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Raise a glass, America. It’s the Fourth of July. Independence Day. Your special day. Why not celebrate with an over-the-top, ultra-violent action spectacular celebrating the can-explode spirit of the country that we all ostensibly love? You know, while it lasts?
Patriotism means a lot of things to a lot of people, and these movies, bless ’em, all at least try to exemplify shining American ideals, albeit with mixed results and some, uh, different ideas about what it means to love your country. They all do have at least one thing in common: explosions. Lots of ‘em. Wherever these films sit on the American political spectrum, they are all pretty much aligned on the idea that rugged individualism should be backed by heavy firepower.
Given that it’s fireworks season anyway, why not sit back and enjoy a movie that lights up the screen with love of the grand old U.S. of A…and also with things that explode real good? These are movies that don’t just say “America!” They say, “America? Fuck yeah!”
Independence Day (1996)
Stupid aliens. You’re really going to blow up the White House just a couple of days shy of the Fourth of July? You think America is going to let that slide? The aliens certainly didn’t count on a cross-section of American rebels, including Marine pilot Will Smith, Gulf War vet President Bill Pullman, tech guy Jeff Goldblum, alcoholic crank Randy Quaid, and Star Trek’s Mr. Data standing up to defend our freedom to deliver cheesy one-liners. This thing was such a huge hit, it kicked off a major disaster movie resurgence in the mid 1990s (Armageddon, Volcano, Deep Impact, etc.), but none could top it for fun and sheer spectacle. (That includes the 20 years later sequel, minus Will Smith.)
Where to stream: Hulu, digital rental
Air Force One (1997)
In the pantheon of cool movie presidents, Harrison Ford’s James Marshall stands tall. There’s a pretty solid setup here: No sooner has Marshall stated, publicly and unequivocally, that the U.S. government will not negotiate with terrorists than a group of terrorists takes control of Air Force One and threatens the resulting hostages, including the First Family. The baddies think the president been ejected from the craft, but he’s actually hiding in the cargo hold, and there’s only one thing for him to do: get them off his plane! Look, it’s no way to pick a president but, if I’m being real, but I’d probably vote for him.
Where to stream: AMC+, digital rental
Olympus Has Fallen (2013)
When a North Korean terrorist group takes over the White House, the first thing they do, naturally, is tear a tattered flag from the roof of the building, eye it disrespectfully (how dare they?), and then throw it off the roof, from which it slowly descends in all its CGI-enhanced poignance and glory. The sometimes-great Antoine Fuqua directs this slightly cheap-looking spin on Die Hard in the White House, with Gerard Butler playing a disgraced former Secret Service agent who becomes the only one who can save the President (and the country) from the terrorists. A great cast (Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart, and Angela Bassett) elevate this violent, middling, but perfectly entertaining action thriller.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Under Siege (1992)
The USS Missouri (the third U.S. Navy ship with the name) had a long and illustrious career before being towed to Pearl Harbor and made into a memorial. It’s also held a prominent (if eclectic) place in pop culture: among other appearances, it was featured prominently in the 2012 film Battleship (more on that one shortly) and was also the setting for Cher’s slightly risqué video for “If I Could Turn Back Time.” But it probably got the most screen time in this 1992 Steven Seagal vehicle. Mirroring the ship’s real history, President George H.W. Bush decommissions the ship (true) just in time for terrorists led by Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey to seize it for nefarious purposes (less true). Only Seagal, playing the ship’s plucky cook, can stop them (very untrue).
Where to stream: Digital rental
White House Down (2013)
Director Roland Emmerich makes his second appearance on this list (after Independence Day), and it won’t be his last. Following efforts by the President (Jamie Foxx) to make peace in the Middle East, a cabal of white supremacists lead by James Woods launches an attack on the Capitol building (if you can imagine) that sends DC into lockdown. Luckily, Marine vet, Capitol police officer, and tank-top all-star Channing Tatum is on hand when Woods and company attempt to kidnap the President and take over the White House in order to start a nuclear war with Iran because of revenge or something. It’s a very solid action movie, but we didn’t come here for the plot: we came for explosions and Channing Tatum’s ever-shrinking wardrobe. Something was definitely in the air when this came out around the same time as Olympus Has Fallen.
