John Sturges, the director of action films like "The Magnificent Seven," "The Great Escape," "Gunfight at the O K Corral" and "Ice Station Zebra," died on Tuesday at French Hospital, near his home in San Luis Obispo, Calif. He was 82 years old.

He died of emphysema, said Roberta Soules, his sister-in-law.

Mr. Sturges's movies were often mean and muscular and celebrated situations involving tough men in desperate situations. He gave starring roles to Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn in "The Magnificent Seven" in 1960 and "The Great Escape"in 1963. Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine earned wide recognition in "Bad Day at Black Rock," for which Mr. Sturges was nominated for an Academy Award for direction in 1955.

In an article in The New York Times in 1975, the novelist Wallace Markfield wrote that Mr. Sturges loved "exploiting the plain, pure physicality of hard, marred men doing difficult jobs."

Mr. Sturges directed more than 40 documentary films when he was in the Army Air Corps in World War II. He enjoyed making movies about the war and once said they were about "why our side won."

One of his war films, the last movie he directed, was "The Eagle Has Landed" in 1977, starring Michael Caine and Donald Sutherland. Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that it was "a good old-fashioned adventure movie that is so stuffed with robust incidents and characters that you can relax and enjoy it without worrying whether it actually happened or even whether it's plausible." The movie, set in 1943, concerns the efforts of German commandos to kidnap Winston Churchill and carry him back to Berlin.

The director's other credits include "The Old Man and the Sea" in 1958, with Spencer Tracy, and the feature-length 1945 documentary "Thunderbolt."

Mr. Sturges was born in Oak Park, Ill., and attended Marin Junior College near San Rafael, Calif. He joined RKO-Radio Pictures in 1932 in the blueprint and editing departments. After the war, he returned to Hollywood and made his debut as a director in 1946. His first two pictures were "Shadowed" and "The Man Who Dared."

He is survived by his wife, Katherine, of San Luis Obispo; a daughter, Deborah Wyle, and a son, Michael, both of Los Angeles, and two grandchildren.