Logic isn’t the problem with this movie. A lack of humanity is,” Ebert writes in his review, adding that Charles Brosnon, who leads the movie, is the “only reason anybody would come to see it.”
