Race Against Time
by Kirk-Picard | created - 08 Jan 2017 | updated - 21 Feb 2017 | PublicIn many cases, the protagonist(s) of a movie is facing a time-limit failing which he/she has to face dire consequences.
Which film featuring the protagonist(s) in a race against time is your favorite?
Discuss here
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1. Back to the Future (1985)
PG | 116 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent thirty years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the eccentric scientist Doc Brown.
Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover
Votes: 1,016,113 | Gross: $210.61M
2. Speed (1994)
PG | 116 min | Action, Adventure, Thriller
A young police officer must prevent a bomb exploding aboard a city bus by keeping its speed above 50 mph.
Director: Jan de Bont | Stars: Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, Sandra Bullock, Joe Morton
Votes: 320,214 | Gross: $121.25M
3. Apollo 13 (I) (1995)
PG | 140 min | Adventure, Drama, History
NASA must devise a strategy to return Apollo 13 to Earth safely after the spacecraft undergoes massive internal damage putting the lives of the three astronauts on board in jeopardy.
Director: Ron Howard | Stars: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise
Votes: 260,644 | Gross: $173.84M
4. Lola rennt (1998)
PG | 81 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
After a botched money delivery, Lola has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks.
Director: Tom Tykwer | Stars: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Nina Petri
Votes: 185,182 | Gross: $7.27M
5. WarGames (1983)
PG | 114 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
A young man finds a back door into a military central computer in which reality is confused with game-playing, possibly starting World War III.
Director: John Badham | Stars: Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, John Wood, Dabney Coleman
Votes: 87,899 | Gross: $79.57M
6. The Martian (2015)
PG | 144 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi
An astronaut becomes stranded on Mars after his team assume him dead, and must rely on his ingenuity to find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara
Votes: 735,300 | Gross: $228.43M
7. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
14A | 137 min | Action, Sci-Fi
A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her teenage son, John Connor, from a more advanced and powerful cyborg.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick
Votes: 968,915 | Gross: $204.84M
8. Inception (2010)
PG | 148 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A thief who steals corporate secrets through the use of dream-sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a C.E.O.
Director: Christopher Nolan | Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe
Votes: 1,982,943 | Gross: $292.58M
9. 25th Hour (2002)
14A | 135 min | Drama
Cornered by the DEA, convicted New York drug dealer Montgomery Brogan reevaluates his life in the 24 remaining hours before facing a seven-year jail term.
Director: Spike Lee | Stars: Edward Norton, Barry Pepper, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rosario Dawson
Votes: 167,267 | Gross: $13.06M
10. The Ring (2002)
14A | 115 min | Horror, Mystery
A journalist must investigate a mysterious videotape which seems to cause the death of anyone one week to the day after they view it.
Director: Gore Verbinski | Stars: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, Brian Cox, David Dorfman
Votes: 313,379 | Gross: $129.13M
11. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
PG | 126 min | Drama, Thriller
A former prisoner of war is brainwashed as an unwitting assassin for an international Communist conspiracy.
Director: John Frankenheimer | Stars: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury
Votes: 69,883
12. Taken (I) (2008)
14A | 90 min | Action, Thriller
A retired CIA agent travels across Europe and relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who has been kidnapped while on a trip to Paris.
Director: Pierre Morel | Stars: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Leland Orser
Votes: 555,971 | Gross: $145.00M
13. Labyrinth (1986)
PG | 101 min | Adventure, Family, Fantasy
Sixteen-year-old Sarah is given thirteen hours to solve a labyrinth and rescue her baby brother Toby when her wish for him to be taken away is granted by the Goblin King Jareth.
Director: Jim Henson | Stars: David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, Toby Froud, Shelley Thompson
Votes: 120,417 | Gross: $12.73M
14. Crank (2006)
18A | 88 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
Professional assassin Chev Chelios learns his rival has injected him with a poison that will kill him if his heart rate drops.
