98 Best Action Movies Of All Time Ranked

Thrills, spills, chills, and kills! Those are the main reasons we immerse ourselves in the transcendent world of cinema. To see big, amazing, improbable, and even impossible stuff happen on the movie screen is a vital experience, particularly when the film playing is an action movie. It just gets the blood pumping and the eyes popping to see impressive feats of stunt work and death defiance. And each year, Hollywood and other movie strongholds release tons of action movies, trying to capture that magic. 

While many are certainly satisfying, only a few contain that elusive combination of a great story, unforgettable characters, and an unmatched technical mastery of stunts 'n' squibs necessary to go beyond genre thrills and achieve the status of truly great cinema. The following movies have all reached that lofty status. Here are Looper's picks for the best action movies ever made.

While it may look like standard action fare about stone-cold assassins and surprising secret identities, "Wanted" is a fun and giddy thriller with a wildly imaginative and ambitious plot involving many unlikely turns and even supernatural forces. 

Wesley is a weak-willed, going-nowhere office drone ... until he learns from an enigmatic woman named Fox that the father he hasn't seen in years was recently murdered and was actually an assassin. And now, his murderer is after Wesley. Fox brings Wesley into the Fraternity, a secret league of highly skilled assassins who work for the concept of Fate. As a result, Wesley soon learns to tap into his extraordinary powers, like super-strength, being able to slow down his perception of time, and curving bullets after he shoots them, which all makes for some pretty crackling action sequences.

• Starring: Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman
• Director: Timur Bekmambetov
• Year: 2008
• Runtime: 110 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 71%

The best action movies tend to fall into one of two classes: They involve a vast many number of characters, or it's one person versus a seemingly undefeatable succession of villains, if not the world. "Death Wish" is a one-man army kind of movie while also a definitive example of dark and gritty '70s urban cinema. Cultural context is important for understanding "Death Wish." At the time, American cities were perceived as being in rapid decline, overrun with violent crime and decay. So in 1974, unflappable, inscrutable Charles Bronson — as unapologetic, ethically unambiguous Paul Kersey — was hailed as a hero. As for the plot, after Paul's wife is murdered by random crooks, he decides to clean up the streets, personally, going out at night and gunning down all of the many criminals he encounters. Love it or hate it, "Death Wish" left an impact and has earned its bloody place in action movie history.

• Starring: Charles Bronson, Hope Lange, Vincent Gardenia
• Director: Michael Winner
• Year: 1974
• Runtime: 93 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 68%

"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is probably best remembered as the film where Brad Pitt met Angelina Jolie ... scandalously dumping wife Jennifer Anniston for her. The couple's chemistry is undeniable as they play married assassins in a high-wire act of a twisty, lightly comic, shoot-'em-up action movie. 

In the film, the curiously, generically named John and Jane work okay but not soul-fulfilling jobs and live a bland, comfortable existence, all of which is a cover for the fact that both, separately, have a secret lives as highly paid, highly trained international assassins. Their mutual covers are blown and their marriage will either be saved or end spectacularly when they're both hired to kill the same bad guy — and then wind up having to kill each other.

• Starring: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaughn
• Director: Doug Liman
• Year: 2005
• Runtime: 120 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 60%

By 1997, Harrison Ford was a seasoned and reliable action star, as well as a respected, older actor with a commanding, authoritative presence. Filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen combined those two personas in "Air Force One," casting Ford as the likable, awe-inspiring president of the United States ... who personally foils a terrorist hijacking attempt. The implausibility of that occurrence is eliminated by setting the whole thing on the president's personal plane and command center. While the idea of the commander-in-chief beating up bad guys and tossing them out of Air Force One may sound ridiculous, it winds up very satisfying, instilling a gonzo — if aggressive and skewed — sense of American patriotism.

• Starring: Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close
• Director: Wolfgang Petersen
• Year: 1997
• Runtime: 124 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78%

After spending decades showing the world he was a serious and nuanced dramatic actor, among the best of his generation, Liam Neeson surprised everyone by demonstrating his "particular set of skills" as an action hero. In "Taken," the first of many "Neeson vs. violent-villains-who-underestimate-him" films, the actor plays Bryan Mills, an ex-government agent whose plans to get to know his distant adult daughter are thwarted when she's kidnapped by a sex trafficking ring in Paris. Mills has four days to get to Paris before his daughter is sold off, and he uses every single deadly skill he ever learned to get his kid back and punish those who took her.

