The 10 Best 1970s Movie Action Heroes

The 1970s was a great decade to be an action movie fan. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas pioneered the summer blockbuster with their action-packed tales of a police chief killing a 25-foot shark and a plucky rebel blowing up the Death Star, respectively.

Morally ambiguous thrillers like Dirty Harry and The French Connection challenged Hollywood’s portrayal of cops. Stars like Richard Roundtree and Pam Grier led the blaxploitation movement. From John Shaft to Ellen Ripley to Han Solo, the ‘70s introduced audiences to some of cinema’s most iconic action heroes.

10 Detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle In The French Connection

Gene Hackman’s “Popeye” Doyle, the morally ambiguous cop at the center of William Friedkin’s gritty crime thriller The French Connection, is the ultimate New Hollywood antidote to classic noir protagonists. Aside from his quest for criminal justice, he’s not much of a hero at all – even “antihero” is a stretch.

Doyle is so focused on catching the bad guy that he forgets there are procedures he needs to follow. He bends the rules more and more recklessly in his narrow-minded pursuit of a French heroin smuggler.

9 Chaney In Hard Times

Walter Hill got his prolific career as an action filmmaker off to a terrific start with his 1975 debut feature Hard Times. Set during the Great Depression, Hard Times stars Charles Bronson as a bare-knuckle boxer, riding the rails, struggling to make ends meet, who partners up with an unscrupulous hustler.

As a brooding, hard-as-nails antihero, Chaney is the perfect Bronson character. Death Wish is arguably his most renowned movie, but Hard Times doesn’t advocate for vigilante justice.

8 John Shaft In Shaft

The novel upon which Shaft was based described its lead character John Shaft as “hotter than Bond, cooler than Bullitt.” Thanks to Richard Roundtree’s mesmerizing performance, that description translated beautifully to the screen.

A throwback to classic Bogart detectives through the lens of the Black Power movement, Shaft was the first Black action hero in a major Hollywood movie. He’s a private eye who’s hired by a Harlem gangster to save his daughter after she’s kidnapped by the Sicilian Mafia.

7 Chief Martin Brody In Jaws

The unforgettable (and scarcely seen) monster is the main selling point of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, but Roy Scheider’s everyman protagonist Chief Brody turns that monster’s reign of terror into a compelling story. A slap in the face from a grieving mother is the wake-up call he needs to circumvent the crooked mayor’s restrictions to save the people of Amity Island.

Brody isn’t a fearless superman; he’s human, which makes him universally relatable. He loves his wife and kids, he’s scared of the water, and he covers up his one little scar out of embarrassment when Quint and Hooper are comparing gruesome wounds.

6 Lee In Enter The Dragon

1973’s Enter the Dragon is still the highest-grossing martial arts movie ever made nearly half a century later. Lee, the master fighter who infiltrates a martial arts tournament to take down a crime boss, is the ultimate Bruce Lee role (and also, tragically, his last).

Even before he fights the bad guys, Lee gets to show off his martial arts prowess. Throughout the movie, Lee is singularly focused on his undercover mission.

5 Max Rockatansky In Mad Max

While the sequels to George Miller’s Mad Max would send Max Rockatansky to an unrecognizable post-apocalyptic wasteland, the low-budget indie 1979 original is a relatively grounded thriller set in a dystopian near-future.

This movie introduced Max as a roguish cop who’s bribed with a souped-up car to stay on the force. The action-packed finale sees Max relentlessly seeking retribution for the murders of his wife and son – and the audience is with him every blood-soaked step of the way.

4 Nurse Flower Child “Coffy” Coffin In Coffy

Along with Richard Roundtree, Fred Williamson, and Ron O’Neal, Pam Grier is one of the legendary stars who defined the blaxploitation movement. Grier typically played righteous vigilantes, and the title character in Jack Hill’s Coffy is a prime example.

The movie was notable for its anti-drug message, which was considered unhip at the time. Coffy is a nurse who turns to vigilantism to exact revenge against the heroin dealer responsible for her sister’s addiction.

3 Inspector Harry Callahan In Dirty Harry

After making a name for himself as a gun-toting lone wolf antihero in a Wild West setting in Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy, Clint Eastwood brought that screen persona to the modern-day streets of San Francisco for the gritty neo-noir thriller Dirty Harry.

The titular Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan is a vigilante cop who goes rogue when a sadistic sniper starts picking people off around the city. The mayor places a bunch of restrictions on Harry, so he goes his own way to bring the sniper to justice.

2 Ellen Ripley In Alien

According to the documentary The Beast Within: The Making of Alien, the script for Alien included a note that all the roles were written unisex and that the casting team could decide which ones would be male or female. By choosing to cast a woman as Ripley, these casting producers broke new ground for female action heroes.

James Cameron’s sequel Aliens was more of a full-blown action movie than Ridley Scott’s original, but Alien has plenty of Ripley’s signature badassery. Sigourney Weaver initially plays Ripley as a relatable everywoman, then convincingly emerges as a flamethrower-toting hero in the finale when she kills the xenomorph.

1 Han Solo In Star Wars

When Luke and Obi-Wan need a pilot to take them to Alderaan in the original Star Wars movie, they stop off at the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is Mos Eisley Spaceport. There, they meet a cool-as-ice smuggler named Han Solo.

With smoldering charisma and dry wit, Harrison Ford fit the role of Han – and the pulpy tone of Star Wars in general – like a glove. As iconic as all the other Star Wars characters are (Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Darth Vader, etc.), Solo is arguably the most memorable of the bunch.

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
(3465 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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