21 best black action films ever made

In the action drama, women are often wildly underrepresented, but black women are practically nonexistent. That all changes with director F. Gary Gray's "Set It Off," a crime actioner about four black women (Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, Kimberly Elise) who set up a string of bank robberies in L.A. The script is pretty standard action fare, but in casting four black women instead of the usual four white guys, the material becomes unique in its execution, carried ably across the finish line by women who are every bit as capable in the genre as their male counterparts.

Tamara Dobson takes girl power to a new level as a drug enforcement agent with style, Cleopatra Jones, taking on Mommy (Shelley Winters) and her gang of hillbilly drug dealers. The first of two films in the short-lived "Cleopatra Jones" franchise, Dobson succeeds in creating a believable action heroine, lighting a torch that she would soon pass to the real star waiting in the wings, Pam Grier.

The first Blaxploitation vehicle for former NFL athlete Fred Williamson, "Hammer" would go on to make him a bona fide star. The story centers on Williamson as a dockworker who becomes a boxer beholden to the mob, forced to fight his way out the only way he knows how. "Hammer" spawned a string of action roles for Williamson, who was by far the most successful and hardest-working in the genre. 

Following closely in the footsteps of Williamson, Jim Brown gets his own shot at action hero infamy in "Slaughter" as a man out to avenge the death of his parents, taking his campaign of vengeance all the way to South America to battle the mob. "Slaughter" is pretty much like every other revenge flick of the era, but Brown's charisma is undeniable and the action is explosive enough to call for a sequel and a long second career for Brown as a bona fide action hero alongside his former fellow NFL players.

Wesley Snipes is in full action hero mode in "Passenger 57" as an ex-secret service agent who is convinced by a friend to help run an anti-terrorism unit for an airline. Of course, as soon as he accepts the job, he finds himself faced with a terrorist hijacking onboard a flight, requiring him to hero up and save the day with the help of a flight attendant (Alex Datcher) and plenty of airborne martial arts. While "New Jack City" made Snipes an actor to watch, the success of "Passenger 57" catapulted him into the upper echelon of '90s action heroes and earned him a string of starring roles through the rest of the decade, culminating with "Blade."

Action films that focused on the drug trade were staples of the '80s and '90s, but in the wake of the runaway success of "New Jack City," a new emphasis on black action was born. Laurence Fishburne stars as an LAPD officer who is tasked with going undercover to break up a drug ring but gets in way over his head as the lifestyle he was asked to imitate threatens to swallow him whole. Featuring plenty of action and a star-making soundtrack featuring a young Snoop Doggy Dog, "Deep Cover" is an action piece with teeth.

Black action stars Fred Williamson, Jim Brown and Jim Kelly team for the first and only time in this tale of a conspiracy to poison black people through the city's water supply brings together the only three men who can stop it with brute force and kung-fu skill. From a cultural standpoint, "Three the Hard Way" served as the archetype for black heroes saving their communities from nefarious forces that would go on to be lovingly homaged (or parodied) in films like "Undercover Brother" and "Black Dynamite." On its own, the film is full of the kind of action audiences crave, with tons of charisma to spare.

An homage to both kung-fu and Blaxploitation, "The Last Dragon" was produced by Motown Berry Gordy with the hope of creating a new breed of black action hero for the '80s mixed with R&B for black audiences, a largely underserved group since the heyday of the '70s. Starring an unknown 19-year-old martial artist in his first role (Taimak), "The Last Dragon" wasn't long on acting prowess, but the pure enthusiasm was more than enough to carry this film into cult status, giving fans their own share of "The Glow" for years to come.

Fred Williamson gives us his take on gangster films of the '30s with an urban twist. Here he stars as Tommy Gibbs, a young hood growing up hard on the streets of Harlem. He has dreams of becoming something much bigger. He digs his way up through the Harlem underworld, beset by racist cops, snitches and sexy women, never stopping until he sits alone atop the city's underworld. Williamson isn't a hero or a villain, just a man who has his eyes on a less than legal prize. That moral ambiguity gives "Black Caesar" a heavier tone than the usual actioner.

Of all the films on this list, "The Spook Who Sat by the Door" is the film you haven't seen but absolutely need to. Extremely controversial for its time, the film, based on the 1969 novel of the same name, is both a satire and a sober discussion on the rise of Black Nationalism in the early '70s. The plot focuses on a disillusioned CIA agent (Lawrence Cook) who is treated as a token by his white peers and given a useless desk job. Little do they know he's only there to learn spy craft so he can go back and teach his fellow Black Nationalists in order to create his own army of freedom fighters willing to settle the score against the white power structure in Chicago. For years, "The Spook Who Sat by the Door" was hard to find largely due to efforts by the FBI to keep it out of theaters and off the home video market. 

Known mostly for his music, Isaac Hayes got his turn to be an action star in 1974's "Truck Turner" as a former football star turned bounty hunter going to war with a brutal madam (Nichelle Nichols from "Star Trek") after he kills her boyfriend and fellow pimp. While it looks like a "Shaft" knockoff on the surface, having a capable female villain face off with Hayes' affable tough guy makes "Truck Turner" a more than memorable entry in the black action genre.