• Starring: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen
• Director: Pierre Morel
• Year: 2008
• Runtime: 91 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 59%

What is slapstick comedy but a funny form of action? It involves pushing the human body to its absolute limits for the delight of the audience or to advance a plot quickly. Melissa McCarthy, an expert on pratfalls and physical humor, makes for a terrific focus of an action movie with the espionage caper "Spy." It feels like her character, a desk-based CIA agent named Susan Cooper, has gotten lost in a high-tech-saturated James Bond movie. After her remote partner runs afoul of a vicious arms dealer, Susan has to go into the field herself, resulting in lots of unlikely heroics and a regular person using their wits to get out of dangerous and deadly situations.

• Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Jason Statham, Rose Byrne
• Director: Paul Feig
• Year: 2015
• Runtime: 115 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

Movies about people trained solely in the deadly arts from birth so as to be a stealthy and efficient assassin are always fun. And "Hanna" is one of the best, largely thanks to the environs, circumstances, and character traits of the assassin in question. Hanna is a teenager, but she's been schooled her entire life by her father in the Scandinavian wilderness to be an ideal killer. He sends her on an important and deadly mission, and she intrepidly moves through Europe, evading one agent after another sent by a high-level operative (and former colleague of Hanna's father) with a singular focus on catching the young assassin. "Hanna" is ultimately a movie about racing — Hanna trying to get to her target, Hanna's enemies trying to get to Hanna, and Hanna completing her mission before she fully questions (or rejects) her role as a murderer.

• Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett
• Director: Joe Wright
• Year: 2011
• Runtime: 111 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 71%

Denis Villeneuve — who'd go on to artfully elevate science fiction with "Arrival," "Blade Runner 2049," and "Dune" — previously made one of the most beautiful and well-constructed police films in recent memory. Competitive and aggressive FBI agent Kate Macer is recruited for a task force to fight the endless war on drugs, where they whisk between the U.S. and Mexico, strategically playing cartel bosses off of each other. This bleak, grimy, relentless film is, counterintuitively, beautifully shot and boasts a dread-inducing score. All of those factors pay off in the action scenes, particularly one memorable sequence set in underground border tunnels.

• Starring: Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin
• Director: Denis Villeneuve
• Year: 2015
• Runtime: 121 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

With the same premise as Ernest Cline's thoughtful sci-fi novel but told in a completely different and much more cinematic way, "Ready Player One" is a film of collision — a collision of reality and virtual reality, of dozens of highly recognizable intellectual properties, and of cars, planes, spaceships, and all kinds of crazy stuff. In the year 2045, America is overcrowded and beset with economic depression and general malaise. Most people find escape in OASIS, an extremely realistic VR world where they can be or do anything they want, like live out old movies or drive cars from those films. When James Halliday — the enigmatic creator — dies, he bequeaths his riches to the first person to discover an Easter egg buried well and deep in the OASIS. Oklahoma-based orphan Wade Watts (and his warrior avatar) is determined to find it, alongside the team of young rogues he befriends along the way.

• Starring: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn
• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Year: 2018
• Runtime: 140 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 72%

Hugh Jackman's Wolverine was always the best part about every X-Men movie, and while he's had his own standalone films featuring everyone's favorite clawed Canadian, "Logan" shreds them all. It completely reinvented what a superhero movie can be, as Jackman applied his dramatic chops to create a nuanced characterization of a hero nearing the end of his life and his mission. And somehow, young actress Dafoe Keen steals almost every scene as Laura, Wolverine's sidekick and — spoiler alert — daughter/diminutive clone. As for the plot, Logan and Professor Xavier evade the bad guys and shuttle Laura to safety in a road movie that's fast-paced, unpredictable, and casually violent. In other words, this is no "Smokey and the Bandit."

• Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen
• Director: James Mangold
• Year: 2017
• Runtime: 137 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

The punishing island prison of Alcatraz has long loomed large in the collective imagination, and action movie kingpin Michael Bay figured out a way to make the decommissioned fortress into the site of an anarchic, loud, and wonderfully preposterous film. 

Rogue general turned supervillain Francis Hummel has set up shop on Alcatraz Island, threatening to blow nearby San Francisco to smithereens unless $100 million is paid to the families of military personnel who died on top secret missions. Mild-mannered weapons expert Stanley Goodspeed must team up with a former Alcatraz inmate, a British spy named John Patrick Mason (who it's implied might actually be James Bond, and he's played by 007 actor Sean Connery) to personally disarm Hummel and his men ... by breaking into the prison.

• Starring: Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris
• Director: Michael Bay
• Year: 1996
• Runtime: 136 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 68%

Walter Matthau, portrayer of over-it curmudgeons in comedies like "The Odd Couple" and "Grumpy Old Men," an action star? In the '70s, even Matthau could fire a gun, beat up violent criminals, and walk away unscathed. 

