Explosive Christmas Action Classics: From Die Hard to Lethal Weapon and Beyond

Holiday cheer is great. Holiday chaos is inevitable. If you want the twinkle lights without the sugar rush, here are the Christmas-season action movies I actually throw on when the family volume hits 11. Some are obvious. Some are very 'wait, that counts?' Either way, they get the job done.

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

   Yes, a Bond movie qualifies. And not a fringe one either. George Lazenby’s lone outing as 007 might be a mixed bag performance-wise, but the movie is a banger. It’s also the one where Bond gets married. The Christmas angle: Bond infiltrates Blofeld’s mountaintop allergy clinic at Piz Gloria over the holidays, escapes on Christmas Eve with Nina’s song 'Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown' playing over the mayhem, gets saved by Diana Rigg’s Tracy, and even proposes that night. It’s not higher only because the Christmas chunk is a slice, not the whole pie.

2. Violent Night (2022)

   Already carving out a spot in annual holiday rotations. Imagine 'Die Hard' if John McClane had a sleigh and a moral obligation to hand out coal. David Harbour’s Santa turns a home invasion led by John Leguizamo into a very red Christmas. Simple premise, big smashy payoff.

3. Fatman (2020)

   The other Santa-with-a-shotgun movie, and it rules. Mel Gibson plays a grizzled, worn-down Kris Kringle who drops coal in a spoiled rich kid’s stocking. The kid responds like any well-adjusted child: he hires a hitman (Walton Goggins) to whack Santa. You get snow, elves, presents... and firearms. Gibson’s take on a blue-collar Santa works, and Goggins’ assassin has his own old grievance with the big guy. If you skipped it in 2020, fix that. It ended up in my yearly rotation.

4. Batman Returns (1992)

   It’s a Christmas movie. Period. Never mind the June 19, 1992 release date. It opened to over $45 million, at the time a record opening weekend, and it’s wall-to-wall Gotham gloom dressed in holiday decor. If you want capes with your candy canes, this is the pick. You could play 'Iron Man 3', but that’s more 'set around Christmas' than 'actually about Christmas'.

5. Reindeer Games (2000)

   Good? Bad? Depends on the day. Entertaining? Absolutely. Fresh out of prison, a guy (Ben Affleck) pretends to be his dead cellmate to meet the pen-pal bombshell (Charlize Theron). Her brother (Gary Sinise) then forces him into a casino robbery the cellmate supposedly had an in on. Identities twist, plans go sideways, and Frankenheimer (a godfather of modern action) keeps the throttle open. It literally opens by panning across dead Santas, so maybe not one for Christmas Eve with the kiddos, but perfect early-December grime.

6. To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)

   You’d swear this neon-noir takes place in a heat-blasted August. Actually, the on-screen dates track most of the story to the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Director William Friedkin deliberately stripped away decorations and holiday chatter to make the world feel even more bleak. There’s a deleted DVD scene with Christmas decor that he cut. Side note: people sometimes toss 'First Blood' into this conversation thanks to a little tinsel in a police station, but the timing’s fuzzy enough it could just as easily be January.

7. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

   Shane Black loves setting things at Christmas, and this was his feature directing debut. It also helped put Robert Downey Jr. back on the big-screen map after the wilderness years. He’s Harry Lockhart, a petty thief who stumbles into acting and then into a murder mystery, guided/dragged by Val Kilmer’s legendary PI, Gay Perry. The movie plays like a sardonic holiday redemption arc, with Harry finding a kind of surrogate family along the way. Also: Perry remains one of the rare openly gay action leads in a studio movie. This one’s a legit December staple for me.

8. The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

   This is a Christmas action classic now, but it flopped hard on October 11, 1996. Being the follow-up from the 'Cutthroat Island' duo (Geena Davis and director Renny Harlin) did it no favors; people wrote it off on sight. Time has been kind. The cult following is massive because it perfectly blends holiday warmth with hard-R carnage. Find me another film where a group of carolers stand there with guns in their faces. Samuel L. Jackson calls it his all-time favorite performance of his, and Geena Davis does the amnesiac mom/killing machine pivot like it’s nothing. Shane Black’s script sold to New Line for a then-record $4 million. Top-three Christmas action, easy.

9. Lethal Weapon (1987)

   Riggs and Murtaugh: the prototype odd-cop couple. One’s straight-laced and retirement-ready, the other’s a barely contained suicide mission. Shane Black again, which means Christmas again. The movie plants its first big gunfight at a Christmas tree lot because of course it does. No snow (Los Angeles problems), but lights and trees pop up to keep you seasonally oriented. It ends with a pile of dead villains, a holiday dinner that turns Riggs into family, and Elvis crooning 'I’ll Be Home for Christmas'.

10. Die Hard (1988)

    The dispute is over: it’s a Christmas movie. From the opening at LAX with jingling bells in the score to the Nakatomi Plaza office party under a gigantic tree, the Christmas Eve setting is baked in from minute five. When John meets Argyle, the soundtrack locks it in with Run-DMC’s 'Christmas in Hollis'. From there, it’s holiday spirit via bad guys, worse federal agents, and one barefoot cop who refuses to quit.

    "Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho."

    No topping it. If you want to keep the sleigh ride going, 'Die Hard 2: Die Harder' is nearly as good and brings the one thing the original didn’t: snow.

What did I miss? Drop your go-to Christmas action picks in the comments.