Directors: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor | Stars: Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Carlos Sanz, Jose Pablo Cantillo
Votes: 230,111 | Gross: $27.83M
15. Thirteen Days (2000)
PG | 145 min | Drama, History, Thriller
In October 1962, the Kennedy administration struggles to contain the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Director: Roger Donaldson | Stars: Kevin Costner, Bruce Greenwood, Shawn Driscoll, Drake Cook
Votes: 52,828 | Gross: $34.59M
16. The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
PG | 124 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Jack Hall, paleoclimatologist, must make a daring trek from Washington, D.C. to New York City to reach his son, trapped in the cross-hairs of a sudden international storm which plunges the planet into a new Ice Age.
Director: Roland Emmerich | Stars: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum, Dash Mihok
Votes: 406,469 | Gross: $186.74M
17. Buried (2010)
14A | 95 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Paul is a U.S. truck driver working in Iraq. After an attack by a group of Iraqis he wakes to find he is buried alive inside a coffin. With only a lighter and a cell phone it's a race against time to escape this claustrophobic death trap.
Director: Rodrigo Cortés | Stars: Ryan Reynolds, José Luis García Pérez, Robert Paterson, Stephen Tobolowsky
Votes: 146,303 | Gross: $1.03M
18. Commando (1985)
R | 90 min | Action, Adventure, Thriller
A retired Special Forces colonel tries to save his daughter, who was abducted by his former subordinate.
Director: Mark L. Lester | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong, Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells
Votes: 142,374 | Gross: $35.10M
19. Escape from New York (1981)
14A | 99 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
In 1997, when the U.S. president crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in to rescue him.
Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence
Votes: 121,404 | Gross: $25.24M
20. The Running Man (1987)
18A | 101 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
In a dystopian America, a falsely convicted policeman gets his shot at freedom when he must forcibly participate in a TV game show where convicts, runners, must battle killers for their freedom.
Director: Paul Michael Glaser | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, Jim Brown
Votes: 137,821 | Gross: $38.12M
21. Source Code (2011)
PG | 93 min | Action, Drama, Mystery
A soldier wakes up in someone else's body and discovers he's part of an experimental government program to find the bomber of a commuter train within 8 minutes.
Director: Duncan Jones | Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright
Votes: 474,385 | Gross: $54.71M
22. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
PG | 103 min | Comedy
A high school wise guy is determined to have a day off from school, despite what the Principal thinks of that.
Director: John Hughes | Stars: Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, Mia Sara, Jeffrey Jones
Votes: 311,095 | Gross: $70.14M
23. Moon (2009)
14A | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped diminish our planet's power problems.
Director: Duncan Jones | Stars: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, Rosie Shaw
Votes: 327,760 | Gross: $5.01M
24. Midnight Run (1988)
14+ | 126 min | Action, Comedy, Crime
An accountant is chased by bounty hunters, the F.B.I., and the Mafia after jumping bail.
Director: Martin Brest | Stars: Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin, Yaphet Kotto, John Ashton
Votes: 72,446 | Gross: $38.41M
25. The Killing Room (2009)
R | 93 min | Mystery, Thriller
Four individuals sign up for a psychological research study only to discover that they are now subjects of a brutal, classified government program.
Director: Jonathan Liebesman | Stars: Nick Cannon, Clea DuVall, Timothy Hutton, Chloë Sevigny
Votes: 13,475
26. La habitación de Fermat (2007)
PG | 89 min | Mystery, Thriller
4 mathematicians are invited to solve an enigma. Once there, they're locked in a mechanically shrinking room and given 1 minute to solve each puzzle via cellphone while also figuring out why they're there.
Directors: Luis Piedrahita, Rodrigo Sopeña | Stars: Alejo Sauras, Elena Ballesteros, Lluís Homar, Santi Millán
Votes: 19,055
27. Exam (2009)
101 min | Mystery, Thriller
Eight candidates for a highly desirable corporate job are locked together in an exam room and given a final test with just one seemingly simple question. However, it doesn't take long for confusion to ensue and tensions to unravel.
Director: Stuart Hazeldine | Stars: Adar Beck, Gemma Chan, Nathalie Cox, John Lloyd Fillingham
Votes: 102,187
28. The Cell (2000)
18A | 107 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
An F.B.I. Agent persuades a social worker, who is adept with a new experimental technology, to enter the mind of a comatose serial killer in order to learn where he has hidden his latest kidnap victim.
Director: Tarsem Singh | Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, Vincent D'Onofrio, Colton James
Votes: 93,420 | Gross: $61.33M
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