The opening scene of an action movie has the opportunity to start the story off with a bang. Many films in the genre use their first scene as a cold open, setting up the characters by showing them in action. This cold-open set piece is often unrelated to the main plot and serves only to set the rapid pace and assure viewers that they’re in safe hands.

The ending of an action movie, on the other hand, has to be the most exhilarating moment in the whole piece. It has to be bigger and bolder than the rest of the film’s action, and raise the stakes higher than ever before. While many have fallen short, the action genre has delivered some spectacular opening scenes, and some even more spectacular endings.

10 Opening Scene: The Dark Knight

The opening bank heist set piece in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was the only finished footage from the movie that Heath Ledger got to see before his untimely passing. Shot in glorious IMAX, the sequence is one of the most perfectly constructed action scenes of all time.

The breathtaking practical effects in this scene — and in the movie as a whole — arrived as a refreshing counterpoint to the usual CG-heavy comic book blockbusters.

9 Ending: Furious 7

The production of Furious 7 was thrown into a tailspin by the sudden and tragic passing of Paul Walker, one of the franchise’s leading men, but James Wan and his cast and crew managed to retool the movie as a touching send-off for their fallen brother.

In the final moments, Dom and Brian have one final race intercut with flashbacks of their adventures together before arriving at a crossroads, bidding each other farewell, and driving in different directions, all set to the sounds of “See You Again.”

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8 Opening Scene: Hard Boiled

John Woo’s Hard Boiled opens with one heck of a shootout. Inspector Tequila Yuen, played by the legendary Chow Yun-fat, shoots up a teahouse in a gun-toting attempt to bring some arms smugglers to justice.

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It’s one of the finest displays of Woo’s signature “gun fu” style of action filmmaking, while the scene expertly introduces Tequila’s cool-as-ice personality.

7 Ending: The Killer

Just as Woo gave Hard Boiled a perfect opening, he gave The Killer a perfect ending. The climactic standoff that influenced Tarantino’s frequent use of the trope ends with Ah Jong being poetically shot in the eyes (the whole movie revolves around his attempts to pay for eye surgery for a woman he accidentally blinded during a shootout).

The villainous Wong Hoi gets away and begs the police for protection as Ah Jong’s detective friend Li catches up with him and shoots him dead.

6 Opening Scene: The Spy Who Loved Me

The pre-title action sequence of The Spy Who Loved Me was originally conceived for George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but the technology to make it happen wasn’t there yet. The idea resurfaced in Roger Moore’s Bond era.

007 is pursued through the snowy mountains of Austria by Soviet gunmen, then skis right off the edge of a cliff before deploying his Union Jack parachute. Cue Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better.”

5 Ending: John Wick: Chapter 2

The creative team behind John Wick always envisioned it as a sprawling multi-part action saga. With the first sequel, John Wick: Chapter 2, the franchise was in place and the filmmakers were free to start ending each installment with a cliffhanger teasing the next.

At the end of Chapter 2, John is stripped of his Continental privileges and sent into a world full of assassins who want his head, significantly raising the stakes for Parabellum.

4 Opening Scene: Kill Bill: Volume 1

The opening scene of Kill Bill had been rattling around in Quentin Tarantino’s head for years before he actually made the movie. The opening shot of the Bride lying beaten and bloodied, staring up at her attackers, vowing revenge, is what the director first pitched to Uma Thurman on the set of Pulp Fiction.

From the grainy black-and-white cinematography to the haunting sounds of Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” everything about this opening scene is perfection.

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3 Ending: Point Break

Nine months after Bodhi escapes Utah’s grasp, the FBI tracks him down to the “50-Year Storm” on Bells Beach in Australia, which he’s been waiting for his whole life. Utah has grown so close to Bodhi that he can’t turn him in. Instead, he lets him ride the wave of a lifetime, knowing he won’t survive.

As the FBI watches Bodhi head to certain doom, Utah walks away. He tosses his FBI badge in the ocean (a staple of action cinema) along the way.

2 Opening Scene: Raiders Of The Lost Ark

Lawrence Kasdan’s perfectly crafted screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark is split into seven acts. The first one has nothing to do with the main plot. It’s all about introducing Indiana Jones and setting up his rivalry with Belloq.

The sequence gives Indy one of the most iconic character introductions in movie history. It also perfectly sets up the movie’s tone, with the boulder chase harking back to the pulpy ‘30s adventure serials that inspired Raiders.

1 Ending: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

The ending of Terminator 2: Judgment Day was so perfect that the series should’ve ended there. Sarah Connor finally managed to prevent Judgment Day and the unwritten future was bright and optimistic for the first time since the time-traveling cyborgs came into her life.

The T-800’s final sacrifice shows that John did teach him how to feel after all. The thumbs-up has been accused of being too sweet, but it is the perfect culmination of the T-800’s boy-and-his-dog dynamic with John.

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Ben Sherlock
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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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