10 Hard Hitting Foreign Action Films

1. Seven Samurai (1954, Japan)

After being raided numerous times by bandits, a poor town hires the titular seven to take on the bandits. You may be saying to yourself, "Self, this plot sounds very familiar." And you'd be 100% right. Why it's our top movie is because this is the first time a movie used the plot of rounding up a group of heroes to defeat a much larger enemy. There was some huge movie released in 2012 that followed that plot, but for some reason I can't think of it. The concept allowed action movies to build towards a meaningful battle. It took the story of David vs. Goliath and allowed a story to build with interesting characters that would ultimately lead to worthy action. It added heart to the genre where hearts can explode by pressing on the right pressure points. Besides creating one of the most successful sub-genres in action, Seven Samurai has some impressive fight scenes. This was one of the first movies to come out from Japan, giving audiences their first glimpse of martial arts. Before that, most action was contained to Film Noir and Westerns. And unless things got really strange, those two genres lacked sword fights. Seven Samurai is as good as it is ground breaking.