10 Best Action Movies Since ‘Mad Max: Fury Road,’ Ranked
No one will ever agree on what the best action movie of the 2010s was, but Mad Max: Fury Road might well be the one that most people would be likely to nominate. That doesn’t mean it has to be your favorite, but it’s not hard to see why it caused a stir critically (more than it did commercially) back in 2015, going to new heights for a series that had already been pretty iconic, as far as post-apocalyptic action movies were concerned (though admittedly, the first Mad Max is a bit more restrained).
But since Mad Max: Fury Road? Yeah, of course there have been other great action movies, and what follows are some of the very best. These ones might well be worthy competitors when it comes to crowning the best action movie of the last 10 to 15 years, and so long as their release date was after May 2015 (the month Mad Max: Fury Road came out), they’re worthy of being witnessed here.
10
‘John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum’ (2019)
Keanu Reeves showed he had it in him to be a great action star back in the 1990s, but perhaps his peak, as far as the genre was concerned, came a little later. John Wick gave him another character to play who could match Neo from The Matrix in terms of being iconic and intrinsically tied to the action genre, with each movie in the John Wick series getting a little wilder and sillier.
But the silliness was a good thing, and Reeves has always been able to pull off the right sort of performance here, being stoic and yet also fitting within the over-the-top world. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum had a clunky title, but it was otherwise an even better movie than the first two John Wick outings, delivering an abundance of varied and often spectacular action.
9
‘The Night Comes for Us’ (2018)
The Night Comes for Us is a movie that has precisely zero chill, but in a good way. It’s a relentless watch that features what feels like non-stop action, unfolding over a fairly lengthy two hours… lengthy considering the premise here is simple, since it’s just about an assassin who makes a never-ending series of enemies after saving the life of a young girl.
It’s an excuse to have a bunch of very violent fight scenes, one after another, and the effect is kind of exhausting, and also stomach-churning if you’re squeamish. It’s the next best thing to a third The Raid movie, seeing as that’s probably not ever going to happen, but there are some recognizable faces from both the first and second Raid movies here, and the action is comparably brutal and well-choreographed.
8
‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning’ (2023)
The seventh Mission: Impossible movie, Dead Reckoning, has quite a bit of what you’d expect from the series at such a late stage, but it’s a case of things not being broke and therefore not being in need of fixing. The eighth movie, The Final Reckoning, didn’t get the memo in this regard, and sort of got away from what worked in Dead Reckoning just because the seventh film didn’t perform well financially, but then that resulted in The Final Reckoning doing worse critically and also not amazingly financially.
All for nothing. Oh well, at least the good times/movies can still be enjoyed, and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning is very much a good time. It sets things up a little shakily, but then delivers a bit over two hours of pretty much perfect stuff, as far as large-scale action blockbusters go. The movie’s exciting, it’s relentless, and it makes sure to have every big action scene feel a little crazier and more memorable than the last.
7
‘Revenge’ (2017)
While it’s not the kind of thing you’d want to watch while eating, Revenge is still very much a movie you should watch, so long as you’re okay with some very intense violence. It’s a movie about revenge, because duh, and it doesn’t pull punches in showing why the protagonist wants revenge against a group of men, and then it’s similarly uncompromising when it comes to showing her fighting back and getting revenge.
That’s all it needs to be, and it helps that Revenge does not slow down for a single second, feeling like one of the fastest-paced movies of its decade. It’s a bad time and a good time at the same time, and also proves hard-hitting enough that even if you might think you’ve seen it all when it comes to movie gore, you could come away from this a little surprised and/or sickened.
6
‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (2022)
The movie that might well have saved cinema, if you don’t mind being a little hyperbolic, Top Gun: Maverick was a big deal back in 2022, and it’s still a pretty damn satisfying action movie in 2025 (and hopefully beyond). It takes the original film, with some of the ideas and characters found there (though not many of the latter), and remixes them into something much better, with this sequel benefiting from having more of an actual story this time around.
