The Dirty Dozen Dames

With this week seeing the release of female-driven action flicks Haywire and Underworld Awakening, it got us to thinking about the many tough women that have bloodied up the silver screen. So ignoring those who play second fiddle to the boys (sorry, Bond girls) here is our list of cinema's most kick-ass chicks.

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12. Lara Croft in Tomb Raider


Over the course of Tomb Raider and The Cradle of Life, Angelina Jolie's anatomically perfect game character Croft fights giant robots, shadow monsters, six-armed guards and the like as she endeavors to save the world from threats like the Mystic Triangle of Light and the deadly Pandora's Box. Shooting, kicking, punching and pouting her way through proceedings, Jolie has repeated this tough girl routine in the likes of Wanted, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Salt, but never managed to better it.

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11. Foxy Brown in Foxy Brown


This is one tough-talking chick you do not want to mess with. Made in 1974 at the height of the blaxploitation era, and starring queen of the genre, Foxy Brown is an ultra-violent revenge flick of the kind they just don't make any more. Pam Grier plays the title character who goes undercover as a prostitute to hunt down the drug syndicate that killed her boyfriend. Whether beating down lesbians in a bar-room brawl or castrating a hood who has crossed her, Foxy Brown was the deadliest woman of the decade - a seriously bad mo-fo with a fro.

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10. Trinity in The Matrix


Trinity's introduction in the first Matrix movie is one of the great celluloid entrances. Dressed head-to-toe in black and with little more than her fists to protect her, she takes on an entire police unit, disabling them 60-seconds flat before making her escape by acrobatically leaping from building-to-building before flying through a tiny window. It's jaw-dropping stuff, and over the course of the three movies Trinity doesn't disappoint, kicking the crap out of everything the Matrix throws at her, all in beautifully balletic bullet-time.

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9. Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo


Both Noomi Rapace in the Swedish original and Rooney Mara in David Fincher's retelling have won raves playing Goth hacker Lisbeth Salander. And what a role it is: The ultimate anti-hero, Lisbeth is tough, damaged, mysterious, vulnerable, intelligent and genuinely dangerous, no more so then when she takes swift and brutal revenge on the guardian who abused her.