12 Fathers Day Movies About Dads Saving Daughters
Happy Father's Day! In honor of dads, here are 12 movies about dads rescuing daughters in distress.
Dads saving daughters is maybe the most enduring trope in action movies, and it's easy to see why: There's no more primal motivation than protecting your children.
But these movies are also fascinating for the way they get into generational differences, societal criticism, and middle-aged men's anxieties about a changing world that may seem to be leaving them behind. They're all wish-fulfillment fantasies, on some level.
Here are 12 action movies about dads saving daughters.
There's a lot going on in Lone Wolf McQuade, in which Chuck Norris plays an ex-military Texas Ranger who now lives in isolation with a wolf. But he soon runs up against a criminal gang led by the evil Wilkes (David Carradine).
There's lots of conflict beforehand, but things really pick up when Wilkes kidnaps McQuade's daughter Sally (Dana Kimmell) and takes her to Mexico. This leads to a martial arts fight between McQuaid and Wilkes that was kind of a huge deal in 1983 — Chuck Norris versus the star of Kung Fu???
Wilkes almost wins, while wearing a very preppie sweater, no less. But then he very stupidly strikes Sally, inadvertently unleashing McQuade's dads-saving-daughters powers.
Kind of an amped-up, more streamlined, much funnier Lone Wolf McQuade, Commando was another of the first films to realize that a simple retired military dad with a tough abducted daughter make for a perfect setup for a manly-man action movie.
Arnold Schwarzenegger rattles off a series of deadly one-liners as John Matrix, the best-named movie hero ever. Young Alyssa Milano is terrific as Jenny Matrix, and Rae Dawn Chong is also great as one of the all-time great can-do-anything action movie sidekicks.
At just 90 minutes, Commando is one of the best-plotted, fastest-moving films in the daughters in distress genre.
So why not do it again?
Schwarzenegger teamed up with Jamie Lee Curtis for this James Cameron epic that is mostly about the deception-filled marriage of Harry and Helen Trasker (Schwarzenegger and Curtis), but culminates, of course, in the abduction of their daughter, Dana (Eliza Dushku.)
It has one of the most spectacular final face-offs in the history of dads-saving-daughters movies, involving Dana, a skyscraper, a jet and a helicopter.
Speaking of planes: Air Force One stars Harrison Ford as regular-guy president James Marshall, president whose plane is hijacked by terrorists, led by Ivan Korshunov (Gary Oldman).
That's bad enough, but then Ivan holds a gun to the First Daughter's head, triggering those dad saving daughters powers we told you about earlier, and fights back, uttering the most famous line in the film, "Get of my plane."
We wish the special effects were a little better at the end of the plane, but we're mostly just on board for President Ford.
The fourth Die Hard film raises the stakes from the previous three by having the estranged daughter of John McClane (Bruce Willis) get abducted by cyberterrorists.
She's Lucy Gennero-McClane (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and if you've seen a Die Hard movie you know that a woman not embracing McClane's surname as her own is shorthand for him feeling inadequate as a man. But things work out OK.
The next Die Hard movie paired up John McClane with his son, but that's another gallery for another day. To die hard.
The gold standard of dads saving daughters movies, Taken stars Liam Neeson as Brian Mills, a dad who has to rely on his "very particular set of skills" to save his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) from being auctioned off by absolutely horrible people to other absolutely horrible people.
Taken, more than any other film on this list, plays out like a very effective divorced dad fantasy: When his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) marries someone who is ostensibly a better provider, Brian proves his worth by doing what the new husband can't.
Mills is always civil to Lenore's new husband Stuart (Xander Berkeley), but by Taken 2, the marriage is collapsing — and we can only assume the new husband turned into a jerk because he couldn't handle the assault on his manhood of being totally shown up by his wife's ex.
The best thing about Taken is how well it establishes the emotional dynamic between the family before plunging into some thrilling action sequences, played out over a tight 90 minutes. Bryan is the best of all dads saving daughters, so good he inspired two sequels.
