The Equalizer
Mr. Nobody
Polar
I have also seen at least one featuring a woman badass.
Any others?
“The Edge”: Anthony Hopkins plays a wealthy but somewhat timid man who (minor spoiler) finds his inner badass when he and a couple other passengers are stranded in the Alaskan wilderness when their plane crashes.
The Ip Man series of movies with Donnie Yen.
A History of Violence
Leon
The Limey
Desperado (rewatched this recently and while it’s definitely pretty cheesy it stands up well compared to more well known cheesy 90s action films like The Rock, etc)
Ben Affleck’s The Accountant. And, it an extreme take on the concept of the surprise badass, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World starring Michael Cera.
Christian Bale’s Equilibrium
Don’t forget El Mariachi!
I would recommend Desperado.
El Mariachi is too low budget, action movies as a genre need a certain amount of looga to work, you can be the best director in the world (and Robert Rodriguez is really really good, one of the best action movie directors there is) but a set peice action scene made for $100 is not going to look as good as one made for $100000.
Once upon a Time in Mexico is too high budget. For whatever reason the big budget and big name stars (and possibly more studio interference )took away what made the rest of the trilogy great
I’ll second “The Limey”. Great flick. On my “to rewatch” list at present. Terence Stamp has a real presence in everything I’ve ever seen him in.
Harry Brown, starring Michael Caine. He’s a retired soldier and his neighborhood has been overrun by local punks. It’s an absolutely brutal movie.
Sorry - meant to Quote from @DWMarch regarding Harry Brown
The 6 p’s! perfect planning prevents piss poor performance
Robert Rodriguez is a B-movie director. Give him $200,000 and he’ll make a B-movie; given him $200 million, and he’ll still make B-movie. It’s what he does.
To go in a slightly different (horror) direction:
You’re Next starts out as a home invasion/survival horror and takes some interesting turns.
Well…
“Deathwish”
Charles Bronson’s character in Deathwish is supposed to be a “typical” bleeding heart liberal who hates guns but after his wife and daughter are assaulted and the former killed, he decides to get revenge on all crime. By the third movie he’s a horror movie slasher with all the preternatural powers and foresight that entails…he just happens to kill bad people instead of horny teenagers.
The “Angel” movies are kind of like this. In the first movie, Angel, a teenage prostitute in Hollywood, helps take down a serial killer killing her friends. In the sequel, she’s gotten out of the life and is now in college, when the cop who helped her in the first movie is murdered by the mob, so she returns and goes back on the street to get information to get the mobsters. She has a pretty fun supporting crew including an aging trans prostitute, a lesbian avantgard artist, a Charlie Chaplin impersonator, and a former movie cowboy with early signs of dementia. For movies made in the 80s, the treatment of the queer characters isn’t perfect but it’s not horrifying either.
Michael Caine has been at it for a while. Just about the original, Get Carter
Hardcore Henry, an entire film seen from the silent protagonist’s perspective (so basically a FPS). Extremely violent and quite darkly funny in a lot of ways, with Sharlto Copley playing a host of different characters to the hilt.
Not everyone’s cup of tea but I thought it was a lot of fun.