Harrison Ford’s 21 best (and 7 worst) movies, ranked
As Ford returns to action in Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, we pass harsh—but fair—judgement on his films, ranging from The Fugitive to Firewall
Film Features Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford is one of our biggest, most iconic movie stars. Much like Gary Cooper and Clint Eastwood, he tends to play tough, stoic men who don’t necessarily wear their hearts on their sleeves, though he’ll sprinkle in bits of warmth, humor, panic, and self-doubt, as required. The carpenter-turned-actor will celebrate his 81st birthday in July, and he’s still at it, trying something new (television, with terrific turns in 1923 and Shrinking) and once again returning to the role that helped make him a legend; he plays Indiana Jones for the last time in the series capper, Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny. To mark Ford’s final turn as Indy as well as his birthday, The A.V. Club has developed a comprehensive list of his 21 best films and, since they can’t all be gems when you’ve been in the game for almost 50 years, his seven worst films.
94 Comments
This one:Does it count if it’s court- or FAA-mandated community service?
This list is BS. Empire should be 2nd. He has the best performance in the greatest starwars movie.
His run of movies in the 1980s was absolutely incredible. I am struggling to pick out any truly excellent movies after that though. Maybe The Fugitive and Presumed Innocent.
I find it hilarious that the “nuking the fridge” bit is somehow considered “jumping the shark” when there are sequences throughout the trilogy that are equally as absurd:- Indy riding on top of a sub to a Nazi hidden base (no amount of mental gymnastics can explain away this plot hole)- Mola Ram ripping still beating hearts out of chests which can inexplicably burst into flame when near lava- Surviving an insane air drop on an inflatable raft- Drinking from the wrong chalice causes a villain to age in moments into a desiccated mess- Nazis faces melt as vengeful spirits escape from the Ark- The alien sequence at the end of Crystal SkullI could go on and on, but somehow surviving the nuclear blast is a bridge too far.lmao… gtfo.
C’mon, in no fucking way is Clear and Present Danger a better Ford movie than The Empire Strikes Back.I’d have put it above 42 and below Witness…
Is it a hot take to say he’s better in “Present Danger” than “Patriot Games”? I think he was, but everybody calls out the sequel as too problematic for modern tastes🙄
I don’t like either of his Clancy movies, but I like him better in Clear and Present Danger.
Since when is ESB a Ford movie?
The order of this list seems almost arbitrary with the exception of the top two. Empire’s not a top three Ford movie or performance??
Caught Patriot Games in a hotel a few weeks ago. Plot jumps all over the place…almost as much as Sean Bean’s wanted character easily globetrots between the USA, the UK and North Africa.It hasn’t aged well at all and probably shouldn’t be considered a top Ford film.
This list claims Anchorman 2, the two Clancy stories and Working Girl are better movies than either American Graffiti or Apocalypse Now. That’s just odd.
To be fair, should Apocalypse Now even be included in this list? I mean he has some lines but is in no way a major part of the movie.
This has to be the first time Anchorman 2 has shown up on any “Best of” list.
Eh, I’d put Working Girl way, WAY higher than it is — probably in the top-10. I think it’s one of his best roles…
You’re really putting freaking Anchorman 2 ahead of American Graffiti??? I think we need to see other people.
Sometimes you know from how they order their coffee that they’re not the right one. *shrugs at this list*
I’ve always had a soft spot for Sabrina. I’m a sucker for when he does comic roles, aside from Six Days Seven Nights.
I didn’t like Sabrina, but I also love Ford in comedies, and Working Girl in particular ranks somewhere in my Top 5.
Ford has always been my favorite action star, because he’s not afraid to show fear. The action stars of the 80s, at least Arnold and Stallone, were unstoppable juggernauts. Ford conveyed that he didn’t always know what he was doing, and didn’t want to do it, but it had to be done.
He’s great that way in The Fugitive, notably when the cops raid the house he’s renting in to arrest the owner’s drug dealer son and he breaks down after (thinking they were there for him). Earlier in the movie is one of the finest acting moments of his career, with the range of emotions that moves across his face when he realizes he is a suspect in his wife’s murder. Disbelief, puzzlement, realization, anger and despair all in about 10 seconds.
Temple of Doom is top 5 best. The rope bridge is the best ending of the 3. He is tied up doing nothing in Raiders ending and Last Crusades ending is a retread of Raiders opening.