Pam Grier returns in this pseudo sequel to her earlier hit "Coffy," originally titled "Burn, Coffy, Burn!" "Foxy Brown" was reworked to feature a new character who has an entirely new ax to grind after her boyfriend is murdered by drug dealers. Unlike Coffy, the character of Foxy Brown turned into a symbol of female empowerment frankly ahead of its time, with a lead actress in Grier who was more than capable of carrying the torch, and continues to serve as an example of a capable action icon who is beloved to this day.

While Tamara Dobson lit the match for black action heroines, Pam Grier set off the bomb with "Coffy," the first in a series of films where she used both brains and her bodacious body to take revenge on all who dared wrong her. In this first outing, Coffy seeks revenge on drug dealers who got her sister hooked on heroin. Going undercover as a prostitute, she starts her vigilante campaign of revenge, and no one is spared. The film floats on Grier's beauty and magnetism, causing a bit of a sea change as for once. Women became an idol for men, and the film is an example of toughness for women. 

Directed by esteemed actor Ossie Davis, "Cotton Comes to Harlem" is one of the first films largely driven by a black cast that showed African-Americans as more than butlers, slaves or farmers. Here we get a gritty crime action piece set in the middle of Harlem. New York City police officers Grave Digger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) and Coffin Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques) serve as the progenitors of the buddy cop film, something that would only grow more popular in the years to come. 

Eddie Murphy was never more popular than he was as a Detroit cop on a covert vacation in "Beverly Hills Cop." A true fish-out-of-water tale, Murphy shines as a cop who seems to never take himself or anything seriously, while fooling everyone as he is driven to find the man who killed his best friend. A gigantic success, "Beverly Hills Cop" spawned a couple of sequels and a canceled TV pilot on the back of Murphy's innate ability to mix humor and action in a crowd-pleasing way.

"New Jack City" is a minor epic with a ruthless villain in Nino Brown (Wesley Snipes) whose remorselessness during the rise of crack cocaine in the '80s placed him in power on the backs of a helplessly addicted population. Featuring performances by Ice-T as a cop on a crusade to stop Brown, helped by Chris Rock in his first dramatic role as Pookie, an addict in recovery who risks everything to go undercover, "New Jack City" is a capable crime actioner for the '90s that takes the sensibilities of '70s Blaxploitation and presents it for a much wider audience (under a much bigger budget).

Wesley Snipes' second go-round as the vampire hunter who's also half-vampire is nothing short of a horror masterpiece. Director Guillermo del Toro completely unleashes the daywalker against a bevy of vampires and supervampires, all expertly shot underneath buckets of blood. Now that the Marvel Studios era of superhero film dominance is at the forefront, some may forget just how well this gem played during a time when comic book movies were still playing it safe while "Blade II" gleefully went all the way.

In creating a tongue-in-cheek homage to Blaxploitation films of the '70s, director Scott Sanders and star Michael Jai White succeeded in creating an icon of sorts that transcended the material it was sending up. "Black Dynamite" certainly re-creates the mood of the Blaxploitation era action films, but White's complete willingness to immerse himself into the material makes him more than just some "Shaft" clone. "Black Dynamite" became a cult hit that spawned an animated series and, finally, a long-awaited live-action sequel due to hit theaters in 2018.

When it comes to the black sex machine who fights the man, Gordon Parks' 1971 "Shaft" is quite possibly the film that is best remembered not just for its gritty, straightforward action, but also in producing the first real black action hero who could get the girl and stop the bad guys at every turn — while also being, of course, black. Richard Roundtree was the perfect combo of smooth and dangerous, creating a hero worth looking up to, something black audiences had been denied for so long. "Shaft'" also had the benefit of introducing the hero's theme song, with an iconic soundtrack from Isaac Hayes, which won an Oscar for Best Original Song.

When action director Michael Bay paired Will Smith with Martin Lawrence in 1995's "Bad Boys," the mix of action and comedy worked just enough to make people want more, without it itself being a great movie. However, the 2003 sequel works so much better largely because of its willingness to go over the top in both action and humor. Smith, at the height of his popularity, and Lawrence, whose star had fallen, create a much better dynamic and, frankly, a much more fearless one as the partners plow through both bad guys and unsuspecting teens who are trying to date Lawrence's daughter. 

Almost as soon as Marvel Studios made its indelible mark on cinema screens, many wondered when King T'Challa and the mystical technokingdom of Wakanda would make it to theaters. The question was answered in 2016 when Chadwick Boseman made his first appearance as the Black Panther in "Captain America: Civil War," but that was only the beginning. When "Black Panther" opened to audiences in February 2018, the film surprised many by not only being a superior action film, but, thanks to director Ryan Coogler, a discussion of black culture that was both unexpected and welcome. That earned the film a Academy Award nomination for Best Picture at the 2019 Oscars.