Everyone likes a good action movie, but everyone loves a great one. The art of the action genre has evolved in the last few decades, as visual effects have shoved human on-set accomplishment to the side, and many of the biggest blockbusters are made largely in a computer. There are plenty of wonderful movies made that way, but if we’re being honest, our tastes lean more towards fights and stunts and shootouts that make our blood pump and our bodies involuntarily flinch because, dang it, that looks like it’s gotta hurt.
So, allowing for the fact that there are enough films to populate a Top 100, here are our picks for The 25 Best Modern Action Movies, from the year 2000 to today. Every year more movies push the boundaries of what the action genre is capable of, so we look forward to having to update this over the years to accommodate all the new masterpieces that await us.
25. ‘Extraction 2’ (2023)
The sequel to “Extraction,” already a slick and devastating actioner, ups the ante in near every way. Never mind that Chris Hemsworth’s protagonist, the comically-named Tyler Rake, should be dead-dead-deadskie after the catastrophic damage he endured at the end of the first movie. He’s got another mission to perform, extracting a crime lord’s family from a Georgian prison, resulting in one of the most over-the-top and breathtaking one-shot-wonder action sequences ever filmed. The plot is nonsense, the characters are mostly dead weight, but in the action department “Extraction 2” is an all-timer.
24. ‘Atomic Blonde’ (2017)
You know how every spy movie has a list of secret agents that has to be retrieved before the bad guys get to it? David Leitch’s “Atomic Blonde” is another one of those, but it’s arguably the most badass version. Charlize Theron stars as Lorraine Broughton, a special agent deployed to Berlin to retrieve the stolen list, where she teams up with a bunch of suspicious characters, played by the likes of James McAvoy and Sofia Boutella. The simple set-up falls apart quickly, and “Atomic Blonde” soon reveals itself to be eye-rollingly convoluted in the story department. But Theron is at her ass-kicking best, and David Leitch proves once again that he’s one of the best modern action directors in the biz.
23. ‘Sisu’ (2022)
Jalmari Helander is not a household name, but he should be. The director of the Christmas horror classic “Rare Exports” and the underappreciated action comedy “Big Game” outdid himself with “Sisu,” starring Jorma Tommila as a reclusive gold miner who runs afoul of retreating Nazis at the end of World War II. Those Nazis picked a fight with the wrong guy, because soon they’re brutally dispatched in thrillingly violent ways. Overlooked but not easily forgotten by anyone’s who’s actually seen it, “Sisu” is destined to be a cult favorite.
22. ‘Undisputed III: Redemption’ (2010)
Straight-to-video action movies don’t come with a lot of expectations, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that “Undisputed III: Redemption” wasn’t going to be an instant action classic when it first came out. But the third entry in the illegal prison-fighting franchise, starring Scott Adkins as the disgraced villain from the previous installment, pulls out all the stops. A simple yet impactful storyline about convicts fighting to the death for their freedom, an unusually strong cast for this scale of production, and some of the best fight scenes of the last few decades. What more could you possibly want from an action flick?
21. ‘Torque’ (2004)
Seven years before the “Fast and Furious” movies went absurdly over the top and got away with it, the motorcycle knockoff “Torque” did it first and was summarily rejected. Watching it now and you’ll see that Joseph Kahn’s outlandish action opus was miles ahead of its time. The plot is about a biker framed for a crime he didn’t commit, but it’s just an excuse to get everyone on their supercharged bikes and race each other and fight to the death. There’s a scene in “Torque” where two characters pop a wheelie to punch each other with their bikes. There’s another in which a motorcycle engine is so powerful it practically busts a hole through space and time. Most of the beloved “Fast and Furious” movies can’t compete with that. Not all, but most.
20. ‘Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn’ (2020)
Speaking of “summarily rejected,” audiences were bizarrely disinterested in Cathy Yan’s superlative “Birds of Prey,” a wild and wacky and unexpectedly intense installment of the DC Extended Universe starring Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Huntress, Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Black Canary and Rosie Perez as Rene Montoya. The film plays fast and loose with DC characters and lore, but the world it crafts is so vivid and odd that it’s not a problem, and the overwhelming fight choreography is exhilarating. As rebellious as a corporate franchise movie can probably be allowed to be in this day and age, and arguably the best DCEU movie. (Yeah, we said it.)
19. ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. The World’ (2010)
Hey, look! Mary Elizabeth Winstead is back! Edgar Wright’s genre-defying rom-com kung-fu musical video game fantasy stars Michael Cera as a Canadian dork who falls for for an American mystery girl, and has to fight and defeat all of her evil exes to earn the right to date her properly. Movies don’t get much more energetic that “Scott Pilgrim,” which nimbly balances the modern pop culture landscape with a serious saga about insecurity and personal baggage. Weird, wonderful stuff, even though the film compresses the timeline of the comics so much that the romantic storyline feels rushed.
18. ‘Chocolate’ (2008)
The Thai action explosion of the 2000s was one of the most exciting things to happen to the genre so far this century, and “Chocolate” is one of the highlights. Yanin “Jeeja” Vismistananda stars as Zen, the autistic daughter of a Yakuza crime lord and his Thai lover, who learned martial arts from watching and mimicking Bruce Lee and Tony Jaa movies. When her mother is diagnosed with cancer, Zen tries to collect her mother’s old debts and accidentally pisses off everyone in the world of organized crime. So now she has to kick every single one of their asses. Breathtaking fight choreography and a unique hero make “Chocolate” one of the greats.
17. ‘Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior’ (2003)
Remember how the hero from “Chocolate” watched Tony Jaa movies? “Ong-Bak” is one of her favorites. The breakout action classic stars Jaa as a Muay Thai master who journeys to Bangkok to retrieve the stolen head of his village’s Buddha idol. Along the way he gets wept up in an underground fighting tournament with some of the nastiest opponents in martial arts movie history. Tony Jaa is a visual effect in “Ong-Bak,” performing seemingly impossible feats and leaping through tiny holes in barbed wire like it was nothing. “Ong-Bak” is an old-fashioned, hard-assed all-timer. (And Tony Jaa’s follow-up, “The Protector,” is almost as amazing.)
16. ‘Hero’ (2002)
It’s tempting to call Zhang Yimou’s “Hero” one of the most beautifully photographed action movies ever made, but that’s not entirely accurate. It’s one of the most beautifully photographed movies, period. Jet Li stars as a nameless warrior, who tells the King of China that he has murdered all of his greatest enemies. As he recounts the tale of their nigh-Shakespearean downfall, one by one, Zhang Yimou embarks on his own quest to outdo every other wuxia epic, and damn near succeeds. The film only stumbles in its final moments, when it’s revealed that everything we just watched might have been insidious propaganda. It’s still a stunner, but it’s also a difficult, arguably off-putting work of art.
15. ‘Kung Fu Hustle’ (2004)
Three years after blowing American audiences away with his kung fu sports classic “Shaolin Soccer,” director/co-writer/star Stephen Chow outdid himself with a breathtaking love letter to martial arts classics of yore. “Kung Fu Hustle” stars Chow as a naive con artist who impersonates a deadly gang member and gets his butt handed to him by the local residents of a slum, who turn out to be kung fu masters. Masterfully segueing from incredible kung fu choreography to gorgeous fantasy violence to ridiculous Looney Tunes comedy, Stephen Chow finds a weird yet practically perfect balance, making “Kung Fu Hustle” the rare action-comedy that works just as well in either genre.
14. ‘Taken’ (2008)
We all knew that Liam Neeson was a great actor, but until Pierre Morel’s “Taken,” we didn’t know that he had this particular set of skills. Neeson transformed his career overnight with the slick, simple, impossibly thrilling action movie about an ex-CIA agent who will stop at nothing to rescue his daughter from human traffickers. The film’s approach to violence is dark and arguably fascistic, with Neeson tearing through Europe like nothing else matters, and set the groundwork for a burgeoning “dad movie” action genre in which absentee fathers regain the respect of their families by proving how important the job that alienated them was in the first place. Come to think of it “Taken” might actually have a lot to answer for, but as an action movie it’s one of the best.
