Names like these promised the visceral, bicep-heavy, high-octane thrills we’ve come to expect from the genre: the breathless stunts, explosions, kinetic combat and wanton destruction. But exactly when we came to call these simply ‘action movies’ is more difficult to trace. Certainly, moving pictures craved action from the beginning. It’s there in the cue “Lights, camera… action” and seems to have been carved into the new medium’s constitution – its way of defining itself as different from books or theatre…