30 of the Most Amazing Action Movies Ever Made

Many films that are often called “dumb” have brilliantly simple high concepts, and Crank is incomparable in this regard: after being injected with an incredibly potent poison, Los Angeles hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) will die (!) if he doesn’t. I don’t support his adrenaline. Wanting little more than to live long enough to take revenge on the mob boss who betrayed and tried to kill him, Chelios spends the rest of the film engaging in the most reckless behavior he can think of: picking fights, driving wildly, electrocuting himself. , very public sex – anything to get his blood pumping.

Where to stream: Peacock, USA.

Another great concept of all time. Keanu Reeves’ car is a bus (geddit?) that terrorists have rigged with a bomb that will explode once the bus’s speed drops below 50 mph. Only a complete suspension of disbelief would allow anyone to imagine that even Sandra Bullock could drive for two hours continuously through downtown Los Angeles without slowing down, but that chutzpah is part of the film’s charm.

Where to watch: Starz

Far more memorable for its conceit than any of its characters, “Hardcore” sees the titular Henry waking up on an operating table, without memory or the ability to speak, and with a plethora of cybernetic prosthetics. Did I mention that we see all of this from Henry’s first-person perspective, as if we were watching a YouTube playthrough of a particularly weird first-person shooter? Pretty soon things get crazy when mercenaries break in and try to kill Henry/us. It’s hard to build a movie around a character with no personality (who we never even really see), but it also means there’s nothing to distract us from one flashy action sequence after another.

Where to watch: Tubi

Almost any of the Fast and Furious films could have found a place here (it’s especially tempting to include F9, if only for its trip into space), but it was director Justin Lin’s Fast Five that found the streak the series has been on ever since. Expanding slightly on the street racing from the previous films, Fast Five is an action-oriented heist thriller where cars don’t just go fast, they jump off cliffs and drag bank vaults down busy city streets. By becoming a little dumber and a lot more self-aware, the series has secured its future.

Where to watch: digital rental.

Brilliantly evil terrorist Charles Rain (Bruce Payne) has the perfect plan to escape from custody: the flight carrying him from Miami to Los Angeles is filled with his former associates among the crew and passengers, so it will not be difficult to evade the FBI agents traveling with him. . . But the bad guys didn’t count on former police officer and counter-terrorism expert John Cutter being on the flight. Wesley Snipes and the wildly insane Bruce Payne entertain the opposition in the film that taught us to “always bet on the black.”

Where to watch: Starz

Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu are clearly having a lot of fun in the film, which combines slapstick comedy, musical numbers, passable early ’00s wire-fu and Crispin Glover as a silent villain. It’s endlessly stupid, but self-aware enough that it never seems completely stupid. Well, at least it’s never unintentionally stupid.

Where to watch: digital rental.

A fast-paced action movie almost certainly shouldn’t be as long as RRR , but there’s not a dull moment in this nearly three-hour Bollywood film. Likewise, a historical drama that deals with the national trauma of the British Raj and depicts two real-life revolutionaries who died as martyrs for the cause of independence shouldn’t be all that funny, but somehow the context only makes it more enjoyable. Find a more exciting moment in film than when a truck full of wild animals is forcibly unleashed into a tranquil meeting on the grounds of a British politician’s residence.

Where to watch: Netflix

Visceral violence may seem like silly fun, no matter how gory, but Man on Fire leans toward the more serious end of that spectrum without even trying to be the least bit more realistic. Seeking to rescue (and take revenge on) a young girl (tiny Dakota Fanning) kidnapped under his protection, John Creasey, Denzel Washington’s CIA agent turned bodyguard, pursues a group of criminals with guns, rocket-propelled grenades and, remarkably, a bomb planted in the guy’s ass. It’s far from the dumbest or loudest action movie Tony Scott has ever made, but it may be the best of the most violent.

Where to stream: Max

The far future world of Paris (circa 2010) looks bleak in this story of a poor suburb of the city that has been walled off, ostensibly to protect its inhabitants… but we all know how these things happen. works in cinema. It is controlled by rival gangs, and politicians are planning to create an “accident” that will level the place and all its inhabitants. What’s most interesting here is the film’s extensive use of parkour—amazing, frenetic athletic feats performed wirelessly and without the use of computer graphics.

(You could also call the movie District B13 or just B13 ).

Where to stream: Fubo, Kanopy.

There’s nothing “dumb” about the artistry of writer-director-star Jackie Chan’s early Hong Kong action films, and the action-comedy Police Story represents a career peak. His acrobatics and death-defying comedic stunts make him as much an heir to Buster Keaton and other silent film greats as they are to martial arts film masters such as Bruce Lee.

Where to watch: Max, The Criterion Channel

This woefully underrated climber sees Karl Urban’s stoic Judge Dredd make his way to Lena Headey’s criminal kingpin, who sits atop a 200-story high-rise in the middle of the ultra-violent future metropolis of Mega City One, part of the United States. devastated by nuclear war. With its dry, satirical tone and the purity of its commitment to violence, it is impressive, entertaining and far better than the Sly Stallone film.

