80). Taken (2008, Pierre Morel) – AFI Ranking: N/A
Is there a more fun entry on this list? I don’t think so. Taken brought back the revenge thriller in full force, and kicked off a series of 50+ year-old actors starring as ex-special forces-type guys who go on “justifiable” killing sprees to get revenge for the death or kidnapping of a loved one. The revenge movie goes back further than Taken, but this movie brought it back to the mainstream, and also reignited Liam Neeson’s career as the first in a long line of “old guy” action movies.
This movie replaced Deliverance (AFI #15) on my list as a movie about a vacation that goes south quickly. I haven’t seen Deliverance, and I know the tone of these two movies is wildly different, but they have that story through line, which made it an acceptable replacement for me.
Unlike Deliverance (at least from what I’ve heard), Taken is pretty much a pleasure from start to finish. Going into the movie (I saw it in theaters), we all knew what was going to happen. What we couldn’t have known, was how effective it would be. Neeson is trying to reconnect with his daughter after spending much of her life away serving his country. His ex-wife re-married rich, and breaks his chops at every opportunity with guilt over how he was never around. We sympathize with him immediately.
For me, the thrills start when Neeson is offered a chance to work security for a pop star at one of her concerts. After the show, he is escorting her to her car, when an armed assailant attacks out of nowhere. And Neeson JACKS…HIM…UP! All of the fight scenes feature sick hand-to-hand combat. There are a ton of ass-kickings all across Paris: at a construction site/brothel, on a boat, at house with more prostitution.
One thing that I love about this movie is that Neeson’s character is brutal in the way you would expect someone to be if a) They’re working against the clock and they need answers, and b) They’ve been wronged. I feel like if this were a Mission Impossible or a Will Smith movie, it would lack the darkness and the danger of a guy like this on the loose. For example, in the famous dinner scene where he needs answers from his old colleague, he just shoots the man’s wife in the arm, threatening to shoot her in the head if he doesn’t get answers. She’s an innocent civilian who shouldn’t be harmed, but Neeson needs answers and knows that’s the fastest way to get them. They show him torturing Marco from Tropoja in order to get answers. He’s not just holding a gun to him and threatening his life. He nails Marco’s arms to a chair and electrocutes him. Repeatedly. And then leaves the electricity on once he has the answers gets needs.
Between the fight sequences and Neeson’s overall brutality, I could watch Taken once a week and never get bored.
79). The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966, Sergio Leone) – AFI Ranking: N/A
It seems unthinkable to me that the movie with the most famous standoff in movie history was somehow left off the AFI’s top 100 thrillers list. I could understand it if the list came out in ’68 and they didn’t truly understand the impact, but it came out 35 years after The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Outrageous.
Quentin Tarantino has said it’s his favorite movie of all time. He pays homage to it in several other movies that will make appearances on my list. If they really cared about film history and context, this movie should’ve been on there. I’m not even a true diehard fan of this movie and it’s starting to annoy me that it was excluded!
Iconic score.
I have it replacing Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (AFI #38), which is also a fantastic movie. Although the movies aren’t thematically linked, both movies have one character putting another character in harm’s way to further their own ends. There is a lot of tension around whether the antagonist will catch on. Otherwise, it isn’t the most thematically appropriate replacement on my list. But still, to paraphrase one of the best quotes from the movie…
“You see on this list, there’s two kinds of movies, my friend – those that came out after the AFI list was created, and movies that got snubbed. This movie got snubbed.”
78). American Psycho (2000, Mary Harron) – AFI Ranking: N/A
SPOILER ALERT: This movie replaces The Wizard of Oz (AFI #43), as the “it was all a dream” entry. Kind of an unsatisfying ending, but this movie has a lot of suspense, particularly the first time you see it. There aren’t too many other movies like it, and I had no idea what to expect in each moment.