There are clear goals that need achieving, a core team of characters that have to prepare and bond, and then a final act that delivers the kind of action you’d want to see in a movie about aerial warfare. Top Gun: Maverick is not shy about being one of the most crowd-pleasing of all the crowd-pleasing blockbusters out there, but that’s what the film industry needed in 2022, and the whole thing more than delivered.
5
‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ (2023)
It might not have seemed all that likely that John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum would be toppable, in terms of going goofy and kind of wild, but then John Wick: Chapter 4 came around and did just that. The runtime for this one was absolutely gargantuan, and possibly a turn-off for those who preferred the brevity and simplicity of the first movie, but also, when an action movie wants to be almost three hours long, that is kind of exciting.
As for the plot? Uh, who knows? Things just get weird at this point. The series has gotten away from itself, and the amount of crazy things that have spiraled out of control because of a revenge-focused storyline early on… it’s a bit of a headache. It’s best just to enjoy the action that John Wick: Chapter 4 has to offer, because it’s of an immensely high quality, enough so to make this, honestly, one of the decade’s best movies so far.
4
‘RRR’ (2022)
Image via Variance Films
Speaking of great movies that came out in 2022, here’s RRR, which is also one of the best epics released in recent memory, too. It’s a movie set about a century ago, and the basic premise is “what if these two revolutionary fighters who didn’t know each other in real life actually met and fought the power together?” And that’s what happens, with the movie having fun with that, but also taking things more seriously where needed.
And it’s odd to say that such an over-the-top movie takes some things seriously, but there is a heart to RRR that’s undeniable, and it does explore heavy themes like repression, prejudice, and revolution. It’s an ambitious film for sure, but it handles everything with a surprising amount of unease, and also goes by pretty fast for a movie that’s three hours in length.
3
‘One Battle After Another’ (2025)
For several decades, Paul Thomas Anderson had shown himself willing to mix things up tonally and genre-wise across a bunch of varied movies, but One Battle After Another marked the first time he directed something that could be described as an action film. It’s also not fully an action movie, since there’s a lot of humor here, some of it’s more of a thriller, and it’s also politically charged as a drama/social commentary kind of thing (and that last quality has made it somewhat divisive).
But also, One Battle After Another does deliver some great chase sequences, and there’s also one long stretch in the middle with characters – and a camera – always on the move, and you’re yanked around enough that it feels sufficiently action-packed. It takes one of the more perplexing Thomas Pynchon books, Vineland, and transforms it into something more digestible and crowd-pleasing, and it’s a sign that Anderson does indeed have it in him to make blockbusters, funnily enough, if he wants to.
2
‘Hundreds of Beavers’ (2022)
More of a comedy than an action movie, but still not lacking when it comes to an odd and offbeat sort of spectacle, Hundreds of Beavers is wonderfully weird and still feels like it deserves more attention. It’s the kind of thing where most people who’ve seen it are willing to praise it, so “underrated” isn’t a word that fits perfectly here, but it’s still a bit niche in the overall scheme of things.
Hundreds of Beavers is a strange one, being a silent film with video game logic and a premise that involves a man battling hundreds of beavers, all done on a modest budget, but it is something special.
And sure, it’s a strange one, being a silent film (for the most part) with video game logic and a premise that involves a man battling hundreds of beavers, all done on a modest budget, but it is something special. It’s perhaps the best slapstick action movie made since, like, the silent era, and also one of the most creative movies of the 2020s so far, without a doubt.
1
‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ (2018)
Sure, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning was pretty great, but it still didn’t quite top Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the sixth movie in the series, and the one that remains the greatest overall. It feels like everything is in the right place here, with all the key characters getting enough to do, Tom Cruise going further than ever before with his much-talked-about stunts and overall dedication, and the variety of the action scenes being impeccable.
The quality of the action in Mission: Impossible – Fallout is similarly difficult to find fault with. Things are big, but never so over-the-top that it feels out of the realm of possibility for this series, at least (which has, with the exception of most of the first movie, always been somewhat heightened). The shark’s not jumped, in other words, and the excitement overall is pretty much unmatched. This one’s where it’s at, in so many ways, and it’s glorious.