Gross.
everything about regarding henry, from the neoptism to the directing, is some grade A hollywood b.s.
I adore Regarding Henry and my jaw dropped when I saw how you ranked it.
Frisco Kid isn’t a very consequential film, but it’s cute and the pairing of Ford and Wilder is great. The best parts of the movie are the two interacting and has left me with quotes embedded in my head for decades.
Not a bad list – good call on Regarding Henry in the “worse” category, because yeah, that’s just a silly movie. But speaking of silly – I never liked him as Jack Ryan – probably doesn’t help that I don’t like that character. Best Jack Ryan was Alec Baldwin and it should have stopped there (or continued as a franchise, which in my alternate universe it did).Not to diss Ford, but he’s a better re-actor than actor. When he has to drive a dramatic scene, it doesn’t work for me unless he’s being shot at or something.
I prefer Baldwin’s take on the character in Hunt for Red October, he feels a bit more like a geeky analyst than Ford’s later version. But Patriot Games and Sum of All Fears are still top-notch action flicks.
Belated ETA: Also pretty sure Patriot Games kicked off the entire Sean Bean Dies phenomenon.
The Sum of All Fears plays soooooo much better today than it did at the time of release.
Eh, that “A goddamn cook!” line from Red October is still relevant today.‘Course, how much longer it’s relevant depends on how long it takes for someone in the FSB to find the keys to the lead-lined tea caddy.
It and Mission Impossible also gave us the advent of Henry Czerny as Mr. Administrator.
I know the guy who wrote the original Cowboys and Aliens comic. He got fucked and didn’t make a cent off the movie.
Oh come one – Ford doesn’t randomly go to Amish country to hide from corrupt cops. He’s there to protect a child who WITNESSED a corrupt cop who murdered another detective. Anyway, if you’re going to post a clip, post this one:
I saw this movie originally when I was way too young to even understand probably 75% of it. I’ve seen it since a solid half dozen times and absolutely love it. This scene in particular is so good. The ending climax as the dirty cops come to the Amish farm is so good too.Lastly, as someone pointed out in a different comment, his ability to express real fear, and the tenderness (like with the boy in The Witness) is just incredible.
Yes, Witness is a wonderful movie. Everyone in it is good and the ending is damn near perfect. My one problem with it – a completely gratuitous topless shot of Kelly McGillis. So out of left field blue that I’m not sure it wasn’t meant to be a dream sequence.
I don’t think I would say that scene is gratuitous – it really establishes how much they are attracted to each other, and how much they might risk as a result.
I don’t think I would say that scene is gratuitous – it really establishes how much they are attracted to each other, and how much they might risk as a result. I know that’s what the scene was supposed to convey – and their relationship is, throughout the movie, realistic and romantic… But what they didn’t really explain was why McGillis was washing a tub of clothes in the moonlight, topless.Maybe it’s an Amish thing, but I doubt it.
The one guy suffocating in the grain silo still kind of freaks me out.But yeah, all around Witness is just a great meat and potatoes action thriller like The Fugitive.
Fully agree. I grew up on a dairy farm so we had grain silos, etc. We were always told to keep away, etc, but to see what could happen was veeeery scary to a young Kman lol
I don’t think I was much more than 6 years old when I saw this and the grain silo scene scared the bejesus out of me. Easily Fords best movie in my opinion.
Same! That was scary as hell!
Haven’t seen this since the olden days. Jarring now to see Alexander Gudonov (“Die Hard”) and Viggo Mortensen (lots of stuff) as a couple of pacifists.
My favorite Godonov performance is as the narcissist symphony conductor in The Money Pit. Shame he died so young, it was impressive that a Russian ballet dancer was turning out to be such a talented actor. Witness, Money Pit and Die Hard were his first three movie roles and were all completely different characters.
Blink and you’ll miss Aragorn
Ezekiel shot first!
I liked What Lies Beneath. Probably would have loved it had the trailer not given away the big twist. I also thought 6 Days 7 Nights was fun, if a bit beneath him. Regardless, how you can put either of those on his worst list but not dreck like Paranoia, Extraordinary Measures, and Ender’s Game?Also, if you’re going to include minor roles in movies like Apocolypse Now and Anchorman 2, then The Conversation would like a conversation with you.
Came here to mention The Conversation, not disappointed.
This What Lies Beneath slander is unwarranted. It’s a solid thriller with a meh ending, and Ford does a solid job in it. It’s not an Oscar winner or instant classic, but it’s not some cinematic abomination either.
Devils Own is definitely worse than What Lies Beneath.
The Devil’s Own deserves an award for running its trailer before the Special Edition re-release of Star Wars: A New Hope and immediately becoming an audience participation game to loudly cheer Harrison Ford and boo Brad Pitt for not being Harrison Ford.
Counterpoint: nothing is worse than the shitshow that was What Lies Beneath. Devil’s Own is maybe as bad of a movie but a better performance from Ford at least.
Not sure if I’d argue that it should be higher up the list, but gods, Working Girl is by far my favorite Harrison Ford performance. This scene in particular amuses me every time. <3
I don’t like hand-holding with my Sci-fi and being explained every single detail like the Theatrical Cut of Blade Runner and is a weaker film with it. And I know Harrison Ford agrees with that since he hated the voice over too. The mystery and intrigue is what makes most Sci-fi memorable for what they are today. And the same can be said for Blade Runner. A true masterpiece. The Directors Cut and the companion cut, The Final Cut, is arguably the best Sci-fi movie ever made.
I can’t say whether I think The Final Cut is the movie perfected, because I appreciate what it did already with The Directors Cut. Flaws and all. It’s definitely one of those things if you love the movie enough and want to argue which is the best cut because its fascinating what we are given with all the different cuts of the movie. I can go on all day about that movie, but I’m sure its talked about to death. Both Blade Runner and Raiders are both great top picks. I couldn’t be the one to pick one over the other. I also love Star Wars too and would put Empire at third if I could.
If you’re going to consider, for entries, cameos in “Anchorman” and his brief “Apocalypse Now” appearance , it’s incumbent to give one to his *other* “tiny but important and compelling” role for Coppola: Martin Starrett in “The Conversation”, in which he’s Smithers to Robert Duvall’s Burns, devotedly stalking & harassing Gene Hackman around San Francisco.
Yeah, if they were going to list great films he’s been in even if it was just a small role, then they should have included The Conversation, one of the best — arguably THE best — paranoid thrillers ever made. But then, what do we expect of the AV Club now that they’ve degenerated to using an iconic image of Young Frankenstein for The Cisco Kid? Certainly not film literacy.
I was hoping someone would mention that.
And doesn’t he have way more scenes in The Conversation than he does in Apocalypse Now.
yeah he’s an actual character in The Conversation, not just military office candy
Well, he owned the 80s and the work he did in subsequent decades seemed increasingly less significant but as Norma Desmond would say, “The pictures got smaller.”
Much as I like Ford, not even his biggest fan could say he has ‘range’. For that reason, if you can divorce the film from the actor, I would say his best roles are ‘Witness’, ‘The Fugitive’ and ‘K19 Widowmaker’.
No love here for: “Cowboys and Aliens”?
What Lies Beneath is great, scared a lot of people, looked great, and Harrison Ford is SUPPOSED to seem like a boring, disinterested husband, who then seems a little annoyed, who then seems worried, who then…
…is there another version of that movie? Because the one I saw in theaters is at or near the top of my list of worst movies I’ve ever sat through. Top to bottom bad movie.
Thank you! One of my favourite performances by him since he so rarely plays a bad guy.
I really liked it a lot,thought Ford seemed to relish in his role and it was an overall very entertaining movie.Surprised it gets a bad rap
“The Empire Strikes Back rates as, by far, the best installment in the original Star Wars trilogy”Doesn’t this mean that it’s the best film in the entire series?
Obv yes.
yes
Anchorman 2, possibly one of the most awful comedies ever to shit itself out onto our screens, is one of Harrison Fords best? He’s a brief werewolf in a shitty scene in a shitty film. Yikes.
So is this just a listicle site now? Is that what we’re doing?
A listicle site that can’t even line up the slide with the movie.
So happy to see Regarding Henry on this list. That movie blows.
A sense of dread hung over The Force Awakens as moviegoers sat through it in theaters because everyone knew someone major was going to die.I’m pretty sure we all knew exactly who was going to die, as Ford had been making it clear for 30+ years that the only way he’d return to the franchise was if Han Solo died. He said as much on nearly every talk show he ever appeared on (because they always asked him the question).
I genuinely didn’t, so it was quite the shock watching it and all the more effective for it.
Same here. Didn’t see that coming and it was a genuine shock. I hate it when people are all “I saw it coming from a mile away” like they’re better than us common folk.
But this is different from the usual cases of this. This isn’t thinking you are smart for guessing that Bruce Willis’ character was already dead in the Sixth Sense — Ford had literally said over and over again that he’d only return to Han Solo if the character died.
I wouldn’t say it was “spoiled,” per se, but a friend put the idea in my head the day before we saw it: “since Luke hasn’t been in any of the marketing, what if Luke plays the Kenobi role and dies in the second act?” So the moment Han stepped out on to that bridge, I was like, “Oh, HE’S Kenobi.” You don’t step out on to bridges in Star Wars.
The Empire Strikes Back rates as, by far, the best installment in the original Star Wars trilogy franchise.Fixed that typo for you.
To be clear: the description of this list clearly states you are ranking the *films* of Harrison Ford, and not just his performance in them. So are you really saying “Anchorman 2″ is somehow better than “Apocalypse Now”? I stopped reading after that, because that’s insane, and it makes the entire list suspect.
Man, old trailers really just gave the whole plot away, didn’t they?
Come on – ‘Working Girl’ is way too low………he’s so great in that. “I woke up in my underwear”(Pause) “I bet you looked nice…….”
Hmm, he’s pretty great in Bruno. Not sure how that missed his best of list:
At the start of Regarding Henry, there is a cocktail party where like three separate guys have Donald Trump’s exact haircut. I barely made it through the rest of the movie.
Harrison Ford is the most overrated actor in the history of the cinema. This list should be titled “21 good movies that Harrison Ford didn’t completely lull everyone to sleep in.” He’s the male equivalent of Ashley Judd.
Clearly the writer has not seen Morning Glory, a charming workplace comedy that Ford is terrific in.
“But most Clancy fans think Ford personified it, and we agree.”Actually no, in my experience that is exactly the opposite of what they believe.Ford might be a better actor than Alec, but his (Baldwin) JR was far closer to the books than Harrison Ford’s portrayal. Even Affleck in the mediocre Sum of All Fears was closer to the books’ Jack Ryan, and he’s definitely not as good of an actor as Ford.If you ignore the books, Clear and Patriot are both very good action films. But Ford’s Jack Ryan was about as far from Clancy’s novels as anybody who tried to portray him.
That first picture of Gene Wilder isn’t the Frisco Kid. It’s a still from Young Frankenstein. (A brilliant movie.)
Best bit of criticism for Regarding Henry that I remember reading or hearing (and I wish I could give it proper citation) was that Regarding Henry is a film that successfully argues that the best thing you can do for a Yuppie asshole lawyer is shoot him in the head.
It’s probably one-of-those-one-in-a-million chances in the movies: radioactive spider gives nerd superpowers. Radiation gives 99.999%of us cancer.
What is this new thing about showing a bunch of great (but oooh, also a few bad ones, tee-hee) films of said trend topic? What happened to just celebrating good things? If you don’t like it (or objectively it’s just that bad), maybe don’t bring it up. You look cheaper than usual with these click-snarky tactics.
I love The Fugitive and I say that as someone who normally hates the whole “Let’s take an old TV show and turn it into a movie” thing. But “The Fugitive” actually surpassed its source material.Although I can’t think of the movie without thinking of John Mulaney’s extended aside about it in “The Comeback Kid” (dealing with the fact that the ballroom in the Chicago Palmer House where he met Bill Clinton was the same location that Ford’s character confronts the corrupt medical researcher towards the end of the movie).
One of Harrison Ford’s first lines in a movie “I ain’t nobody dork!” He sure was right. We all know who he is. No single actor has made more money for Hollywood than Harrison Ford.
Anne Heche was great in Six Days, Seven Nights though.
I actually really enjoyed Firewall. I thought it was an intriguing plot, and Ford was not, at this point, afraid to show his age. His fight scenes are powered by fury but obviously take a toll on his character. I was pleasantly surprised by how good this film was.Meanwhile, I’m sure someone has posted this already, but:
The Force Awakens, a terrible movie, is in the best but not Temple of Doom ?And Crystal Skulls in the worst but not Dial of Destiny ?Your well known incapacity to criticize Disney is beyond ridiculous.