In this prototypical and well-paced, extremely tense hostage thriller, Mr. Blue and his hoodlum underlings hijack a New York City subway car. They want a million bucks in cash in one hour ... and if they don't get the cash by the deadline, they'll kill a passenger at a rate of one per minute. Matthau's overwhelmed and overworked transit cop, Lt. Garber, is tasked with getting the ransom to the gang as quickly as possible and with little help from his untrustworthy associates.

• Starring: Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam
• Director: Joseph Sargent
• Year: 1974
• Runtime: 104 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

One of the first R-rated comic book movies and one of the first ever big-screen adaptations of a Marvel property, "Blade" treats us to gore and good times in pretty much every frame. With a chugging techno soundtrack and Wesley Snipes rocking a leather duster and sunglasses, "Blade" may seem a little dated, but it more than makes up for it in story and energy. Blade, the character, is a lone-wolf antihero, half-human, half-vampire, and on a mission to rid the world of bloodsuckers, usually with his sword or sweet fighting moves. At the same time, he's also on the run from nefarious forces who wish to harness his blood to bring about the arrival of La Magra, the blood god. There's a lot going on in "Blade," in other words, but all of it's a blast.

• Starring: Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff, Kris Kristofferson
• Director: Stephen Norrington
• Year: 1998
• Runtime: 120 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 56%

Easily one of the most dazzling, exciting, and fun superhero movies ever made, "The Incredibles" just happens to be an animated film that's appropriate for whole-family viewing. A triumph of Pixar, CGI allowed filmmaker Brad Bird to make a movie about superheroes that would've been creatively and practically prohibitive in live-action. 

"The Incredibles" is about a family of supers — the parents have retired from their headline-grabbing heroics into a boring and listless suburban existence, raising three kids who are just beginning to explore their special abilities. However, they're thrown back into the business of saving the day when a murderous villain named Syndrome sets out to kill all heroes.

• Starring: Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Jason Lee
• Director: Brad Bird
• Year: 2004
• Runtime: 115 minutes
• Rating: PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

Clint Eastwood is arguably the definitive action star of the '60s and '70s, and his first outing as grizzled, crime-hating, shoot-first-ask-questions-later San Francisco police inspector Harry Callahan is his definitive action movie. Loosely inspired by the Zodiac murders of the Bay Area, "Dirty Harry" finds Eastwood as a strong and nearly silent, hand cannon-toting cop in a cat-and-mouse game with a rooftop killer, attempting to stop him before the kidnapped girl in his clutches dies. But then Harry's violent and antagonistic ways doom him, and the murderer is released — and then commits an even more horrific crime, forcing Harry into a kill-or-be-killed, wipe-the-criminal-off-the-streets situation.

• Starring: Clint Eastwood, Harry Guardino, Andrew Robinson
• Director: Don Siegel
• Year: 1971
• Runtime: 103 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

Heretofore the only entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the word "Marvel" right there in the title, "Captain Marvel" is possibly the ultimate MCU movie. It's a mishmash of its franchise brethren, part high-flying space-and-aliens movie, part superhero origin story, part superhero team-up movie, but at the end of the day, a thoroughly satisfying action flick. Brie Larson plays Carol Danvers, an American Air Force pilot, but she's also an extraterrestrial mega-warrior entrusted by Avengers recruiter Nick Fury to help save Earth from being a big casualty in an epic alien war. And all of it takes place in 1995, justifying and leading up to a climactic and explosive battle scored to No Doubt's "Just a Girl."

• Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn
• Director: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
• Year: 2019
• Runtime: 124 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%

In the 1970s, people loved disaster movies — films where big ensemble casts made up of multiple generations of familiar actors endure an unspeakable tragedies before coming out the other side, bruised and battered but mostly alive. And arguably the definitive disaster movie of the '70s is "The Towering Inferno," a claustrophobic, stressful (in a good way), non-stop action flick about what it's like to be inside a massive big-city skyscraper as a fire tears through the building. The folks trapped inside the tower are important members of San Francisco society. And as the fire begins raging during the skyscraper's opening ceremony, it's up to a fire chief and the building's architect to rescue everyone inside and limit damage while also making sure the tower's crooked contractor gets what's coming to him. And the massive cast boasts everyone from Fred Astaire to O.J. Simpson.

• Starring: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway
• Director: John Guillermin and Irwin Allen
• Year: 1974
• Runtime: 165 minutes
• Rating: PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 70%

After decades of B-movie status, films about guys with capes were slowly adopted into the mainstream. The genre really got going when Marvel Studios started laying the groundwork for its cinematic universe, with individual solo movies to both set the stage and whet audience appetite for the single greatest superhero team-up possible. For the Avengers' long-awaited big-screen debut, Marvel hired a director who really understood comic books — Joss Whedon — and assembled a cast of acclaimed actors who were like the Avengers of movie stars, such as Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Mark Ruffalo as the Incredible Hulk, and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, to name a few. No expense was spared making a movie that was limitless in terms of superpowers, earth-shattering fights, things from space — like a comic book come to life. "The Avengers" (and its many follow-ups) is now the standard by which all other big, fun superhero movies are judged.

• Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson
• Director: Joss Whedon
• Year: 2012
• Runtime: 143 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

It took nearly 40 years for Hollywood to deliver a sequel to probably the best movie ever made about aviation, the Cold War, naval camaraderie, and non-wartime military skirmishes. And somehow, it was worth the wait. "Top Gun: Maverick" is just as good as the original "Top Gun" in terms of drama, thrills, character dynamics, and captivating, breathtaking aerial action sequences. 

The film catches up with Tom Cruise's character from the first film, hotshot U.S. Navy pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, still working and cheating death as a test pilot and go-to flying ace, avoiding promotion because it would keep him out of the air. He's enlisted to train a group of young and cocky pilots for an extremely dangerous mission, one of whom is the son of his longtime rival turned ally. But really, "Top Gun: Maverick" is about the dogfights and plane shots, and it's got plenty of unbelievable scenes of that nature.

• Starring: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly
• Director: Joseph Kosinski
• Year: 2022
• Runtime: 131 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

"Drive" — it's the film that made romantic hero and teen idol Ryan Gosling into a serious actor (by presenting him as the most serious-to-the-point-of-inscrutable character in film history). It also made millions of fans want to rock a sweet satin jacket with a scorpion on the back. Gosling spends a lot of "Drive" silently brooding and the rest of it defying death and evading trouble, both as a movie stuntman and a getaway driver for hire (only ever identified as "Driver"). He's also developed a crush on Irene, a married neighbor whose recently paroled husband asks Driver to help out on a heist, but it all goes awry, leaving the driver to use his driving, survival, and tough guy skills to protect himself and Irene.

• Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac
• Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
• Year: 2011
• Runtime: 100 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Diminishing returns is generally the name of the game with long-running film franchises. But according to critics, "Furious 7" is the most acclaimed film in the entire "Fast and Furious" series. After all, by 2015, filmmakers had stopped taking themselves and the movies so seriously, embracing the chaos and action-packed silliness that made the first few entries in the series critical duds. This time out, the de facto family of drag racers/international criminal masterminds must reconvene to rescue a kidnapped and powerful hacker while also dealing with a British mercenary looking for revenge. And for some reason, of course, this involves a lot of physics-defying car chases, car leaps, car stunts, and car crashes.

• Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson
• Director: James Wan
• Year: 2015
• Runtime: 137 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%

It doesn't seem like a cross between "Groundhog Day" and "Independence Day" would work, but director Doug Liman crafted "Edge of Tomorrow" into one of the most creative action-adventure movies in years. In this smart and chaotic sci-fi/military caper, seemingly indestructible aliens called Mimics terrorize Earth until they have to square off against Maj. William Craig. They kill him too — except not really because Craig gets caught in a time loop and keeps returning to the moment just before his death, fighting and dying — and becoming a better fighter — each time. "Edge of Tomorrow" is a video game-inspired action movie with a moral: If at first you don't succeed (at killing aliens), try, try again (to kill those aliens).

• Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Brendan Gleeson
• Director: Doug Liman
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 113 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

Bursting with color and as proudly goofy as it is strong-fisted, "Superman" ushered in the age of the big-budget superhero movie, and to do so, that means that the film is pretty darn good. After all, filmmakers spared no expense and let their imaginations wander within the extremely familiar "Superman" mythos. Here, newcomer Christopher Reeve plays Superman as the gee-whiz Boy Scout that he is and Clark Kent as a naive doofus (and he's incredibly believable in these completely different personas). Meanwhile, the Man of Steel squares off against Lex Luthor, played by Oscar winner Gene Hackman with charm, depth, and disarming humor. And then there are the action sequences, not the least of which features Superman spinning the Earth backwards to reverse time. Up, up, and away.

• Starring: Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder
• Director: Richard Donner
• Year: 1978
• Runtime: 143 minutes
• Rating: PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

By their very nature, video games can almost always beat action movies in terms of thrilling, explosive moments. After all, they're interactive and goal-oriented, while watching a movie is a passive experience. However, Edgar Wright's adaptation of comic book "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" is the best cinematic representation of a video game, with all of its unique tropes, rules, and dazzlement in film form. 

Michael Cera plays a mild-mannered guitarist in a garage band who, in order to win the heart of the captivating and mysterious Ramona Flowers, must defeat her "seven evil exes" in one-on-one battle. He does so in spectacular, game-form, delivering massively heavy and cartoonish blows to the point where his vanquished enemies leave coins in their wake. Plus, the movie features an all-star cast, from hilarious comedians like Aubrey Plaza to Marvel stars like Brie Larson.