13. ‘District B13’ (2004)
Pierre Morel doesn’t get enough credit as one of the most influential action movie directors this century. A few years before he reinvented the dad movie action genre he introduced the world to parkour with “District 13,” released in America as “District B13.” This “Escape from New York” riff stars David Belle, who helped pioneer the free-running sport in real life, as a heroic denizen of a walled-off slum, who has to rescue his kidnapped sister from a crime lord. He also has to team up with an equally athletic cop, played by Cyril Raffaelli, to disarm a nuclear bomb that could take out a huge chunk of France. Breathless daredevil action, practically from start to finish, which raised the bar for on-screen foot chases and forced Hollywood to step up their own action movie game just to compete.
12. ‘Ip Man’ (2008)
One of the best martial arts movies of the 21st century is a biopic about Ip Man, the real-life kung fu master who taught Bruce Lee. As played by Donnie Yen, Ip Man is a bastion of dignity and grace, teaching Wing Chun to his students and opponents alike, while constantly getting drawn into altercations he’d rather sidestep completely. When a Japanese general stages a fighting tournament during the Second Sino-Japanese War, it’s up to him to defend the dignity of his people and their martial arts. “Ip Man” spawned a franchise, and the second film is nearly as good as the first, but the original is among the best and most satisfying standalone kung fu films around.
11. ‘Fast Five’ (2011)
It’s hard to believe that the “Fast and Furious” movies started off as a shameless street racing knockoff of “Point Break,” because by the time the fifth installment rolled around, it had mutated into a gigantic action extravaganza. Part crime story, part spy story, all gasoline and testosterone, “Fast Five” united the stars of all the previous films into the perfect heist crew, as Vin Diesel and Paul Walker wage a war against a Brazilian crime lord and engage in some of the most ludicrous vehicular stunts ever filmed. The sequels got bigger, and some of them are just as entertaining, but they’ve never quite improved on “Fast Five.”
10. ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (2022)
Tom Cruise returned to his cockpit for a long-awaited sequel to one of the biggest hits of the 1980s. “Top Gun: Maverick” finds the title hero returning to his old stomping grounds to teach a new team of firecracker fighter pilots how to pull off a seemingly impossible mission. They’ll have to flight at low altitudes through a trench and blow up a tiny target at the very end, and the hardest part is trying to keep the audience from realizing it’s a blatant “Star Wars” knockoff until they’re out of the theater. Whatever. “Top Gun: Maverick” is a stone cold stunner, with eye-popping aerial stunts and sweaty machismo oozing out of every pore.
9. ‘The Raid: Redemption’ (2011)
The premise is simplicity itself. A SWAT team gets trapped in a building full of deadly criminals and have to fight to the bitter end to survive. Gareth Evans films the ever-loving hell out of it, with bone-crunching choreography filling damn near the whole running time. “The Raid: Redemption” is exhausting action cinema, the kind of adrenaline rush that might be more than some audiences can handle. But it’s exactly the kind of death-defying low-budget spectacle that raises the bar for the whole action genre.
8. ‘RRR’ (2022)
S. S. Rajamouli’s unbelievable action epic “RRR” isn’t the wildest thrill ride to ever come out of India, not by a long shot, but for better or worse it managed to connect with American audiences like no other. It’s easy to see why. “RRR” is a gigantic bromance about two real-life Indian revolutionaries, Komaram Bheem (N. T. Rama Rao Jr.) and Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan). They become instant besties after the most outrageous child rescue ever, but the secrets they hide from each other are destined to put them at odds. And of course, eventually someone throws a leopard at somebody else. Life-affirmingly huge, and the deserving winner of an Academy Award for Best Original Song.
7. ‘Mission: Impossible — Fallout’ (2015)
It’s tempting to fill a huge chunk of this list with just the “Mission: Impossible” movies, but in the interest of spreading the love, we’re just going to pick one. There’s an argument to be made for picking practically any of them (maybe not so much “Mission: Impossible 2”), and if we’re being honest “Rogue Nation” probably works best as an actual film, but as a pure action extravaganza it’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” that takes the cake. Tom Cruise is back and performing one feat of acrobatic insanity after another as he attempts to, oh, who cares? The plot doesn’t matter. Bad guys are doing bad guy things. All that counts is that Tom Cruise does a real-life HALO jump and death-defying stunts with a helicopter. Wow.
