For decades, politically minded action movies often involve the President of the United States (fictional ones, usually). While most POTUSes need to be rescued from evil terrorists or rivals, there are times when the Big Cheese takes matters into their own hands. You don’t get to win the Electoral College without making a few enemies, after all.

In Section 3 of the United States Constitution, which details a few critical duties of the President of the United States (POTUS), one passage reads: “He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union.” What it doesn’t say is that, also from time to time, the president shall roll up their sleeves and open a can of whoop-ass. And we’ve seen people assume the role of president in movies and have to save the country by any means necessary.

As Donald Trump returns to office as the 47th President, it’s a good time to look at some cinematic chief executives to remember what responsibility, initiative, and cunning look like. From disaster epics to alien invasions, here are 13 of the most badass presidents in action movies.

13. President Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron) in Long Shot (2019)

Making the low end of this list is President Charlotte Field, played by the alluring Charlize Theron in the 2019 rom-com Long Shot. The low placement is purely a technicality: She doesn’t actually become president until the end of the movie. But, president-elect Field deserves greater recognition, as only Theron could pull off a tense hostage negotiation while utterly zonked out on ecstasy. Remember: Never negotiate with terrorists, only with homies.

12. The President (Eddie Albert) in Dreamscape (1984)

Before Inception, there was Dreamscape. Dennis Quaid leads this overlooked sci-fi movie from 1984 as a psychic and con artist who joins a study that allows him to enter people’s dreams. Halfway through the movie, Eddie Albert appears as a POTUS haunted by recurring nightmares—an Achilles’ heel the villains exploit to attempt his assassination. Oscar nominee Albert is more or less sleepwalking through his part, though in the climax, he stands up to a gnarly stop-motion snake monster until a knocked-out Quaid gets back on his feet.

11. President John Harker (Donald Pleasence) in Escape From New York (1981)

Snake Plissken is tasked with saving President John Harker in John Carpenter’s dystopic sci-fi (and all-time great) movie Escape from New York. But the slimy Harker gets a moment to shine as he saves Snake’s ass by shooting up The Duke (Isaac Hayes) and taunting him in the process. Plissken is no fan of Harker, and by the end of the movie, it’s unlikely audiences would vote for him either. However, getting the final kill without upstaging Kurt Russell is kind of cool.

10. President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover) in 2012 (2009)

Danny Glover’s President Wilson isn’t a badass because he rushes before the enemy, guns blazing and dodging bullets. In Roland Emmerich’s disaster flick 2012, which toys with the hoopla around the Mayan calendar, President Wilson is a badass because of how he commands a dignified aura as he soothes a hysterical nation bombarded by Mother Nature’s wrath. Not one to hide in a comfy bunker, Wilson provides additional comfort to everyone around him in the immediate vicinity of the White House—or at least, he tries to. You can imagine how hard it is to get things done when cataclysmic earthquakes tear up the North Lawn.

9. The President (Jonathan Pryce) in G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)

Jonathan Pryce returns as the unnamed Commander-in-Chief from 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra for the Jon M. Chu-directed sequel Retaliation (2013). Though Pryce has much more to do in Retaliation—with not one but two standout scenes, telling off world leaders at a G8 Summit in one and disavowing the G.I. Joes in another—he’s actually not the president at all. He’s Zartan in disguise, continuing a plot thread left at the end of Rise of Cobra. But as far as the world of G.I. Joe is concerned, their president has suddenly turned into a stone-cold badass.

8. President William Alan Moore (Samuel L. Jackson) in Big Game (2014)

On paper, having Sam Jackson playing the role should instantly make his president, William Alan Moore, the most badass movie president of all time. But Jalmari Helander’s cartoonish buddy adventure Big Game—in which Air Force One is shot down over the wilds of Finland—has Jackson step aside to let Onni Tommila, a 13-year-old deer hunter, soak up most of the movie’s crowning moments. But President Moore isn’t made of glass, and he survives a steep fall into a ravine inside an ice cooler and wins a knife fight with a terrorist. He may not be a bad motherfucker, but he’s no lame duck either.