• Starring: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Chris Evans
• Director: Edgar Wright
• Year: 2010
• Runtime: 112 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%

The term "hero" gets thrown around a lot when discussing the near-superhuman levels of punching, kicking, and shooting exhibited by movie stars in action flicks. But then there are the protagonists of action movies about real historical events. If you want to see a story of actual heroism, then check out "Dunkirk," which concerns a particularly difficult episode of combat during World War II. In May 1940, Germany's invasion of France trapped Allied troops in the French coastal area of Dunkirk. The film — with a cast of both up-and-coming and long-established British actors — dramatizes in realistic, unflinching detail (under the guidance of director Christopher Nolan) the novel, brave, and truly heroic efforts put forth by British and French forces to evacuate 330,000 soldiers.

• Starring: Tom Hardy, Harry Styles, Kenneth Branagh
• Director: Christopher Nolan
• Year: 2017
• Runtime: 107 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

Who would have thought that Sylvester Stallone could make a tragic, thought-provoking movie about the dangers of violence and how war destroys a man? Of course, the "Rambo" sequels that followed "First Blood" completely missed the point of that first movie, which is a psychologically and physically realistic action movie about a man a decade removed from the Vietnam War still fighting it internally and then externally. And after Rambo's mental break in Washington state, it's up to his old commanding officer to save the on-the-run ex-soldier from himself and authorities.

• Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Brian Dennehy
• Director: Ted Kotcheff
• Year: 1982
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

Christopher Nolan's trippy opus doesn't take place in the real world, per se, but largely in the world of dreams. Master chief Dom Cobb can enter people's dreams, and in "Inception," he's hired to plant an idea in someone's mind as part of an artful criminal undertaking. The film is grounded not in reality but in the surreal and random world of dreams, which means we're treated to new and unpredictable ways in which people interact with the physical plane. "Inception" is visually stunning, with its physics-eschewing fight sequences and fluidity of time. Of course, it's a mind-bender too. The viewer can never be quite sure if the action is taking place in waking life, a dream, or a dream inside of a dream.

• Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Elliot Page, Tom Hardy
• Director: Christopher Nolan
• Year: 2010
• Runtime: 148 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

James Cameron took an entertaining if simple horror movie in space put forth by Ridley Scott with "Alien" in 1979 and expanded the mythology of the Xenomorph universe to create a terrifying battle between humans and aliens, the outcome of which is never certain. It's claustrophobic like a thriller, but it's also a science fiction movie because of all the space and, well, alien action. Cameron's "Aliens" also further developed the most butt-kicking action movie character of all time — the unstoppable and unflappable Ellen Ripley, portrayed by Sigourney Weaver in an Academy Award-nominated performance. Suddenly, the entire action genre wasn't just about angry fighting dudes anymore.

• Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn
• Director: James Cameron
• Year: 1986
• Runtime: 137 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

Director John McTiernan mixed elements of war movies with horror and science fiction and wound up with one of the most rollicking, thrilling, and unpredictable action flicks ever made. An elite military squad, led by Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer, is supposed to track down a hostage kidnapped by rebels. While avoiding attack by insurgents and the natural dangers of the jungle is enough to worry about, the team also has to deal with something even nastier — the gigantic and wily alien that's tracking them for sport.

• Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura
• Director: John McTiernan
• Year: 1987
• Runtime: 107 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%

Action movie genius John Woo and star Chow Yun-Fat grabbed everyone's attention when they teamed up for the enchanting and rough crime epic "The Killer." Chow plays Jeffrey, renowned as the very best assassin in the criminal underworld ruled by the Hong Kong Triad. He actually loves what he does, filling his chosen targets with lead for large sums of money, but he rejects his profession after an innocent nightclub singer becomes collateral damage in one of his hits. He decides to take just one more job to pay for restorative eye surgery for the blinded singer, but then he's double-crossed and has to team up with a dirty cop to even the score — which means a lot of gun battles shot like they were scenes in a beautiful art film.

• Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Danny Lee, Kenneth Tsang
• Director: John Woo
• Year: 1989
• Runtime: 110 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

Based on the classic (and bleak) graphic novel of the same name, with a script by the Wachowskis ("The Matrix"), "V for Vendetta" offers a chilling vision of the near future. Set in 2028 in England under fascistic rule, a vigilante known only as V, who wears a cape and a creepy mask in the likeness of Guy Fawkes (perpetuator of a royal assassination attempt in 1605), fights back against the brutal police and police state, engaging in speedy hand-to-hand combat in the streets. After he rescues a state-run TV employee from crooked, vicious cops, they team up to wage an all out revolution against tyranny.