Where to watch: Netflix

Michael Bay’s films make money, and quite consistently, but they can also be too loud, too dumb, with action sequences that are more mind-boggling than entertaining. Bad Boys is often to blame for all this, but it has something many of Bay’s other films lack: the brilliant chemistry between leads Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. It’s this chemistry that’s why we still watch Bad Boys movies (at least as of 2020), and while the last one is arguably the best of the trio, it’s hard to top the charm of the mid-’90s original.

Where to watch: Prime Video

Speaking of Michael Bay, it’s about the absurdly unlikely team of Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery as a chemical weapons expert and an Alcatraz escapee respectively, teaming up to stop former war terrorist Ed Harris hiding in an island prison and threatening to attack San Francisco using chemical weapons to expose sanctioned injustices committed against US military personnel, or something like that. Despite the attempt to convey a message, the emphasis is purely on big, fun action, with a lighter touch than many of Bay’s other films. The action was apparently so convincing that some scenes and characters were taken as real and presented to British intelligence as evidence of Iraq’s WMD program – it took MI6 espionage experts too long to realize that chemical weapons were not usually transported in bright colors. green glass balls . (If you’re getting mad here, I included “Rock” instead of “Air” , I understand.)

Where to watch: digital rental.

Robert Rodriguez knows exactly what he’s doing with Machete , a loud, violent and tasteless exploitation film that is intended to be just that. Reprising his role from the Spy Kids franchise, the great Danny Trejo plays Machete Cortez, a former Mexican federal and current mercenary carving a bloody path through Texas to take revenge on the corrupt and racist police who ruined his life. . It’s overly gory, with a lot of gratuitous nudity, and a lot of fun if that’s your thing.

Where to stream: Max

Some will argue that John Woo’s sci-fi action film is almost operatic in its artistic scope, while others will say that it may be the silliest film ever made. I say why not both? An FBI special agent (originally played by John Travolta) and a child killer criminal (originally Nicolas Cage) exchange faces for reasons that make sense until you think about them for more than a few seconds, and keep chasing each other for the rest of the film. It’s an idea that would be nearly impossible to take seriously even if it weren’t for the wildly insane sets (a prison where all the inmates wear magnetic boots? Good!) and deeply committed performances from the actors. the co-CEOs sell it all.

Where to stream: AMC+

Between the peaks of Dirty Dancing and Phantom, Patrick Swayze starred in this unforgettably sleazy tale of a Zen bouncer (who repeats mantras like “Pain doesn’t hurt”) who works at a roadside bar and gets into a lot of brutal fights, mainly because… that: but also because corrupt businessmen control the nearby town. Swayze brings some of that top-notch charisma to a cheesy fisticuffs movie, elevating it to something resembling pop art silliness.

Where to stream: Max

Highlander develops an intricate sci-fi mythology that only disguises the fact that it is a film about immortals (possibly aliens, as we later learn) whose only reason for existence is to cut off each other’s heads. Which makes a pretty good premise for a movie if you ask me. Star Christopher Lambert is an underrated ’80s action legend, and he’s joined by Sean Connery playing his Spanish mentor with an incredibly thick Scottish accent, so I have very few complaints.

Where to watch: Prime Video, Peacock, Crackle, Freevee, The Roku Channel.

The best stories are often the simplest. Here, a young Muay Thai fighter (Tony Jaa) travels to Bangkok to return part of a statue stolen from his village and beat up the thieves who stole it. Think John Wick, but with a plaster Buddha head as motivation rather than a dog. You have to fight almost all the time, but Jaa is so talented and charismatic that it works.

Where to watch: Hulu, Fubo

The film that started a decade of star-studded disaster films and is still (with the possible exception of The Poseidon Adventure ) the best of them all, Airport incredibly received numerous Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. All that prestige just dulls the fun, especially for old-time celebrity watchers: Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy and Helen Hayes are just some of the performers who take part in the story of a terrorist attempting to shoot down a passenger airliner during a snowstorm. threatening to put the only nearby airport out of action.

Where to watch: digital rental.

This is the one where Keanu Reeves fights a league of assassins on horseback through the streets of Brooklyn, so yeah. Almost ahead of Chapter 4 and likely subsequent films in the series.

Where to watch: Netflix

A surprisingly simple film, The Raid (also called The Raid: Redemption , which makes it feel like a sequel) remains a great reminder that a film doesn’t have to have a complex plot to be a work of art. Iko Uwais plays rookie cop Rama, who is forced into action when the arrest of a crime lord gets out of hand: the boss forces every criminal in his high-rise building to stand between him and the cops. Rama has to shoot, punch and kick to get to the roof of the building, where his prey awaits. Welsh director Gareth Evans also directed a very good sequel , The Raid 2 , which streamed on Freevee.

