Rotten Tomatoes' 140 Essential Action Movies
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Welcome to our guide to the most Essential Action Movies! Where everyone enters…and only 140 leave. Which sounds like a lot, but when you’re considering thousands of action movies, it’s only the most thrilling, the most exciting, the most brutal, and the influential who make the cut!
Action is a wide-open genre and term, and we endeavoured to include something from every era, style, and movement of action movies. We have the classics (Die Hard, The French Connection), modern fan favourites (Hardcore Henry, John Wick), superhero blockbusters (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), and plenty from the macho ’80s (Commando, First Blood). Not to mention some action genre crossovers: sci-fi (Equilibrium), horror (They Live), and, of course, comedy (Beverly Hills Cop).
Internationally, we reach as far as Hong Kong (Police Story, Hard-Boiled), Australia (The Road Warrior), England (Kingsman: The Secret Service), France (La Femme Nikita), Indonesia (The Raid: Redemption), Korea (The Villainess), and beyond.
These are the action movies whose influence can be seen in the films that followed. They spawned franchises, pushed back against time, defined and even expanded the genre. These are the badass movies that make audiences feel cooler from having seen them. In the interest of keeping the Essential Movies as tight and pure as possible, we excluded the genres of war, sports, Western, and samurai. Otherwise, a movie’s Tomatometer score was not a factor, so long as the plot was kicked forward in a hail of bullets, car chases, fist fights, and martial arts wizardry.
Now, it’s time to pound faces and popcorn, with the 140 Essential Action Movies to watch now!
Pssst, want to check out the Rotten Tomatoes' 140 Essential Action Movies list in our new look?
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1 new
Mad Max: Fury Road
2015, in 23 top lists Check -
2 new
Die Hard
1988, in 21 top lists Check -
3 new
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
1991, in 27 top lists Check -
4 new
The Matrix
1999, in 30 top lists Check -
5 new
Lat sau san taam
1992 — a.k.a. Hard Boiled, in 12 top lists Check -
6 new
Aliens
1986, in 24 top lists Check -
7 new
Raiders of the Lost Ark
1981 — a.k.a. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, in 29 top lists Check -
8 new
Mission: Impossible - Fallout
2018, in 5 top lists -
9 new
Serbuan maut
2011 — a.k.a. The Raid: Redemption, in 2 top lists Check -
10 new
Heat
1995, in 23 top lists Check -
11 new
Mad Max 2
1981 — a.k.a. The Road Warrior, in 14 top lists Check -
12 new
Total Recall
1990, in 8 top lists Check -
13 new
The Bourne Ultimatum
2007, in 9 top lists Check -
14 new
Predator
1987, in 9 top lists Check -
15 new
Wo hu cang long
2000 — a.k.a. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, in 27 top lists Check -
16 new
John Wick
2014, in 3 top lists Check -
17 new
Jui kuen II
1994 — a.k.a. The Legend of Drunken Master, in 4 top lists Check -
18 new
Speed
1994, in 9 top lists Check -
19 new
Léon
1994 — a.k.a. Léon: The Professional, in 23 top lists Check -
20 new
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
2003, in 18 top lists Check -
21 new
Gladiator
2000, in 25 top lists Check -
22 new
The Terminator
1984, in 24 top lists Check -
23 new
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
2015, in 2 top lists Check -
24 new
First Blood
1982, in 5 top lists Check -
25 new
Commando
1985, in 2 top lists Check -
26 new
Enter the Dragon
1973, in 14 top lists Check -
27 new
Serbuan maut 2: Berandal
2014 — a.k.a. The Raid 2, in 2 top lists Check -
28 new
Dip huet seung hung
1989 — a.k.a. The Killer, in 16 top lists Check -
29 new
Jing wu ying xiong
1994 — a.k.a. Fist of Legend, in 2 top lists Check -
30 new
Baby Driver
2017, in 3 top lists Check -
31 new
Casino Royale
2006, in 7 top lists Check -
32 new
John Wick: Chapter 2
2017, in 0 top lists Check -
33 new
RoboCop
1987, in 15 top lists Check -
34 new
The Rock
1996, in 5 top lists Check -
35 new
Lethal Weapon
1987, in 5 top lists Check -
36 new
Fast Five
2011, in 2 top lists Check -
37 new
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
2011, in 2 top lists Check -
38 new
The Dark Knight
2008, in 27 top lists Check -
39 new
To Live and Die in L.A.
1985, in 2 top lists Check -
40 new
Face/Off
1997, in 7 top lists Check -
41 new
Ip Man
2008, in 4 top lists Check -
42 new
The Bourne Identity
2002, in 5 top lists Check -
43 new
Dredd
2012, in 0 top lists Check -
44 new
Avengers: Endgame
2019, in 8 top lists Check -
45 new
Minority Report
2002, in 8 top lists Check -
46 new
Braveheart
1995, in 19 top lists Check -
47 new
Inception
2010, in 21 top lists Check -
48 new
Black Panther
2018, in 9 top lists Check -
49 new
The Fugitive
1993, in 8 top lists Check -
50 new
X2
2003 — a.k.a. X2: X-Men United, in 5 top lists Check
Last updated on Jan 7, 2024; source