Where to stream: Netflix, Hulu, digital rental
Street Fighter (1994)
Yes, technically Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Guile works for the “Allied Nations” rather than the U.S. Air Force (as in the video games) and, yes, he goes through the movie with a borderline-impenetrable Belgian accent. Still, by the time the camera goes in for a close-up on his American flag-tatted bicep during the climactic fight with Raul Julia, it’s clear that Guile is 100% the real American hero.
(Incidentally, this movie has a weirdly impressive cast: JCVD, Julia, Ming-Na Wen… even Kylie Minogue. Street Fighter was a big deal in the 1990s, no question.)
Where to stream: Digital rental
The Green Berets (1968)
John Wayne, best known for his work as an actor and as a World War II draft-dodger, sat in the director’s chair for this one—a film he passionately set out to create in order to counter the anti-war sentiments of the lily-livered cowards becoming increasingly disenchanted with America’s role in Vietnam. David Janssen plays a reporter with concerns about the conflict, at least until he’s embedded with Wayne’s fictional Colonel Beckworth. At that point, we journey with them into the heart of the Vietnam War and learn that the conflict isn’t complicated at all. It is, rather, a Starship Troopers-style fight between goodies (Americans) and baddies (Vietnamese commies co-lead by a young, distinctly not Vietnamese, George Takei). The baddies don’t deserve our mercy, nor due process, so best just to shoot them a lot. As you would with the Native Americans in a western. The movie did decent business but was almost universally panned, rightly judges as varying shades of offensive and laughable.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Gymkata (1985)
American olympian Kurt Thomas stars in this 1985 film from director Robert Clouse, best known for helming Enter the Dragon. Here, Thomas plays Jonathan Cabot, tasked by American intelligence with infiltrating the convincingly named secluded nation of Parmistan. The country holds what they call “the Game” every year, and the winner gets a wish. The Americans are hoping that Cabot can enter and win, at which point he will be granted his heart’s desire: a U.S. satellite monitoring station in Parmistanian territory. To aid him, he’ll be trained in the unstoppable martial arts skill of gymkata (The thrill of gymnastics! The kill of karate!), which he’ll need to defeat anti-American terrorists, win the heart of the country’s princess, and get us the satellite monitoring station we’ve always dreamed of.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Battleship (2012)
You might not have imagined the relatively simple setup of the beloved Hasbro tabletop game would provide enough fodder for a movie. And you’d be absolutely right—they really had to start more or less from scratch in order to tease a alien-centric plot out of the alien-free strategy guessing game. While Taylor Kitsch is assigned to the USS John Paul Jones, and Alexander Skarsgård commands the Sampson, alien spacecraft from “Planet G” threaten the world, but specifically the water around Oahu. There’s a nod to the mechanics of the game when joint Japanese and American forces realize that they can track the invading warships using tsunami warning buoys, but mostly it’s all an excuse for some Transformers-esque naval action. It’s a nice sign of the times, though, that Japanese and American ships team up in the waters around Pearl Harbor.
Where to stream: Netflix, digital rental
Rambo III (1988)
Rocky and Rambo, two beloved Sylvester Stallone-fronted franchises, had similar trajectories: each begins on a relatively sensitive and thoughtful note, but, by the gung-ho Reagan mid-1980s, throws subtlety out the window. The entry point in what became the Rambo series, First Blood, nodded toward dealing Vietnam-era post-traumatic stress, while the second sent Rambo after forgotten POWs. Number three sends him off to Afghanistan to rescue an old friend, and in doing so takes a definite side in the long-running conflict between the Soviet Union and Afghan Mujahideen rebels, cutting a swath through Soviet forces with a machine gun and a rocket launcher and generating a record-breaking body count (literally! Guinness named it the most violent film ever made in 1990). This wasn’t just a fantasy—supporting Afghan militant groups was a centerpiece of U.S. anti-Soviet planning for over a decade; in a sense, this is Stallone bringing dry government policy to life for children who act out American imperialism via toys, comic books, and video games based on the movie.
And, yes, OK, many of those Afghan militants went on to form the core of what became the Taliban—so that element hasn’t aged very well. But the bit where Rambo blows up a helicopter with a bow and arrow is timeless, so it all evens out. Right?