6. ‘John Wick’ (2014)
The “John Wick” movies got bigger, and more elaborate, but they never got better than the original. Keanu Reeves stars as a man whose wife dies and leaves him a puppy so he’ll remember how to love. Then a bunch of gangsters steal his car and kill the dog, so he goes on an epic killing spree, because — surprise! — before he retired, he was the greatest hitman who ever lived. Simplicity itself. Emotionally gut-wrenching, pulse-poundingly violent cinema. You’d be hard-pressed to find any action hero who’s given more carte blanche to kill everyone else on-screen. The sequels expanded on the mythology, for better on occasion (but mostly for worse), and the first act of “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” is, in a vacuum, possibly the best action movie of the century so far. But to date, only “John Wick” works on every level.
5. ‘Kill Bill: Volume 1’ (2003)
The first half of Quentin Tarantino’s ode to all the genre stuff he loves — revenge flicks, kung fu flicks, samurai flicks, “The Green Hornet,” anime, the list goes on and on — is one of the great cinema pastiches. Uma Thurman stars as The Bride, who was left for dead on her wedding day (well, her wedding rehearsal day) and goes on a roaring rampage of revenge, slaughtering all of her old hitman co-workers, each of whom seem to be living in a different type of movie. Both halves are amazing but the action is front-loaded, with stunning kitchenware duels to the death, and a bravura climax where The Bride kills an entire army of bad guys. “Kill Bill Volume 1” ain’t kiddin’ around.
4. ‘The Bourne Identity’ (2002)
What started out as a notoriously troubled production turned into one of the most influential action movies ever made. Doug Liman’s grounded, character-driven, dare we say “gritty” spy thriller brought the genre kicking and screaming into the 21st century, a time when the horrors of 9/11 made many wonder if there was any place for secret agent escapism anymore. Matt Damon plays an assassin who gets amnesia, pieces together his old life, and is appalled by what he finds, becoming a very atypical hero, and inspiring the rest of the film industry to follow suit, and bring all the other franchises into the realm of plausibility. It worked for James Bond (“Casino Royale” was clearly a reaction to “Bourne’s” success, and it probably had a lot to do with “Batman Begins” as well.
3. ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ (2022)
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” isn’t the only action movie to win Best Picture this century, but by God is it the best. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert wrote and directed this ingenious sci-fi/action/drama hybrid, starring Michelle Yeoh as a woman who never pursued any of her dreams. The unexpected upside is that she’s created countless alternate realities in which she made something of her life, and she can tap into all of those other experiences and abilities to stop a reality-consuming villain using kung fu and, eventually, the power of love. Easily the most profound motion picture on our list. Also, the only one that prominently features a makeshift, mid-fight butt plug.
2. ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ (2000)
Ang Lee’s sumptuous wuxia epic about love and repression stars Michelle Yeoh and Chow-yun Fat as legendary warriors whose obvious love can never be expressed, and Zhang Ziyi as the spirited young warrior who refuses to be told what to do, no what who or what she wrecks in the process. Lee’s dazzlingly-realized fight sequences are exciting, yes, but also haunting and expressive. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is one of the most romantic and emotional action movies ever made, and one of the prettiest, and one of the most thrilling too.
1. ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)
George Miller’s fourth post-apocalyptic “Mad Max” movie is far and away the best, and when the competition includes “The Road Warrior” and “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” that’s saying something. Tom Hardy stars as Max, who gets abducted by a mad despot’s cult, and winds up escaping an army of high-octane zealots with the even-more-badass Imperator Furiosa, played by a rarely-better Charlize Theron. “Mad Max: Fury Road” is one giant car chase, practically from beginning to end, but Miller’s visual ingenuity is unparalleled, making every frame a wonder, every stunt a wincer, and every detail important to his characters and story. Think of it like Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman’s “The General,” if you weren’t asked to root for the slave-owning Confederates.
