The Best Action Movies on Netflix Right Now By Jacob Kienlen and Connor Sheppard December 20, 2020 10:25AM PST You know what gets our blood pumping? The organization says it’s “still working to maintain our Franklin space” as the pandemic drags on. Ben Affleck famously turned his career around with his 2007 directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, but he proved he wasn’t a one-trick pony with his excellent 2010 film. Steven Soderbergh directs this razor-sharp, tight action thriller starring Gina Carano as a black ops agent who is sold out by everyone around her…and so she kicks some ass. Ethan Hawke stars in this wicked Western as a man who crosses paths with a sociopathic Marshal, played by John Travolta, and the great supporting cast includes Taissa Farmiga, Karen Gillan, James Ransone, and Toby Huss. (Plus, you get to watch Nazis getting punched all day long.) Donnie Yen is a sacred name in the martial arts branch of cinema appreciation, and you can see why with three Ip Man films now available on Netflix. The Best Animated Film Oscar for 2018 went to this unexpected treat, one of the best superhero movies of the modern era. Raise your game, Pilgrim! You have likely never seen a movie quite like this 2004 martial arts action-comedy, Stephen Chow’s masterpiece. You can watch as much as you … This is kind of like a southeast Asian action all star team up. The entire beloved trilogy is on Netflix, but the first film remains the undisputed best of the bunch, a perfect blend of science fiction, action, and clever comedy. Remember when action stars would come out of nowhere and become household names overnight? RELATED: 10 Best Action … One-part sci-fi flick and one-part martial arts film, The Matrix redefined action movies in the late 90s with never-seen-before visual effects. This chaos, a movie that no one would call great — not even the people who made it — but that does certainly scratch an itch for B-movie insanity with an A-movie budget. The film’s structure is at first confounding and ultimately pretty satisfying, following Adkins’ Cain Burgess, fresh out of prison, to a local pub where he holds the men responsible for his horrifying prison term to task for their bad deeds, jumping from flashback to flashback while he holds them at gunpoint. All rights reserved. What’s true of any social-media endeavor remains the same on this app: Give people the space to talk, and they will say too much. The concept is simple and elegant -- after an environmental experiment turns the world into a frozen wasteland, the citizens of a never-halting train live in literally compartmentalized economic bubbles depending on what class they were riding on the day the world ended. This is not only one of the best Bond movies, it’s one of the best action movies of the ‘90s. And then see it again. It’s the story of the Battle of Kamdesh, one of the most brutal in the Afghanistan War, as the Taliban assaulted a poorly-placed base in the middle of a valley. Fox became an international star as Marty McFly, the kid who went back in time and nearly erased his existence. Co-written and directed by Ben Wheately, this British black comedy has a great ensemble cast that includes Armie Hammer, Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Sharlto Copely, and more. -- Haleigh Foutch, Cast: Donnie Yen, Simon Yam, Lynn Hung, Siu-Wong Fan, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, This 2008 martial arts essential stars Donnie Yen as Ip Man, the legendary Wing Chun master who went on to train Bruce Lee. Below we’ve curated a list of the best action movies currently available to stream on Netflix, from the more adventure-tinged playful flicks to big-budget superhero movies to straight-up kung fu films. John ‘Ecstasy’ Fletcher of Whodini Is Dead at 56. Watch as much as you want, anytime you want. You’ve got Frank Grillo playing hero with a baby in one hand and a space-blaster on the other, Antonio Fargas as a Vietnam vet who calls everybody “bitch”, Iko Uwais and Yaya Ruhain beating the shit out of giant aliens, and there’s even an honest-to-god Kaiju battle. And again while not as satisfying as some of McKay’s other films, this one certainly isn’t bad. So this first Pierce Brosnan vehicle was a comeback for 007, and what a fun, glorious, underrated comeback it was. Mel Gibson may be one of the most disliked movie stars in the world, but he’s actually given some intense, interesting performances since his fall from celebrity stardom, particularly in this Cannes-premiered 2016 thriller about a father whose estranged daughter gets caught up in a very dangerous situation. It’s not a traditional action film, but there are enough shoot-outs to qualify for this section. So now you can argue with your friends and family about which of them is the best, or impress them with your knowledge of trivia, or just drag Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull across hot, alien coals. Sadly, Netflix does not have Gerard Butler’s entire Mike Banning trilogy available, but it does have the first of his Fallen series. This submarine thriller made hardly a ripple (sorry) when it was released in 2014, but