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Very interesting inquiry, Posh. I ll try to show my picture of where the line is drawn.

An action movie is not necessarily a purely 100% endless sequence of explosions, gunfights, kickboxing etc. That would make it totally nonsensical and mindless. For every good action movie to prove its point, it should have at least a half-sensible story. Hence we have some sort of plot, establishment and development of characters...before we get in into the serious stuff.

A true action flick is one where the story starts off real quick and things start happening quite quickly. The changing of scenes happens swiftly and the characters keep moving quickly from one frame to another, before the violence starts...like in Die Hard or Commando etc...

For example, Aliens. It followed Alien and the audience were well-versed with who Ripley was, and what had happened to her. But still, to develop the character more and to throw in a bunch of new characters (each with their own unique personality, like Bill Paxton, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen etc.) we have story-driven character development for at least 15-20 mins before getting into the action...see, action needs to blend into the storyline, the action we see on screen should feel as a part of the proceedings which have been going on...

Take any action flick as an example. Arnie's flicks, like Commando, Raw Deal, Terminator 1 & 2, Die Hard series, Predator etc. all movies depend on establishment of plot and characters. Stallone's Cobra or First Blood series, Van Damme movies, Seagal movies, Lundgren movies etc. All have a healthy dose of violence in all of em, but for the action in those movies to look gullible, there is need of a plot and character development.

As regards V for Vendetta, the movie is categorised as action. Because it has lots of it, and the story development happens quite quickly as the characters move from one frame to another. It does not let you catch up (ala the Matrix movies) and you have to be quick in order to keep up with the pace of the story. That, imo, is an action movie.