Critics' Choice Awards: What are the Best Action Movies of 2012?

After yesterday’s fantastic discussion of the year’s best comedies as I begin to fill out my nomination ballot for the 2013 Critics Choice Movie Awards, which are due on Sunday, December 9, today we move to the Action category.

Like the Comedy category, I need to nominate not only the year’s Best Action Movie, but also the Best Actor and Actress in an Action Movie and this category is actually proving even harder than Comedy as there just don’t seem to be enough options.

Here are the categories we’re discussing in this post:

Best Action Movie
Best Actor in an Action Movie
Best Actress in an Action Movie

I have listed below 36 films I am currently considering at the bottom of this post, though after seeing Zero Dark Thirty last night (which is fantastic!) I don’t think of it as an action movie. The only real action in it takes place in the final 20 minutes or so and, like the entire film, it is far more procedural than it is all-out action. Of course, my feelings on this may change come nomination time, but for now I have left it off my “best” list.

Unlike the Comedy category, I wasn’t even able to come up with a top ten, instead only able to offer seven I would consider to be among the “best” of the year in this category. I know many of you love The Raid, but unfortunately I did not like that film at all and at this point I have still yet to see Django Unchained (that will be taken care of in less than 48 hours), Dredd 3D, The Expendables 2 (hoping to watch that in the next couple days), Men in Black III, Jack Reacher (I won’t see this before nominations are due) or Safe (I may try and watch this soon as well).

So there are at least a couple of movies I can see before nominations are due that may make the list, but for now here’s how my take on the situation breaks down at the moment:

Best Action Movie

End of Watch
Looper
Prometheus
The Dark Knight Rises
Skyfall
Haywire
The Avengers

As for the actor and actress categories my current picks would look like this, and they include supporting actors since I have to assume that’s allowed since there is no separate category.