There’s violence – the time Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) kills Paul Allen (Jared Leto); anticipated violence – when he’s about to kill his assistant (Chloe Sevigny) and of course the tension of whether or not he’ll be found out during all of his evasive talks with the Detective (Willem Dafoe) investigating the disappearance of his first murder victim.
Similar to Zombieland, this movie stands out for its humor. In a grand sense the movie is probably considered a satire, but a lot of the humor comes from the erratic and somewhat incongruous behavior of Patrick Bateman. He’s a loose cannon and completely unpredictable. Sometimes the tension is released with a laugh at how odd he is, sometimes it’s destroyed with an axe.
77). The Deer Hunter (1978, Michael Cimino) – AFI Ranking: 30th
Need I say more?
I haven’t seen this movie in 15 years. I don’t know if I’ll ever watch it again. This scene is nuts. I rank it lower than the AFI only because the movie is about both the horrors of war and its impact on survivors and their families. It isn’t necessarily a thriller through and through, but when it ventures into thriller territory, we get one of the most emotional scenes in movie history.
76). A Clockwork Orange (1971, Stanley Kubrick) – AFI Ranking: 21st
This one is tricky because I don’t really think this movie is a traditional thriller, but it’s too good of a movie to be replaced on this list.
It’s a shocking movie. Again, I don’t know if it’s a thrill ride, but one thing about this movie is that it’s not afraid to “go there”, and that gives the viewer a sense of unease because any level of violence and depravity feels possible.
There’s some tension toward the end when a bloodied Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) is taken in by a man whom he assaulted earlier in the movie. The man doesn’t seem to recognize him, and we’re left to wonder whether or not his memory of Alex will come back to him. However, this is a small portion of the movie.
I guess when a movie is this shocking and provides this much discomfort, it has to be a thriller because what else could it really be?
75). A History of Violence (2005, David Cronenberg) – AFI Ranking: N/A
I haven’t seen this movie in a while, but it’s a very interesting movie. I’m trying to recall if there’s another like it. SPOILERS, of course, but it’s a twist on the “wrong man” trope, where Viggo Mortensen’s character is actually…”the right man”.
We don’t get any backstory, but Mortensen is shown to be a salt of the earth family man-type who owns a coffee shop in the midwest. After he stops a violent crime in his coffee shop he becomes a local hero and the publicity attracts the attention of some criminals from Philadelphia that start harassing him and his family, claiming to know him as “Joey”.
There are movies that feature criminals harassing families (Cape Fear, etc.). There are movies where a character has some type of multiple personality disorder and though we don’t see it initially, he’s actually responsible for all of the mayhem (Fight Club, etc.). A History of Violence seems to be going down one of these roads, but something seems off. Things come to a head and it turns out that these guys who claim to know “Joey” actually do know Joey. This isn’t because Mortensen has a mental illness, it’s because he tried to leave behind his life of crime.
The physical confrontation with these criminals is tense. It all leads to Joey having to drive back to Philadelphia for the climax of the movie, to finish off his old the crime family.
I have this movie replacing Dracula (AFI #85). They’re similar in that a man has to face his true nature. Otherwise, there’s not much common ground.
This movie has tension, violence and misdirection. It’s unclear why, but I’ve seldom heard about it in the last 10 years. It should be on more lists.
74). The Terminator (1984, James Cameron) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991, James Cameron) – AFI Rankings: 42nd and 77th, respectively.
This is the last, “I haven’t really seen these, but I respect them a lot” entry. I saw T2 once, a long time ago, like more than twenty years ago. I’ve only seen part of the original Terminator, but I know it was a sci-fi/action game changer that turned Arnold into a movie star and catapulted James Cameron to a blockbuster director. Similar to how The Godfather: Part II somehow furthered the impossibly phenomenal mythology of the first Godfather, T2, which came out 7 years after the original, outdid the ground-breaking CGI of the original.
Much respect.
73). The Town (2010, Ben Affleck) – AFI Ranking: N/A
It’s official, Affleck can direct! After a strong directorial debut with 2006’s Gone Baby Gone, Affleck showed it wasn’t a fluke with the R-dropping, testosterone-laden bank heist movie, The Town.