7. President Tom Beck (Morgan Freeman) in Deep Impact (1998)

On one hand, President Tom Beck of Deep Impact fulfills his job description to a T: he leads America with solemnity and grace. But it’s an entirely different matter to lead the nation through an extinction-level catastrophe. While Morgan Freeman is a distinguished president, his first meeting with an ambitious MSNBC journalist (Téa Leoni)—who suspects the big secret around “Ellie” is some garden-variety extramarital affair—paints Beck more like a mafia boss than a democratically elected leader of the free world. If you think Freeman can only play stately gentlemen and wise elders, his introduction in Deep Impact will make you see him in a new light.

6. President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) in Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

The …Has Fallen movies are all about Gerard Butler’s Secret Service agent Mike Banning breathlessly racing to protect the President of the United States or going on the run after being framed for trying to assassinate the president. In the first two films, Butler puts himself in front of many, many bullets for President Benjamin Asher, played by Aaron Eckhart—a vanilla but not flavorless action-movie POTUS. Asher isn’t afraid of picking up a gun or headbutting a dude. But, like all good presidents, he delegates those duties to a capable agent.

5. President James Dale (Jack Nicholson) in Mars Attacks! (1996)

“I want the people to know they still have two out of three branches of the government working for them. And that ain’t bad.” Jack Nicholson weaponizes his smarmy charm as President James Dale in Tim Burton’s ludicrous Mars Attacks! Though the Martians are ostensibly the villains, Burton’s film revels in the rotten core of humankind—a doomed species even without help from alien invaders. Look beyond Dale’s impassioned speech about brotherhood across boundaries to spot hints of self-serving motives; even the Martians know better than to trust a politician. Still, credit to President Dale for getting them to listen in the first place.

4. President Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

You’ve got to give it up to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. That title is upfront and unambiguous: it’s about Abraham Lincoln, who hunts vampires. (And frankly, he does it pretty well.) Both Seth Grahame-Smith’s original novel and Timur Bekmambetov’s film version are tongue-in-cheek farces that maintain a straight-faced facade, but star Benjamin Walker puts in an honest effort to give Honest Abe some action-hero swagger. Abe isn’t as cool as Blade or Buffy, but he’s got more chops as a vampire hunter than Hansel and Gretel do as witch hunters.

3. President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) in White House Down (2013)

Jamie Foxx’s President Sawyer, from Roland Emmerich’s witty action-thriller White House Down, is an unsubtle Barack Obama analog, down to a minor—but circa 2013, timely—subplot involving the withdrawal of troops in the Middle East. But Obama never wore Jordans, not during his time in office, anyway. Nor did the 44th president aim a rocket launcher at the front gate of the White House. That’s all Sawyer, an eloquent statesman who takes questions from an 11-year-old YouTuber like she’s Anderson Cooper. While a sweaty Channing Tatum takes charge in most of the action in White House Down, Foxx isn’t afraid to get his presidential hands dirty.

2. Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman) in Independence Day (1996)

President Thomas J. Whitmore, played by Bill Pullman in Roland Emmerich’s smash hit Independence Day, taught us all how to celebrate. Whitmore is such a badass that getting into the cockpit of a McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet to fight aliens isn’t even the most memorable thing he does in the movie. After noticing that the eerily young pilots about to fight an invasive species are “a little nervous,” Whitmore grabs a loudspeaker to bid his brave soldiers a good morning—and then some. “Mankind—that word should have new meaning for all of us today,” he says. Go ahead. Finish it. You know the rest.

1. President John Marshall (Harrison Ford) in Air Force One (1997)

A thousand action movies revolve around protecting the President of the United States. So it’s a hell of a thing how Wolfgang Petersen’s Air Force One follows a hero’s journey in which the POTUS who has to save himself. Who else but Harrison Ford could play the ready-to-rumble Head of State? After Air Force One is sabotaged by neo-Soviet terrorists, President Ford—sorry, President Marshall—gets down and dirty at over 35,000 feet, knocking out goons and shooting up others before ordering Gary Oldman to “get off my plane.” Hail to the Chief, baby.