With physically adept actors like Iko Uwais and Keanu Reeves committing wholeheartedly to bringing intense fight choreography to life, and well-established filmmakers like George Miller and Christopher Nolan providing action cinema with a couple more gems, this past decade was a great time to be a fan of the genre.
The 2010s brought with it a wave of rollicking blockbusters that were essentially feature-length action sequences, with everything from The Raid and Mad Max: Fury Road smartly letting the action drive the story and characters instead of the other way around, as is the case with so many disappointing films in the genre.
Fast & Furious 6 (2013)
Although it didn’t quite top the Rio-set carnage of its 2011 predecessor Fast Five, 2013’s Fast & Furious 6 offered up another high-octane installment in the oeuvre.
Featuring a tank on a highway, Rita Ora as a flag girl, and an 18-mile-long airport runway, Fast & Furious 6 delivers plenty of the insane one-upmanship that fans of the franchise have come to expect.
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi (2016)
Michael Bay is hardly known for being a great filmmaker, but he tends to do his best work on smaller budgets. His suitably intense dramatization of the 2012 Benghazi attack, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, is a prime example of Bay at his finest.
Bay’s directorial style is a little heavy-handed, but there’s not much room for subtlety in a movie about waves of militants attacking an American diplomatic compound, and he tackles the subject matter with great respect for the soldiers involved.
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)
Lionsgate has announced that the fourth and fifth John Wick movies will be shooting back-to-back. Somehow, Keanu Reeves and co. have managed to keep topping themselves, and with any luck, that hot streak will continue into those next two films.
The third installment in the franchise, Parabellum, offered up a horseback chase through the streets of New York, Halle Berry’s kick-ass attack dogs, and an all-out war on the grounds of the Continental.
Inception (2010)
Although Inception’s primary form of currency is meditations on the timeline of dreams and the fabric of reality, its true selling point is its breathtaking action.
Christopher Nolan will do as many effects practically as he can, which leads to incredible set pieces like the fight in the revolving hallway.
Dredd (2012)
Following the crushing disappointment of Sylvester Stallone’s PG-13 Judge Dredd movie in the mid-‘90s, fans finally got the ultraviolent festival of blood and gore that they’d come to expect from the character in Pete Travis and Alex Garland’s Dredd.
The streamlined story of two Judges’ raid on an apartment building controlled by a drug lord keeps the action coming, while Karl Urban is perfectly cast in the title role and Olivia Thirlby is a terrific foil as his rookie partner, Judge Anderson.
Baby Driver (2017)
Edgar Wright’s second Hollywood movie, Baby Driver, falls into a handful of categories: it’s a crime film, a comedy, a jukebox musical, a love story — but above all, it’s an action movie, and one of the genre's most entertaining in recent memory.
The story of a getaway driver who drives to the rhythm of the music on his iPod is bursting at the seams with inventive set pieces, colorful supporting characters, and pitch-perfect storytelling.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)
By the fifth installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Tom Cruise’s one-insane-stunt-per-movie quotient had worn thin, so he went one step further with the sixth movie, Fallout, and did an insane stunt in pretty much every scene.
Running across rooftops, hanging from helicopters, jumping out of planes — Cruise put his life on the line countless times for our entertainment, and the result is one of the greatest action movies ever made.
John Wick (2014)
Apparently, the producers behind John Wick pushed for the title character’s vengeful rampage to be kicked off by the villain killing his entire family. However, this wouldn’t have been anywhere near as effective as the murder of his adorable beagle. After the death of a dog, audiences will happily go along with any degree of bloodshed in the pursuit of justice.
Keanu Reeves made an icon out of the title character, turning a high-concept action thriller into one of Hollywood’s most lucrative franchises, and the action is beautifully staged by Chad Stahelski and David Leitch.
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
George Miller’s fourth Mad Max movie spent more than a decade in development hell. In that time, he meticulously prepared what would become one of the greatest action movies ever made, using a storyboard in place of a script to ensure he was telling the story as visually as possible.
Tom Hardy makes for a fine Max Rockatansky, but Charlize Theron steals the show here as the badass post-apocalyptic warrior Furiosa. Miller did most of the stunts practically, only using CGI to smooth over the edges, so there’s a breathtaking authenticity in the vehicular carnage.
The Raid (2011)
Gareth Evans’ The Raid follows an elite police squad infiltrating a high-rise controlled by a crime syndicate, which is just a vehicle to feature wall-to-wall action with intense fight choreography and hair-raising suspense at every turn.
Like a lot of the best action movies, The Raid stars actors who are proficient in martial arts, like Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, so there are no awkward cuts to stunt doubles.