In Aliens, Ellen Ripley was slowly converted from a Final Girl into an early example of the Action Girl. Her performance earned her an oscar nomination and the number 8 spot on the AFI's Greatest Heroes list. Not to mention she frequently appears on lists of the best female Heroes. We also see Vasquez, a butch action girl.
In the first two Terminator films, Sarah Connor grows from Distressed Damsel to one of the most badass heroines of all time, perhaps the only other that can truly stand beside Ellen Ripley.
Mace in Strange Days. It pretty much takes an entire police SWAT team to kick her ass. Justified Trope in that she's a professional bodyguard, whom you'd reasonably expect to be able to kick someone's ass if necessary.
Most recently, in Avatar we have Trudy Chacón who goes out all guns blazing, the Na'vi princess Neytiri and—while not quite an Action Girl in this film—Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Grace Augustine, who's still no Distressed Damsel.
DOAThe Movie! Christie, Helena, Ayane, Katsumi, and of course Tina.
Action Girls were not common in early movies, as the true form usually requires convincing hand-to-hand combat skills. However, a female character in a Western or Pirate movie could get away with the role. Maureen O'Hara is probably the most famous. She had a powerful screen personality, great acting skills, and an ungodly beauty that could carry any part. She also always looked to be having enormous fun whenever she got in a swordfight, most particularly in Against All Flags (as a Pirate Girl) and At Sword's Point (as the daughter of one of The Three Musketeers!).
Many Kung Fu movies. In particular, characters played by Cheng Pei Pei (60s and 70s), Brigitte Lin, Michelle Yeoh (both 80s and 90s; coincidentally, she played the aforementioned Wai Lin), and now Zhang Ziyi.
Yeoh, Zhang and Cheng came together as Shu-lien, Jen, and Jade Fox of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The sequence in the bar is FANTASTIC, as well as the fight between Shu and the rebel Jen.
In the 1980s, the so-called "girls with guns" subgenre took off in Hong Kong action cinema. Despite its name, the "guns" in question were usually quickly discarded in favor of bareknuckle brawling, thus making more straightforward Action Girl stars out of Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Khan, YukariOshima and Cynthia Rothrock. The latter two were actual martial artists (and Oshima was also a stuntwoman), making this borderline Truth in Television.
In Last Action Hero, Slater's daughter is one of these, and at first it's played for laughs by subverting the Distressed Damsel—she's screaming mock-hysterically as she kills the mook sent to take care of her. But it's also deconstructed a bit when Slater mentions that she spent her prom night alone in her room, field-stripping an AK-47.
Interesting little semi-subversion in Red Eye. Rachel McAdams' character is manipulated, abused, and (metaphorically) raped by Cillian Murphy's Magnificent Bastard, and eventually she decides to man up (for want of a better term) and brutalize him with a pen, a shoe, and a field hockey stick. She does pretty well (or at least, well enough not to be a Faux Action Girl), but she still needs the help of Daddy Brian Cox, who also mans up just in time.
So-Ha from The Shadowless Sword.
Princess Leia Organa from Star Wars often switches in and out of the Action Girl role. She must have got it from her mother, Padme Amidala, who is, incidentally, the best shot with a blaster in the entire series.
Ukrainian model/actress Milla Jovovich frequently plays Action Girls. She has the attractiveness to get by in Hollywood, and the lean, rangy body of a female athlete.
Joan of Arc, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.
Selena in 28 Days Later has this kind of scheme going on. Since 28 Days Later is on the cynical end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, she may be badass and violent, but she's still just a rather athletic chemist with a machete. It's therefore understandable when she gets a bit Chickified toward the end when surrounded by a bunch of soldiers.
Francesca Bruni in the 2005 Casanova movie. Your brother is a poor swordsman who's got himself into a duel? No problem, just take his place and kick ass!
Selene in Underworld, played by Kate Beckinsale. However, this is debatable on whether she's an Action Girl or a Dark Action Girl.
Red Dawn. Teenaged girls Toni and Erica, who subvert the usual trope by being too rugged up in the Colorado winter to be much fanservice. After the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits kill their first Dirty Communists, they state flat out that the guys can do their own washing up. We later see them blasting away in ambushes and using their feminine wiles to get bombs into places where the Russians really don't want them going off.
Maya from Eight Below. Only female dog and the leader of the pack.
Johnny Mnemonic has Jane, a female cyborg bodyguard. She's not as Badass as Molly Millions in the original story, but this was probably due to the limits of cinema at the time.
Leigh (Laurie Zimmer) in John Carpenter's original Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). She starts out as just a secretary in a police station but becomes an action girl when the nearly-abandoned station is under siege by a street gang during the night and fights them off along with the lone policeman and two convicts. She keeps her cool especially in comparison to the other secretary who panics.
Laurie Strode became one of these in Halloween: H20. Not only did she spend most of the movie protecting the other characters from Michael Myers, she also ends up turning the tables on Myers and hunting him down with an axe.
Mothra has been the Kaiju version of an action girl since her first appearance, and is arguably one of the most successful ones ever, starring in her own film series, and appearing frequently in the Godzilla franchise. In the case of the latter, she's one of the few monsters to ever defeat Godzilla (and did it with no fancy powers), is willing to stand up to KingGhidorah in her larva form, and usually takes on the role of The Smart Guy and Only Sane Man during team-ups.
Akane Yashiro from Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, the Ace Pilot of the Millenium Era Mechagodzilla, and one of the few humans with the guts to take on the King of the Monsters one-on-one.
Babydoll, Sweet Pea, Rocket, Blondie, and Amber from Sucker Punch.
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