Action movies are perhaps one of the most popular and most common movie genres at the cinema providing the audience with high octane, exciting experiences.As technology has advanced so has the means to thrill the audience and the likes of Casino Royale, Die Hard 4 and the Bourne Ultimatum are a long cry from the first action film in 1903.The Great Train Robbery was released in the silent era and despite lasting just twelve minutes the film used cutting edge techniques such as cross cutting, location shooting and camera movement and it was a great success at theatres.And so film fans' love affair with the action movie began.While actors like Errol Flynn brought the action film to the attention of a cinema going public in the 1930s it was the release of the James Bond movies in the sixties and seventies that popularised the genre.With every release the action genre was advanced with car chases and physical fighting that became more elaborate with every film.

While Britain had James Bond, not to be outdone, the Americans focused on the action sub genre the cop movie, which was to go on and be a huge hit with the public.

Throughout the sixties American cinema looked at the maverick police officer combining action set-pieces along with serious themes that give character insight and emotional power.

Hollywood produced a string of successful movies with one of the most famous being The French Connection, which went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, Bullit with Steve McQueen, Dirty Harry with Clint Eastwood and Assault on Precinct 13.

Into the eighties and the cop action film was given another dimension , comedy and with that came a string of box office hits including Lethal Weapon, Beverly Hills Cop and Bad Boys and Rush Hour in the nineties.

The action genre, whist doing well at the box office, also made stars out of actors such as Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis Arnold Schwarzenegger and more recently Vin Diesel.

Stallone shot to fame in 1982 with Rambo: First Blood about a Vietnam veteran. The film went on to have three sequels including Rambo which is to be released later this month.

Similarly Schwarzenegger's The Terminator, which was released in 1984, propelled him to fame producing two sequels Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Rise of the Machines.

Bruce Willis owes much of his success to the character John McClane, who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time the 1988 movie was a hit and had three sequels, the most recent being last summer.

Martial arts have had a major impact on the action genre with Bruce Lee's four movies Fists of Fury, The Chinese Connection, Enter the Dragon and Return of the Dragon catapulting Lee and the kung fu genre to world wide prominence that was to be copied many years later.

Jackie Chan and Jet Lee are the most recent actors to continue that type of movie both having success in their native countries as well as breaking into Hollywood.

But in recent years movies such as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Dagger and Curse of the Golden Flower have been a critical and commercial success as Asian cinema integrate further with Western movie go-ers.

Within the last twelve months action movies have dominated the box office with Daniel Craig's James Bond taking the pace of the franchise to new extremes, Willis and Stallone going back to Rambo and McClane and Jason Bourne the surprise hit, America's answer to Bond.

This summer once again it's this genre of movie that will dominate proceedings with The Dark Knight, Ironman, Indiana Jones all scheduled for release.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw