Annal:2004 Saturn Award for Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Saturn Award in the year 2004. For a ranked list of films, try the honor roll.
Kill Bill: Volume 1
- 2004 Saturn-Action winner
- Score: 10.54
Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is trash for connoisseurs. From his opening gambit (including a “Shaw-Scope” logo and gaudy ‘70s-vintage “Our Feature Presentation” title card) to his cliffhanger finale (a teasing lead-in to 2004’s Vol. 2), Tarantino pays loving tribute to grindhouse cinema, specifically the Hong Kong action flicks and spaghetti Westerns that fill his fervent brain—and this frequently breathtaking movie—with enough cinematic references and cleverly pilfered soundtrack cues to send cinephiles running for their reference books.…
- 2004 BAFTA-Film nominee
- 2004 Golden Globe-Drama nominee
- 2004 Saturn-Action nominee
- Score: 18.54
Freely adapted from Charles Frazier’s beloved bestseller, Cold Mountain boasts an impeccable pedigree as a respectable Civil War love story, offering everything you’d want from a romantic epic except a resonant emotional core. Everything in this sweeping, Odyssean journey depends on believing in the instant love that ignites during a very brief encounter between genteel, city-bred preacher’s daughter Ada (Nicole Kidman) and Confederate soldier Inman (Jude Law), who deserts the battlefield to return, weary and wounded, to Ada’s inherited farm in the…
- 2004 Saturn-Action nominee
- Score: 6.54
While Japan undergoes tumultuous transition to a more Westernized society in 1876-77, The Last Samurai gives epic sweep to an intimate story of cultures at a crossroads. In America, tormented Civil War veteran Capt. Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) is coerced by a mercenary officer (Tony Goldwyn) to train the Japanese Emperor’s troops in the use of modern weaponry. Opposing this “progress” is a rebellion of samurai warriors, holding fast to their traditions of honor despite strategic disadvantage. As a captive of the samurai leader (Ken Watanabe), Algren learns,…
- 2004 Saturn-Action nominee
- Score: 6.54
A whodunit revolving around a group of 10 strangers who find themselves running from a desert storm. They hole up in a roadside motel that proves as hospitable as the Bates Motel. The patrons are killed, one by one, and the survivors must try to figure out who the killer is before they, too, check out…permanently!
- 2004 Saturn-Action nominee
- Score: 6.54
Though it bears little resemblance to the original 1969 thriller starring Michael Caine, the 2003 remake of The Italian Job stands on its own as a caper comedy that’s well above average. The title’s a misnomer—this time it’s actually a Los Angeles job—but the action’s just as exciting as it propels a breezy tale of honor and dishonor among competing thieves. Inheriting Caine’s role as ace heist-planner Charlie Croker, Mark Wahlberg plays straight-man to a well-cast team of accomplices, including Mos Def, Jason Statham, and scene-stealer Seth Green in a…
- 2004 Saturn-Action nominee
- Score: 6.54
The Missing is the story of Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett), a young woman raising her two daughters in an isolated and lawless wilderness. When her oldest daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) is kidnapped by a psychopathic killer with mystical powers (Eric Schweig), Maggie is forced to re-unite with her long estranged father (Tommy Lee Jones) to rescue her. The killer and his brutal cult of desperados have kidnapped several other teenage girls, leaving a trail of death and horror across the desolate landscape of the American Southwest.