Where to watch: Netflix

John Carpenter’s homage to earlier exploitation films gets away with some of the more stereotypical elements by being a loving pastiche, and by including Chinese and Chinese-American actors (such as the great James Hong) in important roles, which was typical for earlier American films. I couldn’t take up martial arts and Asian mysticism. The combination of fantasy and action ensures there will never be a dull moment.

Where to watch: digital rental.

The films of Paul Verhoeven’s classic era (roughly between this and Starship Troopers ) don’t always quite hit their mark, but they each have something to say, using over-the-top action as a means of distracting the audience from whatever it is. that’s what he’s trying to say (the fact that audiences still don’t always perceive Starship Troopers , for example, as satire clearly shows how effective this strategy was). Here, a resurrected cop, played by Peter Weller, battles all the typical 1980s street thugs… only to discover that corporate greed is the real enemy. The violence here is almost non-stop, with highlights(?) being a very visceral shot to the bad guy’s groin, as well as an extended scene in which the bad guy is doused in toxic waste, mutating and melting until he explodes when hit by a car. .

Where to stream: Max

One of my favorite films of 2023 comes from Finland and features old prospector Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) bringing his recent gold find into town to cash in. The year is 1944, and along the way he is taunted by a traveling Waffen-SS platoon. through an almost conquered country. In John Wick style, they quickly discover they’ve got the wrong guy: our grizzled prospector is a veteran of the 1939 Winter War with the Soviet Union, where his exploits became legendary. The gold is too tempting for the Germans to give up easily, but Korpi kills them in increasingly brutal (and oddly satisfying) ways.

Where to watch: Starz

A modern exploitation film for anyone who loves violence and cheese, Mad Heidi takes the classic story and turns it into a very strange Swiss dystopia. Heidi (Alice Lucy) is literally rolling in the hay with Peter the Goat (Ken Macena) when he is taken in and executed by the authorities for the unauthorized sale of his superior goat cheese. The crackdown on him and other enemies of the state (including the lactose intolerant) is overseen by President Mieli (Casper van Dien), who controls the country’s cheese production resources with an iron fist. Enter: Heidi, seeking revenge. The whole thing is brilliantly stupid and over-the-top, a rare example of a cheesy (get it?) exploitation parody that actually works.

Where to watch: digital rental.

In Park Chan Wook’s classic drama, Choi Min Sik as Oh Dae Soo was locked in a room for fifteen years for no apparent reason. After his release, Dan-soo sets out on a quest for revenge, but finds himself caught up in a twisted web of conspiracy. Oldboy’s signature scene, which had a huge influence on many of the films that followed it, involves a hallway fight scene that has been celebrated many times but never improved upon.

Where to watch: Netflix

Bones break and blood flies during Nowhere Man’s superbly and uniquely choreographed fight scenes. Although the film takes itself seriously, there is a playfulness to its performances that sometimes puts us, the audience, at the center of the action… almost literally. Cha Tae Sik (Won Bin) is a quiet man who runs a pawn shop – or at least he seems so ( John Wick did not invent this trope). Tae Sik is a former secret agent, and when a criminal organization realizes this, they kidnap his young girlfriend and her mother to force the man to sell them drugs. He doesn’t take it calmly.

Where to watch: Netflix, Peacock, Mubi

This slot could have accommodated any of several 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger joints, including the overall excellent Predator , but for pure frantic violence it would have to be Commando. What the film lacks in subtlety or plot, it more than makes up for in purity of purpose: it’s Anold as John Matrix, given a gun and let loose on some nebulous bad guys in a fictional South American country. This film apparently boasts the highestdeath toll among actors in a single film , and that is commendable.

Where to stream: AMC+

At one point , Rambo III held the Guinness Book of World Records title as the most violent film ever made… but the 2008 sequel far surpasses it. Rocky and Rambo were two beloved franchises starring Sylvester Stallone that had similar trajectories, each starting on a relatively sensitive and thoughtful note before throwing subtlety out the window entirely. Rocky retreated a bit over the years, but Rambo was never bothered by that . In 2019’s Rambo: Last Blood, Rambo killed an impressive(?) 46 people, but couldn’t compete with the 254 on-screen kills in the 2008 sequel.

Where to stream: Peacock

Not to be confused with Juliette Binoche’s charming vehicle, Chocolat . Chocolate is a Thai martial arts film made by many of the same directors who brought us the more famous Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior . Here, actress and martial artist Janine Vismitananda (credited as Janine Mitananda) plays Zen, the autistic daughter of a Thai woman and her former Japanese gangster father. The plot here… isn’t all that great… but the fight scenes and choreography as Zen fights for his mother’s debts are relentless and top-notch. If we ignore the hilariously insipid description of the “special need to kick ass” in the trailer (easier said than done), the protagonist’s ASD is handled quite well… and it’s really nice to see some new representation in ass-kicking. genre.

Where to watch: Prime Video, Tubi, Freevee