Where to stream: AMC+, digital rental
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
James Stewart plays Jefferson Smith, a newly-appointed Senator whose naïveté is at first a weakness, and then becomes the bedrock for the ideals that keep him from becoming yet another grafting politician. It might seem churlish to include this sweet, inspirational comedy-drama alongside movies like Rambo, but Mr. Smith Goes to Washington‘s central conceit—that one good ol’ fashioned American man could clean up the whole crooked system by standing up for his beliefs—seems less like a charming ideal and more like a depressing reminder that it’s nearly impossible to get anything done around here.
Where to stream: Prime Video
Rocky IV (1985)
On a related note, the initial Rocky movies all work on different levels, but by the third, the formula was getting tired, and so the fourth took a gamble by going over the top (not to be confused with Over the Top) patriotic, and it paid off in a big way, earning the biggest box office of the series, before or since.
After boxer Ivan Drago (future movie He-Man Dolph Lundgren) literally kills Apollo Creed with the entire Soviet Union behind him, rugged individualist Rocky goes rogue, getting Drago to agree to an unsanctioned match in the USSR. It’s all laid out invia an all-time great, utterly memorable training montage: while Drago trains with a whole team, modern equipment, and the best steroids communism had on offer, Rocky does it the good old-fashioned way: by chopping down trees and pretending to be a doggie pulling Paulie around on a sled. Like a fuckin’ man.
Without giving too much away, the ending sees Rocky winning over the Soviet audience and earning the applause of Premier Mikhail Gorbachev himself. And that’s the story of the fall of communism.
Where to stream: AMC+, digital rental
Miracle (2004)
As a couple of Rocky movies taught us conclusively, the best way to defeat the Soviet Union and the perfidious threat of communism is through sports.Which…given the choice between sports and global thermonuclear war…yeah, let’s do sports. Miracle tells the roughly true story of the victory that came to be known as the “Miracle on Ice,” when Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) and the United States men’s ice hockey team defeated the heavily, heavily favored Soviet team at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, thus ending the Cold War forever and ushering in a lasting era of peace with the USSR. The movie breaks zero new ground when it comes to inspirational sports-movie tropes, but it’s very effectively nostalgic and inspirational.
Where to stream: Disney+, digital rental
Missing in Action (1984)
Developed at the same time Rambo: First Blood Part II, Missing in Action was probably the second most successful movie of the 1980s to explore concerns o POWs and MIAs potentially remaining in Southeast Asia (though these weren’t the only two). The premises are similar: here, Chuck Norris goes to Vietnam to investigate reports of U.S. soldiers remaining in captivity in Vietnam. He finds them, and then fights his way out. Resolving the fates of missing service-members was a major issue in the 1980s (and rightly so), but it’s unclear whether these popular action spectaculars helped raise awareness or just satisfied a thirst for retribution.
Where to stream: Cinemax, digital purchase
Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Like any action franchise worth its mettle, the Die Hard movies get bigger, louder, and more preposterous as they go—and that’s certainly true for Live Free or Die Hard, in which ordinary ex-cop John McClane enters superhero territory… but it actually represents a fair balance between the earlier, (slightly) more grounded movies, and the way-over-the-top (and fairly terrible) fifth entry. In this one, America’s entire cyber-infrastructure is at risk from a vengeful Timothy Olyphant, and since the villain has control of the computers, McClane will have to stop him the old-fashioned way. With guns and such. This one gets a middling score on the “Rah Rah America!” scale, but a million extra points for the very excellent titular pun.
Where to stream: Paramount+, digital rental
Pearl Harbor (2001)
Look, I’ve been to the Pearl Harbor Memorial—it’s an overwhelming emotional experience, one that doesn’t at all make you think wouldn’t this be better if the focus were on a campy, sitcom-level romantic triangle? But, hey! It’s a movie, not a history lesson!
Not even a little bit. It’s long and noisy, but certainly action-packed enough to make it a solid Independence Day time-killer. Or you could just watch From Here to Eternity.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Despite being incredibly on-the-nose as a metaphor for American military might, Captain America is pretty cool. Not quite as cool in the movies as the comic book version, who kicked off his career by socking Hitler square in the jaw, but there’s still enough Nazi-fighting action to cheer for.
