Introduction : action and adventure cinema / Yvonne Tasker -- Pt. I. History, criticism and style -- 1. ’Trauma thrills’ : notes on early action cinema / Jennifer M. Bean -- 2. The ’culture war’ of sensational melodrama, 1910-14 / Richard Abel -- 3. ’Child of commerce! bastard of art!’ : early film melodrama / Ben Singer -- 4. Action-adventure as Hollywood genre / Steve Neale -- 5. Dwight Macdonald and the historical epic / Mark Jancovich -- Pt. II. Theorising action aesthetics -- 6. ’Get ready for rush hour’ : the chronotope in action / Martin Flanagan -- 7. The collapse of reality and illusion in The matrix / Aylish Wood -- 8. Guns and gas : investigating the 1970s car chase film / Tico Romao -- 9. Saving Private Ryan’s ’special affect’ / Michael Hammond -- Pt. III. Gender, stars, bodies -- 10. Ready for action : G. I. Jane, Demi Moore’s body and the female combat movie / Linda Ruth Williams --

11. Mas macha : the new latina action hero / Mary Beltran -- 12. Beauty in motion : gender, spectacle and action babe cinema / Marc O’Day -- 13. Breakdown : white masculinity, class, and U.S. action-adventure films / Susan Jeffords -- 14. Maximus melodramaticus : masculinity, masochism and white male paranoia in contemporary Hollywood cinema / Martin Fradley -- 15. The family in action / Yvonne Tasker -- Pt. IV. Nation, ethnicity and stardom -- 16. The Hong Kong/Hollywood connection : stardom and spectacle in transnational action cinema / Leon Hunt -- 17. Europeans in action! / Christine Holmlund -- 18. Greek war film as melodrama : women, female stars, and the nation as victim / Lydia Papadimitriou -- 19. Spaghetti western, genre criticism and national cinema : re-defining the frame of reference / Dimitris Eleftheriotis -- Pt. V. Action, authorship and industry -- 20. Genre and violence in the work of Kurosawa and Peckinpah / Stephen Prince --

21. The dirty dozen : the contradictory nature of screen violence / Tony Williams -- 22. ’It’s aimed at kids - the kid in everybody’ : George Lucas, Star wars and children’s entertainment / Peter Kramer -- 23. Man’s favourite sport? : the action films of Kathryn Bigelow / Barry Keith Grant -- 24. ’They call me "action woman"’ : the marketing of Mimi Leder as a new concept in the high concept ’action’ film / Rachel Williams.

Includes bibliographical references and index.