• Starring: Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, John Hurt
• Director: James McTeigue
• Year: 2006
• Runtime: 132 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 73%

Edgar Wright is best known for directing "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz," and "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" — movies that are predominantly comedies but laced with plenty of innovative action. With "Baby Driver," he makes the leap to full-blown action, and the result is as frenetic and assured as Baby's driving. 

Ansel Elgort plays the title character, a young but very skilled driver recruited to handle the getaway car for a heist squad. The unreal stunts in "Baby Driver" make the film deliriously fun, and the filmmaker's extensive movie knowledge and vocabulary inform his self-assured direction with a mishmash of homages and techniques gleaned from other films, making for a thoroughly satisfying assault on the senses. The end result is pretty much everything audiences could want out of an action film and a car movie.

• Starring: Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Jamie Foxx
• Director: Edgar Wright
• Year: 2017
• Runtime: 113 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

Sometimes the problem with comic book movies is that they take themselves so darn seriously, forgetting the whole point of their source material — they're supposed to be ridiculously fun ... and also a little ridiculous. "Guardians of the Galaxy" embraced its DNA to deliver one of the most purely enjoyable comic book-based movies of all time. It's as much a comedy as it is an action ride through outer space, with Chris Pratt perfectly cast as the funny and fearless Peter Quill (or "Star-Lord," as no one will call him). Add in a space prison, a telepathic arrow, '70s rock classics, a foul-mouthed raccoon, a talking tree, and one epic space battle and hand-to-hand bout after another, and the end result is a joyous, self-conscious blast.

• Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista
• Director: James Gunn
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 121 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

The original "Jurassic Park" was a revelation in 1993, popularizing a sub-genre known as the "techno-thriller." Pioneered by "Jurassic Park" author Michael Crichton, these fables inevitably involve technology run amok to the shock and horror of the humans that created it. But, of course, that's all a lot of fun to watch, especially when the technology is dinosaurs brought back to life via cloning. And now, said dinos are trying to kill people in a rainstorm, spitting venom in a bad guy's face, chasing kids, and ripping other dinosaurs to ribbons. Add in a majestic, unforgettable score by John Williams and enthusiastic direction by Steven Spielberg, and you've got a modern masterpiece of popcorn cinema.

• Starring: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum
• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Year: 1993
• Runtime: 126 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

The medium of film was still in its infancy when "King Kong" hit theaters in 1933, one of the first-ever action films and also one of the first "big" movies, influential on the many spectacular blockbusters that would follow over the decades. The rudimentary special effects are still impressive in this ambitious first telling of a gigantic ape taken from his island home to be exploited as a curiosity. Then Kong gets angry, escapes, and climbs the Empire State Building, memorably swatting away at the tiny airplanes trying to dislodge him. Never has a fable about man's desire but inability to conquer nature been such a sensory overload.

• Starring: Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot, Robert Armstrong
• Director: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack
• Year: 1933
• Runtime: 100 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

"Top Gun" just might be the ultimate dad movie and the ultimate '80s movie, a mixture of era-appropriate muscly American patriotism and cocksure guys flying military jets, complete with smirks and self-congratulatory cheers the whole way through. Tom Cruise permanently put himself on the A-list as Maverick, a flight school attendee who thinks he's better than his superiors and classmates, all just as bold and brash as he is (and with names like Ice, Goose, Merlin, and Viper). Maverick proves his mettle, however, when forced into an active and sensitive military skirmish, with some tricky flight work involved. And that's why "Top Gun" is one of the best action movies ever made — the quick-cut, stunt plane footage makes for some of the most exciting, seemingly impossibly captured scenes ever put on film.

• Starring: Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer
• Director: Tony Scott
• Year: 1986
• Runtime: 109 minutes
• Rating: PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 58%

Reboots generally don't work — and even if they do, they're still doomed to pale in comparison to the original thing. Not so with "Mad Max: Fury Road," which expands and improves on the "Mad Max" universe with a nonstop ride through the familiar, harrowing, post-apocalyptic wasteland on modified car/tank/war machines piloted by crazed, survival-driven nomad warriors. "Mad Max" creator George Miller returned to direct "Fury Road," and his 35-plus years of experience as a filmmaker show up in an action movie that's both endlessly thrilling and emotionally compelling. It helps that master actors Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron are along for the ride, to say nothing of "Doof Warrior," a guy who stands on a moving vehicle and plays a fire-spewing electric guitar and who just might be dystopian cinema's most memorable character.

• Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult
• Director: George Miller
• Year: 2015
• Runtime: 120 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

Following their successful, for-the-ages team-up in the crime movie masterwork "The Killer," filmmaker John Woo and action star Chow Yun-Fat reconvened three years later to make "Hard Boiled." Here, Chow plays an impossibly awesome (and artistically violent) legend on the right side of the law, although Inspector "Tequila" Yuen isn't exactly by-the-book. He goes undercover to bust illegal gun dealers and does whatever he needs to do to get his man. His skills are stretched to their limit when, after his partner is killed in a fire fight with gun smugglers, he teams up with an undercover cop, and they infiltrate the very dangerous Hong Kong Triad. "Hard Boiled" is exactly that, a slow-burning, police drama with plenty of unpredictable turns and a spectacular climax.

• Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Philip Chan
• Director: John Woo
• Year: 1992
• Runtime: 126 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

In the mid-20th century, when international cinema didn't get a lot of attention in the English-speaking world, Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa earned universal, well-deserved praise for his beautiful, haunting, lyrical, and tautly shot films. And among his best works is the 1954 adventure epic "Seven Samurai." 

In a rural, rundown Japanese village in the year 1586, the local farmers are threatened by vicious bandits, who plan to attack and steal the entire harvest. Their way of life, if not lives, are in jeopardy, prompting elder Gisaku to suggest hiring seven samurai for protection and defense. As the village is too poor to pay the warriors in anything other than food, Gisaku suggests finding the hungriest samurai because they're the ones who will fight the hardest. And, as proven by Kurosawa's battle sequences, Gisaku is correct.

• Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Yoshio Inaba
• Director: Akira Kurosawa
• Year: 1954
• Runtime: 208 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Westerns used to be thought of as kid stuff. Back in the '30s and '40s, children loved Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and other good guys in white hats singing along the trail as they foiled train bandits and horse thieves. The real Old West was nothing like that — it was probably more akin to the absolutely gonzo, lawless nightmare world of Sam Peckinpah's Texas-Mexico border-fight epic "The Wild Bunch." 

A huge influence on latter-day filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, "The Wild Bunch" embraced blood, violence, and moral ambiguity. In 1969, movies by and large did not show blood — guys got shot and they fell down. "The Wild Bunch" showed (and kind of celebrated) the real consequences of violence with its multiple, never-ending shootout sprees. (One guy's got a machine gun that more properly belongs on a warship.) But sometimes cowboys and gunslingers had to shoot each other, and that made the good guys a little bad, and the bad guys a little good.

• Starring: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan
• Director: Sam Peckinpah
• Year: 1969
• Runtime: 142 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

"Train to Busan" is a zombie movie, but it's not totally a horror movie. It's more of a chase movie, like so many great action movies of the past, except in this case the bad guys trying to defeat the good guys are flesh-hungry members of the undead. Oh, and there's little to no escape for Seok Woo (Gong Yoo), his daughter, or the many other characters because "Train to Busan" is about the early stage of a zombie outbreak, and it takes place on a train. That's a recipe for an intense, breathless action film.

• Starring: Gong Yoo, Ma Dong-seok, Choi Woo-sik
• Director: Yeon Sang-ho
• Year: 2016
• Runtime: 118 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

In 2002, as the James Bond franchise was slumping its way through an era of stale, lazily delivered clichés, there came a refreshingly modern, wholly American spy movie that reflected a more current environment of geopolitics. That's right, we're talking about "The Bourne Identity." 

As Bond's Cold War era slipped into history, a sense of "what now?" developed on the world stage as the war on terror and age of surveillance emerged, embodied by Matt Damon's ultra-trained superwarrior who doesn't know his own name but is aware of his own incredible fighting abilities. Thanks to the paranoid, shaky camerawork and urgent pace established by director Doug Liman, the audience rarely knows more than Jason Bourne does, and as a result, they never quite get to take a breath either.

• Starring: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper
• Director: Doug Liman
• Year: 2002
• Runtime: 113 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%

Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" is a two-part epic tale of revenge, centered on a hero of near-superhuman abilities and unrelenting focus but with enough vulnerabilities and human motivation to make audiences root for her. The Bride goes on a quest to locate and murder every member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad that left her for dead (and in a coma) years earlier. The trail ultimately leads to the gang's leader, her ex-lover Bill, but along the way, the Bride must subdue each of her enemies in wildly choreographed fight sequences, any number of which would be the centerpiece of a semi-decent action movie. But "Kill Bill" is loaded with them, from the suburban home battle with Vernita Green to the acrobatic melee with O-Ren Ishii's Crazy 88 in Japan to the final showdown with Bill.