Where to stream: Disney+, digital rental
How the West Was Won (1962)
This sprawling, slightly goofy epic goes big in every regard: five directors, a giant ensemble of big Hollywood names (Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Debbie Reynolds, etc.) and a three-lens Cinerama filming process meant to be projected onto an enormous, curved, proto-IMAX screen. It’s also epic in timespan, staring in 1839 and continuing over the ensuing half-century. It’s a fun but entirely unsophisticated take on American westward expansion, posing the process as a series of family-friendly challenges and setbacks for white settlers rather than a murky, complicated, and violent series of conquests of indigenous peoples.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Red Dawn (1984)
The apex of the “Communists are coming to get us!” action sub-genre, Red Dawn became such a cult classic that it even (somehow) scored a post-Soviet remake involving an invasion by China North Korea. The original became a cult classic for its relatively simple “Rambo, but with teenagers” setup—it’s the perfect suburban fantasy, both timeless and very 1980s. A foreign army has invaded, the government has collapsed, and only you and your friends can stop them! is a premise that works in any era. (But especially the ‘80s.) It’s all done with incredible self-seriousness, which only helps to sell the concept (and heighten the cheese factor).
Where to stream: Max, digital rental
Invasion U.S.A. (1985)
This Chuck Norris vehicle begins with a fake-out: a boatload of Cuban refugees (or “refugees”) is met by a welcoming American Coast Guard… except that it’s not the Coast Guard, it’s Latin American communists, who kill them for the coke that they were smuggling. Once on the mainland, the guerrillas team up with Soviet operatives and, together, plan attacks throughout America (because: reasons). Naturally, when they blow up Chuck Norris’ house, they learn they’ve picked on the wrong guy. Norris intended this as a message movie about a real and present threat, but I’m not convinced that the politics and social messages are ever the reasons to watch a Chuck Norris movie.
Where to stream: Tubi, MGM+
National Treasure (2004)
The hunt for Lincoln’s gold is on! Or… something like that. For generations, members of Benjamin Franklin Gates’ family have passed down a secret—apparently there’s a massive, secret treasure that the spendthrift businessmen who ran the country circa 1776 decided to sock away rather than spend, a fact revealed to an ancestor of (real life) founder Charles Carroll. (This accumulated wealth, we’re assured, was passed down from ancient empires and had absolutely nothing to do with the 1,000 or so enslaved people Carroll kept to do his work for him). Historian Ben, played by true national treasure Nicholas Cage, realizes that there’s a treasure map of sorts print on the back of the Declaration of Independence! Which he’ll have to steal! It’s an action-packed tour through something that loosely resembles American history.
Where to stream: Disney+, digital rental
300 (2007)
We love Spartans. Love ‘em. There’s even a name for it: laconophilia. So, even though Zach Snyder’s 300 (based on the Frank Miller/Lynn Varley graphic novel) is set over 2,000 years before the founding of the United States, it works as a distinctly American, pro-western fantasy of righteous battle to the last. There’s a reason it was made during the Bush II era: Delivered smack dab in the middle of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s hard not to see the movie’s east vs. west themes as allegorical. In real life (perhaps surprisingly), it was the Spartan constitution and blended government that most influenced the framers of the U.S. Constitution, not the baby oiled pecs: that ancient nation generally had two kings, one to balance the power of the other; the kings ruled mostly in military matters, while a national assembly and two elected legislative bodies made all of the day-to-day decisions and generally could overrule one or both kings. Today, though, we mostly love how they’re in really good shape and won’t let anyone take their weapons. To broadly paraphrase the Athenian Pericles: our legacy isn’t set in stone; it’s what others make of it.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Top Gun (1986)
In real life and in the movies, the TOPGUN program for Navy pilots is for the best of the best, and, presumably those who feel the need for speed. Though highly, highly fictionalized, the film does pay tribute to naval aviators in its story of “Maverick” (Tom Cruise) going through training and making time with flight instructor Kelly McGillis. Not only a fun Fourth of July flick, but a reasonably good lead-in to the long gestating, less gay, but Best Picture-nominated(!) sequel.
