It was the golden age of the Hollywood action movie. Over the 16 years between "Return of the Jedi" and George Lucas's return to that galaxy far, far away with "The Phantom Menace", explosions, musclebound guys in vests, and high body counts reigned supreme.

It was a time before mega-franchises and superheroes had become the dominant species in multiplexes, when heroic men — and, with the notable exception of the trailblazing Ripley in "Aliens", it was almost exclusively men — saved the day with little more than their wits, oversized muscles, and vast arsenals of automatic weapons to protect them.

But the best entries in the genre offered so much more than slow-motion leaps from burning buildings and precision-targeted bullets. With very few exceptions, the bona fide action classics were

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