• Starring: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu
• Director: Quentin Tarantino
• Year: 2003, 2004
• Runtime: 247 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85% and 84%

Not many action movies about a city-wide gang war evoke memories of Greek epics read in high school literature classes, but "The Warriors" confidently straddles the world of fight films and literary importance. Told over the course of one harrowing night, "The Warriors" is about the titular Coney Island gang who travel to a huge, middle-of-the-night criminal summit ... which ends in chaos when a messianic gang leader is killed. Mistakenly identified as the culprits, the Warriors have to find their way back home, negotiating enemy territory that's aggressively defended by New York's many other hoodlum collectives, many of them unique in appearance, such as the leather-clad Rogues, the purple-vest-and-fedora wearing Boppers, and the clown makeup- and pinstripe-sporting Baseball Furies.

• Starring: Michael Beck, James Remar, Lynne Thigpen
• Director: Walter Hill
• Year: 1979
• Runtime: 90 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

"Terminator 2," while a sequel of course, was one of the most expensive movies of all time. But the money is all up there on the screen, and that sheen suits the plot and feel of the story, with highly advanced robots traveling through time to alternately kill and rescue the future savior of the human race, John Connor. Especially well executed is the motorcycle sequence, which involves a high-speed chase, a semi-truck, and shotguns. And every time a puddle of liquid metal reshapes itself into that evil Terminator? It's still cool and still impressive, even after 30 years. People that don't even like action movies can appreciate this one, thanks to the stellar pacing of director James Cameron — action, catch a breath, escalated action, a breath, climax. That, combined with the high stakes of the plot (that kid had to save humanity) and the fact that by the end we're all somehow crying over the friendship between a boy and robot with sunglasses, makes for a blockbuster for the ages.

• Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong
• Director: James Cameron
• Year: 1991
• Runtime: 136 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

"Jaws" — arguably the first film in the populist, thrill-packed, summer blockbuster mold — is what made Steven Spielberg into a household name. At one time, "Jaws" was the highest-grossing movie of all time and for good reason. The shark attack sequences are expertly shot, utterly terrifying, and completely surprising, which is quite a feat because the parts of "Jaws" where the titular shark isn't attacking beach-goers or grizzled boat-borne shark hunters are loaded with almost overwhelming dread. (That may be in large part to composer John Williams' iconic, simple, two-note musical motif). Viewers are at full attention throughout "Jaws," whether there's blood in the water, an animal tearing through ships, or a foolish mayor telling beachgoers that they don't have anything to worry about.

• Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw
• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Year: 1975
• Runtime: 124 minutes
• Rating: PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy is really more like one long movie, but the second installment is definitely the best chapter, showing the result of Bruce Wayne's rise and training in "Batman Begins" and what will play out in "The Dark Knight Rises." Indeed, "The Dark Knight" is arguably the best superhero movie of all time, with a tone that reflects the character and shows utter faithfulness to the comics upon which it's based. One could argue that it's a psychological drama first and a superhero movie second, as Christian Bale does a lot of brooding and quiet acting in between unbelievable, high-speed Batmobile chase sequences, Harvey Dent going off the rails, and Heath Ledger giving a chilling and unforgettable performance as the not-funny-at-all Joker (while also blowing stuff up real good).

• Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart
• Director: Christopher Nolan
• Year: 2008
• Runtime: 152 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

By the mid-'90s, action movies were dying under their own weight — huge budgets meant lots of explosions but not a lot of depth or character. Then along came "Speed," Jan de Bont's fat-trimmed, all-killer-no-filler thrill ride couched in a simple premise. If a Los Angeles city bus slows to under 50 mph, a bomb planted on board explodes. "Speed" breaks with form to make for lots of surprises (a lead actor dies early in the film, for example), and the plot necessitates absolutely non-stop action. But there's also a lot of humanity in "Speed." Everyday people from many different walks of life are thrust together onto the city bus, and they come together as a team to rise up and meet the challenge. Of course, there are also plenty of explosions, buses jumping over chasms, and death-defying leaps, along with Keanu Reeves as a newly minted action hero and a star-making performance by Sandra Bullock.

• Starring: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper
• Director: Jan de Bont
• Year: 1994
• Runtime: 115 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

Part of the reason "Die Hard" works so well is its cinematic context. Action movies at the time all tended to feature stoic dudes with huge muscles laying waste with boulder-sized fists and machine guns, never doubting their utter alpha maleness and barely cracking a smile. Contrast that with "Die Hard," in which Bruce Willis is a relatively average-sized, normal guy who cracks wise and expresses fear and self-doubt as he almost single-handedly beats back terrorists to literally save Christmas. It helps that Willis, best known at the time for the TV detective dramedy "Moonlighting," was incredibly charismatic — but let us not forget that "Die Hard" also gave us a breakout performance from the beloved Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber, one of the all-time great movie villains. Yippie-kay-yay.

• Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia
• Director: John McTiernan
• Year: 1988
• Runtime: 131 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%