The first heist is expertly staged and shot, which sets the tone for the rest of the movie. A good bank robbery scene is thrilling in and of itself. It also gets us somewhat invested in the group of robbers since we see that they are good at robbing banks and characters who are good at their jobs are at least interesting, if unsavory people.
The cracks in the robbers’ relationships start to show at the heist as well, as we see Affleck’s character recoil at the actions of Jeremy Renner, whose electric performance sets the new bar for the classic role of the hothead in the group. Affleck’s character seems to be a person with remorse and as the movie unfolds it’s clear he wants to get out of the game.
Of course, it all leads to a final heist, a daring robbery of Fenway Park that almost functions like the “suicide mission” from the ends of The Usual Suspects or The Dirty Dozen. It’s an impressive sequence with a long getaway where we’re not sure if Affleck will be able to make it out alive.
I have The Town replacing Bonnie and Clyde (AFI #13), which was a difficult choice. Mark Harris’s great book, Pictures at a Revolution, details how Bonnie and Clyde was one of the pivotal movies at this revolution between old and new Hollywood in 1967. The violence and sex displayed on screen pushed American movies forward. Film noir and westerns brought antiheroes to the forefront, but this was a movie about the bad guys. Yet, when we watched Bonnie and Clyde for our AFI Monday, I wasn’t that into it. I won’t say it doesn’t hold up, but The Town represents an upgrade on the genre.
72). Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuaron) – AFI Ranking: N/A
If we were going on sheer quality, Children of Men would be near the top of any list. It’s about as good of a movie as there is, and given that Alfonso Cuaron would become an Oscar magnet, this movie’s lack of recognition in the Best Picture and Best Director categories spoke more to the Academy’s disrespect for certain genres.
So, why only #72? It’s tough to say. The stakes are certainly high (the future of humanity!), but I don’t necessarily feel the same level of danger as some of the higher entries on this list. There are antagonists, for sure, but not necessarily villains. The threat isn’t as real because there isn’t necessarily an evil entity with an evil plan or ideal. More true to life, the antagonists are just people with a different opinion about how to preserve the human race.
I have Children of Men replacing The Day the Earth Stood Still (AFI #82), a movie that I have not seen. While their stories and plots are different, the two movies do seem to share the motif of humanity at a crossroads. In that respect, I give the nod to the newer, expertly-made movie from a generational filmmaking talent (seriously, Cuaron has Oscars for directing, cinematography, and editing, as well as nominations for writing and producing). The guy is a story-telling juggernaut.
71). Hush (2016, Mike Flanagan) – AFI Ranking: N/A
I have Hush replacing Wait Until Dark (AFI #55), a movie I have not seen, but they obviously share a major through line: someone without one of their 5 senses being harassed by criminals. For Wait Until Dark, the victim is blind, in Hush, the victim is deaf and mute, and also completely isolated.
It’s always interesting to imagine yourself in the position of a character, and most thriller scenarios are tough enough. Now you’re taking away my ability to hear?!? I have no shot to come out alive.
One reason I’m swapping in Hush is because it’s about as pure of a thriller as can be. There isn’t much backstory, a deaf-mute writer lives in a cabin in the middle of the woods. One day a masked murderer just shows up to kill her. There’s no reason for it. He’s not trying to get money or drugs or an artifact. He’s just a murderer. The movie is 82 minutes, we watch her fight for survival for more than an hour. It’s impossible not to feel horrible that she’s at such a supreme disadvantage. You’re with her every step of the way.
Like I said, it’s just a pure thriller. The only thing that could’ve made this movie better is a better killer. Let’s just say if this killer were Michael Myers, the movie would’ve been over in 3 minutes. If the killer was John Wick, it’s done in 90 seconds. The killer in this movie takes off his mask too early and is a bit of a dope, which slightly dampens his mystique.
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