Despite what some very loud online voices might say, movies are still alive and well. They may be more spread out than ever and more prone to disappearing thanks to the deluge of content clogging the major streaming services, but there’s certainly no shortage of new masterpieces being minted every year. That applies to all genres of film, but doubly so for action. With the advancement of visual effects and the rise of filmmakers who come from stunt backgrounds, it’s no wonder that action movies are just as visceral as ever.
The last ten years of action cinema have seen the mighty return of long-dormant franchises, bold originals and visionary works from across the globe. Simply put, if action fans couldn’t find films to love in the last decade, then they weren’t looking that hard. This list will celebrate the action movies from the last ten years that are absolute masterpieces; some brought in the big bucks, while others were a bit more underappreciated, but they all deserve the praise they deservedly got.
10
‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ (2024)
Despite being a flop at the box office, Furiosa was a bold, ambitious reinvention of the Mad Maxfranchise. Every entry in George Miller‘s post-apocalyptic action series has brought something new to the game. The original was a grimy revenge thriller, while its sequel, The Road Warrior, was a dystopic, guzzoline-fueled Western. Beyond Thunderdomeexpanded the character of Max and plunked him into the middle of a lost boys’ adventure. Fury Roadstripped the series down to its essential parts, and then, nine years later, Miller expanded the franchise with the sprawling, epic prequel Furiosa.
Digging into the backstory of the fan-favorite character originated by Charlize Theron in Fury Road, Anya Taylor-Joy takes over and brings fiery fury to the role. Whereas prior entries operated in a much looser continuity, Furiosa connects directly with Fury Road, providing key details about the character without ever feeling beholden to its predecessor. Miller paves a new road for the franchise but continues to deliver the same dizzying, acrobatic action sequences that put directors half of the octogenarian Miller’s age to shame.
9
‘RRR’ (2022)
Speaking of putting other filmmakers to shame, Indian director S. S. Rajamouli‘s epic, period action extravaganzaRRRexploded onto screens in 2022, making most of its Hollywood contemporaries look sedate by comparison. Set in 1920s Delhi and inspired by real-life revolutionaries, the gorgeously shot film is an anti-colonial diatribe wrapped in a roller-coaster ride.
Featuring a massive trainwreck, animal attacks and a full-blown dance battle, RRR balances tone and mixes genres with the kind of success that most action filmmakers could only dream of. The film’s overwhelming acclaim brought renewed interest to Indian cinema, which has for years been putting Hollywood on notice with its wildly original and electrifying films. It’s that kind of pure cinematic passion that makes RRR one of the most exciting movies of the 21st century.
8
‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ (2023)
One of the most prominent action franchises of the last ten years, Keanu Reeves‘ John Wick came out of almost nowhere to hand other would-be action heroes their asses with a slick neo-noir hitman franchise. Noted for its heightened world where assassins are ubiquitous and the underworld operates with bureaucratic lethality, the films not only reinvigorated Reeves’ career but also jump-started the directorial journeys of Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, who both came from stunt backgrounds.
While Leitch would go off to forge a solo career in franchises like Deadpooland Fast & Furious, Stahelski would stick with John Wick, including directing the most recent mainline entry. The epic-sized John Wick: Chapter 4 expands the world and lore exponentially, all while bringing out the big guns for some of the franchise’s most blistering action, including a video-game-inspired top-down gunfight and an extended third act that’s also a stealth remake of cult classic The Warriors. When it comes to Wick, more is just never enough.
7
‘The Night Comes For Us’ (2018)
John Wick was part of a 2010s action trend that saw an increased focus on brutal, bloody action punctuated by impressive stunt work and fight choreography. That trend was popularized by the 2011 Indonesian action classic The Raid, which starred Iko Uwais and Joe Taslim, both of whom would return for what is arguably the peak of the brutality trend:The Night Comes For Us. Spilling as much blood as most modern horror movies, this Netflix original is so intense it’s likely to leave audiences bruised.
Directed by Timo Tjahjanto, the movie follows Taslim as an enforcer who turns against his gangster brethren in order to protect a young girl whose family he helped kill. That singular act sets off a series of bone-crunching, artery-opening fight sequences that escalate until the characters eventually end up looking like meat hanging in the back of a butcher shop. There may have been better action movies in the last ten years, but there are none bloodier than this.
6
‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’ (2015)
The Mission: Impossiblefranchise entered the 2010s looking to prove itself, and its star, still viable. It did that in spades with the Brad Bird-directed entry Ghost Protocol, and would follow it up with the best film of the entire franchise, Rogue Nation. Bringing Christopher McQuarrie into the fold, who would end up seeing the series through to its supposed end, the fifth film finds the perfect balance between stylish spy thrills and show-stopping action spectacle.
