The subject of my research is how certain white masculinities are experienced in the action films of the late 1990’s to the present. It is my contention that the period saw the action film as a battleground where white masculinity came to terms with its own cinematic image. The experiencing of masculinity was not played out across national spaces and exaggerated bodies as it had been before, but through a complex relationship between such white masculinity and the cinematic simulacrum of its own image. In addition, I explore how these masculinities were experienced in the wake of the September 11th attacks and the War on Terror which followed. The films selected for this thesis not only speak to the continual deconstruction of gender identities by postmodernism, but illustrate a dialogue between the masculine imagination and the experiencing of masculinity itself.