The 50 Best Action Stars in Movie History

This prestigious list of cinema's greatest butt-kickers, a little something we like to call The 50 Best Action Stars In Movie History.

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Complex Original

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This year is poised to be a good one for the action genre, with fresh entries in the superhero franchise, comic book adaptations galore, and a sequel to The Expendables, the Sylvester Stallone-backed ensemble sequel being the closest we're going to get to a modern-day Dirty Dozen in this decade. The anxiety to see some butts get kicked on the silver screen will subside, and, soon enough, some of Tinseltown's most reliable action gurus will be back at your local theater.

But the genre's most unexpected and craziest jolt of adrenaline will come this weekend, when writer-director Gareth Evans' brutal The Raid: Redemption hits limited theaters. Set inside a grimy apartment building in Jakarta, Indonesia, the festival favorite pits an overmatched SWAT team against an endless crew of criminals trained in the martial art Silat; at the film's center is Iko Uwais, a fisticuffs beast who, if you ask us, has the potential to be the next Tony Jaa.

The Indonesia-born Uwais is certainly in a better position to achieve action flick glory than former Friday Night Light star Taylor Kitsch, whose leading man turn in Disney's John Carter couldn't save the production from becoming a staggering $200 million loss for Mickey Mouse's company. Perhaps Kitsch will have more luck with this May's board-game-by-way-of-Transformers blockbuster Battleship. That John Carter debacle has to sting, though.

We wish both Uwais and Kitsch the best of luck, but they've both got a way to go before either one of them graces the following, prestigious list of cinema's greatest butt-kickers, a little something we like to call The 50 Best Action Stars In Movie History.

RELATED: The 50 Best Action Movies

Written by Frazier Tharpe (@The_SummerMan)

Follow @ComplexPopCult

Mark Wahlberg

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Milla Jovovich

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Michelle Yeoh

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Christian Bale

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Daniel Craig

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Antonio Banderas

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Angelina Jolie

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Liam Neeson

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Carl Weathers

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Pam Grier

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Matt Damon

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Dolph Lundgren

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Vin Diesel

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Burt Reynolds

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Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson

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Will Smith

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Keanu Reeves

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Sean Connery

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Patrick Swayze

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Nicolas Cage

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Sonny Chiba

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Charles Bronson

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Russell Crowe

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Wesley Snipes

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Chow-Yun Fat

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Steve McQueen

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Jet Li

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Mel Gibson

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Jean-Claude Van Damme

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Chuck Norris

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Jason Statham

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Clint Eastwood

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Jackie Chan

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Harrison Ford

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Tom Cruise

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Kurt Russell

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Steven Seagal

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Bruce Willis

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Bruce Lee

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Arnold Schwarzenegger

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Sylvester Stallone

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