it’s a solid, old-fashioned action flick, featuring tense direction by Kevin Macdonald and a reliably strong lead performance from Jude Law. The action choreography alone is breathtaking, and maybe watching this cut will encourage you to seek out the 123-minute Berlin cut (this one is 108) or the even longer one known as the “Chinese Cut,” which runs 130 minutes. – Matt Goldberg, Writers: Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, Cast: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Dylan McDermott, Angela Bassett, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, and Cole Hauser, Boy, I hope you like head-stabbing because Michael Banning is one of those "particular set of skills" guys, and above all, those skills involve stabbing some motherfuckers in the head. Co-directed by Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto, Headshot is every bit as good as the more widely famous Indonesian fight films, The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2, which are actually directed by Gareth Evans, a Welshman. It’s a lean, mean fighting machine. Some might say they're more fantasy epics than action movies, yet every … The former flames have come together in a League, and Scott has to face them down like a series of videogame bosses before he can take on the final challenger. The film is a cinematic mash-up of Japanese anime and gamer culture, intended for the crowd who grew up on Nintendo and comic books, but it brings plenty of laughs all the same. Top action movies to watch on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime & other Streaming services, out on DVD/Blu-ray or in … The plot doesn’t really matter — there’s something about experiments and lost memories and whatever — as this is all an exercise in style. Netflix … With his daughter being threatened, Grillo’s character has to find out as fast as possible who betrayed him while staying in constant motion and getting in scrapes around the city of L.A. The film takes viewers on an emotional, fun … On the run, she must gather intel and unravel a conspiracy before it’s too late. What could go wrong? Once the aliens make contact, the film ricochets through settings and characters at a breakneck pace, packing in a paperback book series worth of sci-fi lunacy into a single feature film that travels from subterranean tunnels to the nuclear wasteland of Los Angeles to an alien ship, and all the way to Laos, where Mark teams with rebels to battle the alien threat. -- Haleigh Foutch. – Adam Chitwood, Cast: Armie Hammer, Sharlto Copley, Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Jack Reynor, Sam Riley, and Noah Taylor, What if an entire movie took place during a Mexican Standoff? Making almost $700 million worldwide, this is the kind of blockbuster that the MCU sort of pushed out — a crazy, end-of-the-world disaster movie with a Roland Emmerich aesthetic and ridiculous special effects. Oscar Isaac leads a group of soldiers into an illegal job to rip off a notorious drug lord and, well, things don’t go as planned. ), and when it comes down to him battling Yang’s warrior ruler to protect Qingping from becoming a concubine and to take back control of the prized city Jingzhou, the fate of both kingdoms is thrown into upheaval. I’m talking about 1995’s GoldenEye, which was the first Bond movie to star Pierce Brosnan and found director Martin Campbell tackling a story that wrestles with the relevance of a spy like James Bond in a post-Cold War world. But Banning is called to the highest level of service once again after terrorists overtake the White House with President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) inside. It’s not our best gift idea, but sometimes it’s the only option. These are not traditional biopics or martial arts movies, working as a hybrid of period piece and action. Ti West (The House of the Devil) wrote and directed this tight little Western that barely got released in theaters, so most Netflix subscribers probably haven’t seen it. Let Ari (Grande) and Ari (Aster) Make Something Weird Together. Shadow is a wuxia work of art. From the sexually charged fight with Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) to James Bond driving a freaking tank, this movie is a high-octane blast. It appears the version of Wong Kar-wai’s brilliant action epic that’s on Netflix is the one that was heavily edited in the final days of Harvey Weinstein’s waning power, but it’s still good enough to make this list. With Wheelman, Grillo takes on a different kind of challenge for an action star -- a performance told almost entirely in close-up, from the confines of a single vehicle. The plot may be overheated macho garbage, but there’s an 11-minute centerpiece sequence in this Chris Hemsworth vehicle involving a higher body count than most entire franchises that action fans simply need to see to believe. He can only continue to date her if he defeats her seven evil exes. Gucci Mane Freezes All Other Infants Out of the Baby Name Game. Listen, this movie has nothing on Michael Mann’s Manhunter, the first adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel called Red Dragon, but