Action Cliches

Often in actions films, they feature a group of 'world-weary assassins or Green Berets or Navy Seals or mercenaries' who will pull together to do one last suicidal mission.
It is common that at least two men will not want to go on the assignment; at the end of the film one of the men will end up saving the men that originially went out on the mission, to which this man will die.
During the film, the leader will tell his men 'This is my fight. You guys have no skin in this game. You're free to go.' but the men will never leave and abandon their mission.

Several large men possess a preposterouos level of upper body musculature, and these are the men that will often be betrayed by someone who does not possess upper body musculature, but who employs lots of people that do. These men are often a lot smaller as well, so the muscular men get betrayed by weedy men.
There is a group often referred to as 'the firm' and muscular men will often be stabbed in the back by bitter rivals, mostly weasel-like politicians or somebody who is an ex member of staff from the CIA.
For example, in the film '300' the Spartans are betrayed by a hunchback drawf.

Contemporary action films often have a villian who are heavily accented Russians, Serbs or unidentified, all-purpose easten Europeans sociopaths, cigar-smoking thugs from south of the bored or untrustworthy Arabs, or villainous bureaucrats from Washington or London.
Women are tend to be shown as promiscuous femmes fatales or crusading journalists or medical support staff or happles rebels or victims or miscats.

Good action films feature some form of emergency surgey; a fall from a great height, a reasonable amount of toture and a lot of rappelling. An action film without rappelling, is like a horror film without disembowelment. In action films, men often rappell down high-rises, mountains and into holds of ships.
'The prinipals should have a lot of scars, and each scar should come with a story.'  A good example is a psyco with an eye-patch and a machete. The hero should have lost his soul and is struggling to regain even the smallest amount of dignity that will help remind him of a time he did not want to wake up and puke his guts out.

No one drives a car in action films, ever. Off-road vehicles only. This also means no mules, no ponies, no biofuel vehicles. At some point, a woman [especially the lead woman] will get punched in the face, an arrow or bullet will fire through the villians skull, and a blade or piston will trip through a mans chest from behind. 

Within the martial arts genre, the hereo should run up the wall to attack somebody violently, and ninjas should fly through the air [on invisible wire of course] to which one ninja should turn out the be a woman. Ninjas often do aerial battle in the bamboo forest.
Ninjas often descend from the ceiling which is common in this genre, however the villians never expect this, and the hero often picks them off one by one.