Where to stream: Paramount+, digital rental
Midway (2019)
In some ways, it’s hard not to look at this as an unofficial followup to Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, focusing, instead, on the pivotal Battle of Midway (though including its own take on the attack on Pearl Harbor)—Bay and this movie’s director, Roland Emmerich, share plenty of stylistic similarities. As noisy action spectaculars, they’re roughly on the same level, with Midway leaning even harder into video game-style digital set pieces. This one scores points for reaching for a level of historical authenticity the earlier movie did not, placing a much greater emphasis on realism. It’s not the best film about the Pacific Theatre, but it is among the more accurate.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
With tongue (at least partly) in cheek, Quentin Tarantino constructs a violent alternate history fantasy about competing plots to kill Hitler. Tarantino films come with a level of prestige (and star power) that the pictures he’s paying homage to can’t compete with, but there are still hints of exploitation classics that imagined righteous victories when the real-life circumstances were a bit more complex. Here, a Jewish team of American soldiers stalks the Führer, leading to a surprising climax. Tarantino would pull a similar trick with 2012’s Django Unchained.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Commando (1985)
One of the defining figures in 1980s American-style action was, weirdly, an Austrian bodybuilder. Yes, before he proved his American bona fides by becoming the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger frequently portrayed superheroic American soldiers. And also Conan. Here, he plays a retired Special Forces Colonel whose daughter is kidnapped by a Latin American dictator played, improbably, by Dan Hedaya. It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that Hedaya’s President Arius will come to regret it.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Uncle Sam (1996)
Horror’s hardest working hack (said affectionately), the great (very occasionally) Larry Cohen scripted this Fourth of July slasher, making a play at filling a horror niche by creating a memorable villain around a holiday largely neglected by horror. For a good ten or twenty minutes, this story of an American soldier in Kuwait killed by friendly fire who returns to wreak vengeance, seems like it’s going to lean heavily into anti-war and anti-militarism themes. But that’s all pretty quickly forgotten as our murderous Master Sergeant takes to killing anyone and everyone, regardless of their beliefs of political affiliations. And if that isn’t the American dream, I don’t know what is.
Where to stream: Shudder, Tubi, Prime Video
The Patriot (2000)
Roland Emmerich’s career tends to veer between action spectaculars (Independence Day) and slightly more thoughtful movies (the Shakespeare drama Anonymous). The Patriot sort of splits the difference, taking an emotive action-movie approach to the Revolutionary War—Mel Gibson’s fictional Benjamin Martin is drawn into the fight against the British, forming a guerrilla unit to try to get back his captured son. The film rather gleefully dances around ugly historical realities, including in making egalitarians out of slaveholders, but no more than the typical American history textbook. The key moment here might be the sequence in which Benjamin uses as a flag as an actual weapon, ultimately impaling a horse on a flagpole (it’s a British horse therefore fine).
Where to stream: MGM+, digital rental
Invasion, U.S.A. (1952)
No, we didn’t do this one already: this is a 1952 Red Scare movie par excellence, unrelated to the Chuck Norris movie, even though they share a communist invasion leitmotif. Here, a group of weenies at a bar are all debating the reasons why they wouldn’t sign-up to fight the commies: a manufacturer figures that tractors are more lucrative than tanks; a cattle baron complains about his high taxes; a fashion model moans about war work having ruined her hands. Well let me tell you, comrade, they’re all in for a pretty big surprise when the TV informs them that Alaska’s just been nuked by the Russkies. If that doesn’t make them change their tunes, the unnecessarily batshit twist ending will.
Where to stream: Tubi, MGM+
G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987)
Not nearly as successful, nor as well-remembered, as the Transformers animated movie released around the same time, the G.I. Joe movie involves the team in a battle against the precursor to Cobra, the ancient race of serpent people known as Cobra-la, and their new leader, Golobulus. Rather than keeping track of any of that, you can probably just watch the opening sequence that made me gay, a celebration of American fighting men (and one woman!) that blends bazookas, glitter, aerial acrobatics, and extended crotch shots in a musical extravaganza unrivaled, in my opinion, in the history of patriotic cinema. Cobra isn’t just a ruthless terrorist organization, they also suck in a flying dance battle. Go Joe!
Where to stream: Digital purchase