there are still things that make it worth a look when you’re flipping through your Netflix queue. This one includes some of the best screen work by Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, and Pete Postlethwaite. At its peak, it’s got some adrenaline-pumping lunacy that’s admirable. Third, it is just an unbelievable amount of fun, the kind of movie that you can watch again and again. This South Korean film centers on a man whose entirely family was murdered, and who sets out for vengeance by getting himself sent to the prison island where their killers — and a whole lot of other killers — are being kept in isolation. JOIN NOW Scripted by Endgame co-director Joe Russo, Extraction is a hardened (and extremely violent) actioner that follows a disillusioned mercenary who is tasked with escorting a young kidnapped boy out of Dhaka, Bangladesh. And if fight scenes are what you're looking for in a good action movie, there's no shortage in this one, which stages wall-to-wall combat in a breathless, relentlessly entertaining showcase. After the massive success of Casino Royale both critically and commercially, a sophomore slump for Daniel Craig’s take on 007 was kind of inevitable. In 2006, Wolfgang Petersen remade one of the most famous ones of all time, The Poseidon Adventure, once again gathering a cast of famous faces. These history-loaded Netflix movies bring all the drama, and their detailed story lines are worth a binge-worthy session. They tell the semi-true story of Ip Man, a legendary leader in the world of martial arts, who trained Bruce Lee. Oscar Isaac stars as Santiago "Pope" Garcia, a DEA agent who gets the old Special Forces band back together to rob a drug lord's jungle hideaway. Cast: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Alison Pill, Mark Webber, Johnny Simmons, Ellen Wong, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, and Jason Schwartzman. It’s right up there. In this vision of the future from the Alan Moore and David Lloyd graphic novel, an anarchist named V (Hugo Weaving) teams with a woman named Evey (Natalie Portman) to inspire the world to rise up. A wealthy martial artist living the dream life, Ip Man's life is thrown into chaos when the Japanese occupy his hometown during wartime. That’s essentially the premise of Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, which is a violent, R-rated good time. The crux of the film is the relationship between Miles, who’s not yet ready to lead, and an alternate universe Peter Parker, who’s going through a mid-life crisis and reluctantly mentors the young, new Spidey. The best feature film from Tjahjanto to date, The Night Comes for Us is a relentless showcase of action and carnage, rooted on the story of a criminal turned war criminal looking for a little redemption. This movie is ostensibly an action movie in which “the other guys” are the stars—in this case, a mild-mannered forensic accountant (Will Ferrell) and a hot-tempered detective who mistakenly shot Derek Jeter (Mark Wahlberg). – Adam Chitwood, Cast: Jin Zhang, Michelle Yeoh, Dave Bautista, Tony Jaa, Chrissie Chau, Kevin Cheng, The Donnie Yen-led Ip Man series is one of the great action franchises of our era, and with Master Z: Ip Man Legacy, it gets the ass-kicking spinoff it deserves. Are you looking for the best action movies on Netflix right now? It’s a legitimately great movie, not just for what it did for its genre and the future of its legendary super spy. Clubhouse Is Dangerously Close to Becoming Our New Internet Wasteland. List of the latest action movies in 2019 and the best action movies of 2018 & the 2010's. The movie follows Scott Pilgrim (Cera), a sweet if slightly selfish and misguided young man who falls for delivery girl Ramona Flowers (Winstead). Not only is everyone here excellent — especially, Ben Affleck, doing his best work since Gone Girl — but it’s the kind of tight action movie that Hollywood doesn’t really make that often anymore. Here are the best choices you could make with a working Netflix subscription if you’re jonesing to see a great action movie. Maggie Grace plays a Federal agent trying to stop them, and Toby Kebbell is a meteorologist who teams up with her to help. Scott’s comfortable with the video game framework, but the film is really about two people discovering they have to get over their own baggage if they’re going to find new love. Spider-Gwen, Spider-Ham, Spider-Man Noir all have different backgrounds and motivations, but they all rose above adversity to become the hero their world needed. And if you have yet to witness the action, adventure and excitement that Indiana Jones puts on display better than just about any other archaeologically themed feature franchise, this is your perfect opportunity to remedy that, especially since a fifth Spielberg film is due out in just a couple of years. One of his most career-defining films was this 1988 martial arts flick that made $50 million worldwide on a budget around 2-4% of that. Club has written critically about the movie; and (3) if it was a graded review, it received at least a “B.” Some newer (and much older) movies will be added over time as Netflix …