It seems like action movies never go out of style, and there is always an audience for a quality one. These include everything from heist movies to action-packed thrillers and from sci-fi flicks to straight-up blockbusters with more explosions than meaningful dialogue. With the money spent on action movies in recent years, they need to make big box office and are almost always assured of an audience.
Over the past five years, there have been some fantastic action movies for fans of the genre. Not all these movies made huge box office money, but all of them were high quality, top-of-the-line action thrillers.
Upgrade (2018)
Upgrade was a movie that came in and slipped by a lot of the audience unaware. Directed by Leigh Whannell, one of the writers from Saw, this action sci-fi thriller starred Logan Marshall-Green in a futuristic city of self-driving cars. When the vehicle he is in crashes and his wife is murdered, he gets a chance to walk again if he has a STEM implant placed in his body. This turns out to be a self-learning computer that gives him superpowers, and he sets out on a mission of vengeance.
Wonder Woman (2017)
In 2017, DC was the first of the two major comic book companies to create a superhero movie with a female lead in the new era of comic book movies. In Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot took on the role of the Amazon Princess in an origin story that took place in World War I. She then sets out to battle Nazis and tries to kill Ares, the God of War, to try to save the world from evil. Wonder Woman 1984 comes out in 2020 as a sequel.
Baby Driver (2017)
Edgar Wright is one of the top filmmakers working today and has made several high-quality movies in different genres. In 2017, he set his sights on the action movie genre, and in particular, the car chase thriller. The movie was Baby Driver, a film starring Ansel Elgort as a getaway driver working for a local criminal. Baby Driver had great action sequences from Edgar Wright and is arguably the coolest action movie of the last five years.
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
If this were a list of the best action movies of the century so far, all three John Wick movies would be on the list. This was a film franchise that pretty much changed what people think of when they consider the genre. It is a B-movie series shot with A-level talent.
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum is the film that made this list for the last five years of theatrical releases. This movie, released in 2019, took what happened in the first two films and ramped up the action considerably, putting every assassin in the world on the tail of Wick.
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
The crazy thing about the new Planet of the Apes movie series was that each movie was almost a different genre. When the series reached the 2017 release of War for the Planet of the Apes, the sci-fi fantasy series went into a full-blown action war movie. This movie saw the apes, led by Caesar, go to war with the humans with the control of the Earth at stake. The human resistance is a paramilitary group known as Alpha-Omega, although the U.S. Army is also out for revenge against the leader of that group.
Logan (2017)
The least superheroic comic book movie released in the last five years might be the 2017 X-Men movie, Logan. Director James Mangold made it clear after the made The Wolverine that he wasn't a fan of the regular superhero movie genre and wanted to create something totally different. What resulted was an action movie set in the future that was more like a western version of Mad Max. This was Wolverine's last stand and the rise of a new generation of mutants led by the teenage X-23.
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
If there is one Marvel Cinematic Universe movie that deserves to sit on a list of the best action movies of the last five years, it is easily Avengers: Endgame. While most MCU movies fall into different genres, most are entrenched in the action genre, although none as profoundly as this last Avengers movie.
The entire second half of Avengers: Endgame is a giant adventure that leads the team through time travel, dramatic fight scenes in different eras, and finally, one of the biggest battle sequences in comic book cinema. Every hero in the MCU bands together to battle Thanos for the survival of the Earth.
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Arguably, the best action movie of the entire 21st century and the best action movie of the last five years came out in 2015 with Mad Max: Fury Road. The film was an Oscar contender, which was a massive shock for a Mad Max movie about mutants battling in souped-up vehicles that can shoot fire at each other. The action here is insane, and this is a film that showed that going to the extreme could be hugely successful with the right hand behind the camera.
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)
It almost seemed that every Mission: Impossible movie tried to do the impossible. From the start, with a great heist movie, every film attempted to one-up the movie that came before it. When Christopher McQuarrie took over as the director, the films blew away everything that came before. The best film in the series hit in 2018 with Mission: Impossible - Fallout, where Henry Cavill joined Tom Cruise in the cast, and the stunts and action sequences were the best of the year for any film.
Black Panther (2018)
If there was one superhero movie that had the best chance to win an Oscar, it was the MCU film Black Panther in 2018. The movie was smart, it had great action sequences, and it told a spectacular story. It also had arguably the best villain in comic book movies in Killmonger, a man who honestly had something to fight for. From the one-on-one fight scenes to the impressive battles with the Dora Milaje warriors, this was an almost perfect action film.