Starting with Tom Cruise dangling from a plane as it takes off and only getting more intense from there, the movie brings in classic elements such as franchise villains, the Syndicate, while injecting fresh blood in the form of Rebecca Ferguson‘s fan-favorite character, Ilsa Faust. From the Hitchcockian opera house sequence to the underwater heist, Rogue Nation doubled down on the action setpiece formula set by Ghost Protocol and came up with a winning hand.
5
‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (2022)
Mission: Impossible wasn’t the only franchise to bring Cruise back into good graces with audiences in the last ten years. The actor also got back into the cockpit for legacy sequel Top Gun: Maverick,which upped the ante on Tony Scott‘s ’80s original through a seamless mix of extensive visual effects and genuine jet-plane stunt work. Bringing back Cruise’s devil-may-care character to train a new generation of hot-shot pilots, the movie cracks the belated sequel code by knowing where to pitch its references and when to cut loose with something new.
Director Joseph Kosinski shows off his computer-graphics background and pushes the technological aspects of the film. The story and characters may be drawn in the broadest of strokes, but those strokes are all the team needs to keep the audience engaged between the jet-fueled action scenes that blew them out of the back of the theater. Many praised the film for reinvigorating movie theaters that were still flagging after coming out of the fog of COVID, and it is undeniable that Top Gun: Maverick is the epitome of big-screen entertainment.
4
‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ (2022)
A masterpiece across several genres, Everything Everywhere All at Oncemixes surreal comedy and science fiction with martial arts. It provided a star vehicle for action royalty Michelle Yeoh, and it was handsomely rewarded with a multiverse’s worth of Academy Awards. The film features Yeoh as a down-on-her-luck laundromat owner, whose world gets turned multidimensionally sideways when she discovers that her universe is only one of many. Now, she must fight an alternate version of her estranged daughter, who has become a multiversal threat.
Coming from the powerhouse directing team of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known collectively as the Daniels, the film weaves together dozens of disparate threads into one colorful whole that offers a little bit of everything for everybody. In addition to giving Yeoh her best Hollywood role in years, the film also carves out a nice space for some juicy supporting roles for Jamie Lee Curtis and Ke Huy Quan, who both won Oscars alongside Yeoh. Add some psychedelic visual effects on top, and Everything Everywhere All at Once is everything an action fan could ask for.
3
‘Godzilla Minus One’
Where Hollywood can’t seem to figure out how to make kaiju action exciting in their bloated, boring Monsterverse, Japan resurrected their greatest giant monster for a new action classic that is emotionally moving, propulsively paced and made on a budget that wouldn’t cover the cost of alcohol at a Hollywood wrap party. Coming from director Takashi Yamazaki, who also served as the film’s visual effects supervisor, Godzilla Minus Onereboots the classic monster franchise in post-war Japan, as the nation’s attempts to rebuild and wrangle with guilt are complicated by the appearance of an atomic lizard.
The scenes of mass destruction in Godzilla Minus One are both awe-inspiring and genuinely terrifying.
The plot focuses on a disgraced kamikaze pilot and his attempts at redemption aboard a minesweeping ship with a motley crew, who find themselves smack-dab in the middle of a kaiju conflict when the titular monster of the hour re-emerges. The scenes of mass destruction are both awe-inspiring and genuinely terrifying, as the filmmakers make Godzilla a legitimately scary threat that is seemingly insurmountable. The action always puts the characters front and center, while still making plenty of room for the ticket-selling CGI attraction.
2
‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ (2018)
While many fans went gaga over the generation-spanning, fan-service fanning Spider-Man: No Way Homefor the ways it brought back past villains and heroes from the franchise’s past, it was really just riffing on a song that had already been played perfectly several years earlier in the immaculate animated action masterpiece Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Focusing on alternate universe Spider-Man Miles Morales, the movie was a blast of fresh air into the superhero genre.
With a striking visual style and animation, the movie feels directly ripped from the pages of a comic book, and while its emotional spotlight is directly on Morales, it still makes room for a half dozen other Spider-Heroes who all get individual moments to shine. That collaborative spirit also makes for some of the most dynamic action seen in both the animated medium and superhero cinema, which replicates the child-like rush and wonder of cracking open a comic book and letting their imagination run wild.
1
‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)
More words have been written about the supercharged action masterpiece that is Mad Max: Fury Roadthan its stoic action hero has ever uttered across four movies. There simply isn’t much left to say about George Miller’s near-perfect film that hasn’t already been said with colorful hyperbole. Taking the third act of The Road Warrior and stretching it out over the film’s entire runtime was a risky move that could have absolutely blown up in Miller’s face, but his film defies expectations at every wild turn, offering a beautifully shot desert-spanning car chase that is the quintessential example of visual storytelling.
Long-delayed and with a nightmarish production, many fans weren’t expecting much out of the fourth Mad Max film when it was announced. Indeed, it’s a true miracle that it made it to the finish line in the first place, but the hard work and perseverance are all on screen. Fury Road is an uncontested action masterpiece, the greatest action film of the last ten years and possibly the greatest action film ever made.