Taken 2 ups the ante: This time mom and dad get taken, and Kim has to help them, using some incredibly cool techniques involving triangulation and grenades. But, this being a dads saving daughters movie, Kim eventually needs rescuing, courtesy of her pop.
Still, this might be our favorite Taken movie because of the cool twists on the dads saving daughters genre and the inventiveness of the script and action scenes.
There's not as much taking in this Taken, but it nonetheless fulfills some angry divorced dad fantasies: mom's new husband Stuart (played in this one by Dougray Scott, replacing Xander Berkeley) turns out to be an absolutely horrible person, and only Brian Mills can stop him.
This one breaks new ground in the dads saving daughters genre, because Brian has to save not only Kim but her unborn baby.
One thing we love about this film is that it spawned the one-liner, Taken 3 makes Taken 2 look like Taken.
When his daughter (Ilah Davis) disappears into the adult film industry, Ohio prude Jake VanDorn (George C. Scott) must infiltrate the unseemly business and even impersonate a sleaze himself in order to find out what extremely upsetting stuff his daughter has gotten into. He works alongside industry insider Niki (Season Hubley, great) and becomes something of a father figure to her, too.
Written and directed by the great Paul Schrader, the film is a fascinating look at how the industry worked around the time of its release, even though Jake's transformation isn't totally convincing.
He also gets in a fight with a much younger, more street-savvy young man at the end, and that doesn't totally make sense, but this is still an oft-imitated touchstone in the dads saving daughters in distress genre.
It also benefitted from one of the most ruthless ad campaigns in movie history: An ad that just shared Jake's exclamation upon seeing his daughter on-screen: "Oh my God, that's my daughter."
Another classic dads saving daughters in distress setup: Macho L.A. helicopter pilot Ray Gaines (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) is estranged from his wife Emma (Carla Gugino) because he's too cool, or something.
But then an earthquake traps their daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) with mom's new boyfriend, Daniel.
Because this is a dads saving daughters movie, mom's new boyfriend is of course not up to the task of protecting Blake, because that's dad's job. Would you believe that by the end of the movie, Ray and Emma are reconsidering their future?
You might expect Stillwater to be a lot like Taken: Matt Damon, Jason Bourne himself, lets loose in France trying to save his wrongfully convicted daughter? Sign us up.
But it turns out to be something more complex, and interesting than the typical dads saving daughters routine. Damon's Oklahoma roughneck Bill Baker starts out deeply suspicious of the French, and assumes his daughter (Abigail Breslin) has been railroaded into a cell. But he has to solve the problem with his brains and empathy, not brawn.
Some dad-on-the-warpath movies are really just excuses for a middle-aged "regular guy" to fight a world that's gotten too permissive for his tastes. But Stillwater isn't.
This is another of those (sighs, rolls eyes) thoughtful movies that asks dads to consider the ethical and moral ramifications (barf) of rushing to judgment instead of just beating people up.
Hugh Jackman plays Keller Dover, a man who goes on the warpath when his daughter is kidnapped. (Terrence Howard plays another dad who goes down the path reluctantly.) When their daughters are kidnapped, they kidnap a suspect — played by Paul Dano — and go medieval on him.
As you've probably intuited, Prisoners is filled with twists.
Mel Gibson plays John Link, an ex-con and recovering alcoholic who is now a tattoo artist. When his estranged daughter Lydia (future The Boys star Erin Moriarty) gets in trouble with her ex-boyfriend's criminal gang, John learns that she's become addicted to drugs and tries to help her recover.
Lydia ends up abducted, and her dad is able to save the missing link — which is also the name of his business: Missing Link tattoo. But father and daughter are also able to recover the missing link in their relationship. It works on so many levels.
Something we like about this movie is the dad using his wisdom to help his daughter in her recovery from addiction. Sometimes loving and supportive dads are even more helpful than dads saving daughters by beating people up.
We're betting you might also like this list of the 15 Most Beautiful Movie Cars.
Main image: Commando. Warner Bros. 20th Century Fox.
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