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 -
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 -
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 -
23 new
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
2015, in 2 top lists Check -
25 new
Commando
1985, in 2 top lists Check -
31 new
Casino Royale
2006, in 7 top lists Check -
34 new
The Rock
1996, in 5 top lists Check -
37 new
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
2011, in 2 top lists Check -
47 new
Inception
2010, in 21 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 -
51 new
Edge of Tomorrow
2014, in 3 top lists Check -
58 new
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2014, in 3 top lists Check -
60 new
Wonder Woman
2017, in 4 top lists Check -
62 new
Goldfinger
1964, in 15 top lists Check -
65 new
Iron Man
2008, in 7 top lists Check -
68 new
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
1989, in 16 top lists Check -
70 new
Jûsan-nin no shikaku
2010 — a.k.a. 13 Assassins, in 1 top list Check -
81 new
Big Trouble in Little China
1986, in 3 top lists Check -
82 new
The Fifth Element
1997, in 7 top lists Check -
83 new
Kingsman: The Secret Service
2014, in 3 top lists Check -
86 new
Hardcore Henry
2015, in 0 top lists Check -
98 new
The Avengers
2012, in 7 top lists Check -
99 new
Cliffhanger
1993, in 3 top lists Check -
101 new
Ronin
1998, in 1 top list Check -
105 new
Independence Day
1996, in 8 top lists Check -
107 new
Batman
1989, in 9 top lists Check -
114 new
Die Hard: With a Vengeance
1995 — a.k.a. Die Hard with a Vengeance, in 4 top lists Check -
118 new
Air Force One
1997, in 2 top lists Check -
119 new
Captain America: Civil War
2016, in 2 top lists Check -
123 new
The Mummy
1999, in 4 top lists Check -
124 new
The Expendables 2
2012, in 1 top list Check -
127 new
Xia nü
1971 — a.k.a. A Touch of Zen, in 15 top lists Check -
131 new
National Treasure
2004, in 3 top lists Check -
133 new
Highlander
1986, in 2 top lists Check -
138 new
Ying xiong
2002 — a.k.a. Hero, in 6 top lists Check
Last updated on Jan 7, 2024; source