10 Most Exciting Movies of All Time, Ranked
There are all sorts of movies out there, definable as different things outside the normal genres. There are quiet and eerie movies that aren’t always horror ones, some movies are intense, others evoke positive emotions (usually by being funny or heartwarming), and then others are defined by feeling exciting. A bunch of these can be labeled thrillers, of course, but action, crime, and even horror movies can also inspire excitement.
And exciting is the word of the day, or at least the word of this article. The following films prove particularly entertaining and riveting, and all rank among the most exciting of all time. Because excitement is an emotion, and different people find different things exciting, it’s unlikely you’ll agree 100% with all the selections here, but these movies all intend to be exciting, and are all successful/acclaimed in that regard.
10
‘Hard Boiled’ (1992)
After The Killer, John Woo amped things up a bit and doubled down on action further by making Hard Boiled. Even before The Killer, Woo had made pretty wild action movies before (see A Better Tomorrow and the underrated Last Hurrah for Chivalry), but Hard Boiled is probably his most exciting and non-stop film, being about a cop and an undercover cop working together to take down dozens upon dozens of bad guys.
Hard Boiled is a movie overflowing with spectacle, explosions, slow motion, and some fantastic stunt work.
While Hard Boiled isn’t literally shootouts from start to finish, it does almost feel like it is, and the last half is especially action-heavy. It’s a movie overflowing with spectacle, explosions, slow motion, and some fantastic stunt work, and it’s an absolute must-watch if you consider yourself to be something of an action movie fan, since films in this genre rarely prove this relentlessly entertaining and bombastic.
9
‘Marathon Man’ (1976)
The 1970s was a decade when paranoia seemed to be a pretty popular thing to explore in cinema, and Marathon Man is indeed one of the decade’s most paranoid movies. That does translate to excitement, in a way, and Marathon Man does intend to entertain while also feeling disturbing, getting the balance right (though again, your mileage may vary; you could find it a bit much to be “fun” in the traditional sense).
But it’s fair to call the anxiety here darkly exciting. Marathon Man is about Dustin Hoffman’s character getting pulled into something progressively more grim, because of his brother, with the series of events eventually putting him at odds with a Nazi war criminal who uses his dentistry skills in ways that are even more horrifying than how ordinary dentists use such skills. It’s a movie that also lives up to its title, in a way, since it just keeps barreling along steadily, giving your nerves the kind of workout an actual marathon might give the rest of your body.
8
‘Godzilla Minus One’ (2023)
Some Godzilla movies are goofy, others are horror-focused, and some function pretty well as bombastic action movies. As for which one’s the most exciting, at the risk of sounding like some afflicted with recency bias, it might well be Godzilla Minus One. The stakes in most Godzilla movies are high, but they feel particularly so in Godzilla Minus One, and the version of Godzilla here is especially menacing.
It’s also a Godzilla film that sees Japan less well-equipped than usual to handle the emergence of a giant monster, owing to Godzilla Minus One beginning not long after the end of World War II. Even the groundbreaking original film, made in 1954, gave its characters almost a decade between the end of the war and the beginning of Godzilla’s destructive reign to recover. You also come to care for the human characters quite a lot here, and so all that adds up to make Godzilla Minus One thrilling, exciting, stirring, and surprisingly moving.
7
‘Police Story’ (1985)
Police Story might be the best Jackie Chan movie or, if not, then it’s a strong contender at the very least. He plays a very competent but also unconventional police officer, going up against a powerful criminal gang associated with drug dealing, and also having to protect a young woman who intends to testify against the head of said gang in court.
It’s expected stuff narratively, for a crime/action/thriller movie, using the premise here as an excuse to have a bunch of spectacular action sequences, and that’s what you’re here for with a movie like Police Story. There’s some comedy as well, and the non-action stuff is perfectly watchable, but when people are fighting or chasing in this movie, it’s next-level stuff, making Police Story an all-timer of a martial arts movie worth watching, even if you don’t usually gravitate toward martial arts flicks.
6
‘North by Northwest’ (1959)
Alfred Hitchcock was sometimes called the Master of Suspense, which is fair, considering he did indeed master evoking that particular emotion throughout many of his movies. But not all his films were thrillers, and some of his best – like North by Northwest – also had a good deal of humor in them, plus Hitchcock also had a knack for helming romantic movies.
You get a bit of romance in North by Northwest, as well as thrills, and it’s also something of an adventure movie, with a classic “man on the run” premise (Hitchcock dug such plots) pushed to its limits. North by Northwest goes big – and is sweeping – enough to still hold up immensely well, even by today’s standards, with the whole thing moving at an effortless and admirably quick speed, ensuring it remains as entertaining nowadays as it would’ve been for audiences back in 1959.
5
‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)
The first three Mad Max movies weren’t lacking in excitement, by any means, with movie #2 (sometimes called The Road Warrior) being especially action-packed. But they were all out-done by Mad Max: Fury Road, which came out 30 years after the third movie, and very much takes place in the same universe with the same kind of feel, but everything’s heightened and slicker, with director George Miller making the most of 21st century technology and effects.
The plot here is simple, but that’s sometimes the best thing for a story to be when excitement is seen as a priority (as was the case with the aforementioned Police Story). Mad Max: Fury Road is an extended chase one way, and then back in the other direction, with just enough by way of character development and world-building to keep you invested. It’s all executed in a sublime enough way to make Mad Max: Fury Road perhaps the best film of its year, and one of the best overall of the 21st century so far.
4
‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ (2018)
Just as Mad Max: Fury Road is the high point of a generally strong long-running series, so too is Mission: Impossible – Fallout the peak of the Mission: Impossible film series, which began in 1996. You get a typically strong and dedicated performance by Tom Cruise here, tons of running (of course), and a story about Ethan Hunt and a few associates needing to prevent a potentially world-changing event.
It does enough with the story and the characters to satisfy as a good spy thriller, and then Mission: Impossible – Fallout absolutely excels when it comes to action, meaning watching the movie is to be pulled between feeling suspense and all-out excitement non-stop for almost 2.5 hours. It’s a movie that’s about as good as modern-day action/thriller films can possibly get, and it’s also one that never seems to get old, no matter how many times you choose to rewatch it.
3
‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
Since it’s one of the best paced movies out there, The Dark Knight is obviously pretty damn exciting, to say the least. It hits the ground running in the way so many of the best sequels tend to do, with Batman well-established in the previous film, and a new iteration of the Joker set up as a legitimate threat right from the opening scene. And he never really lets up from that point onward.
And the great villain here is a big reason why The Dark Knight feels so consistently intense and relentless, but it’s also a movie that wants to continually shock, awe, excite, and feel action-packed. It’s one of the best superhero/comic book movies ever made, to the point where even calling it a superhero film feels a bit like underselling the whole thing.
2
‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’ (2003)
Every film that makes up The Lord of the Rings trilogy is fantastic, but there’s an argument to be made that The Return of the King is the strongest, or at least the most exciting. It’s got even more spectacle than the previous two movies, since it goes all-out in depicting the battle for the fate of Middle-earth, and also brings to a close Frodo and Sam’s journey to destroy the One Ring.
So it had to be big and exciting, but it’s still surprising just how grand The Return of the King happens to get, easily qualifying as an all-time great epic movie in the process. And even more impressively, it slows down when it needs to, because almost three hours of excitement is followed by 20-ish minutes of incredible catharsis – much of it bittersweet – in the film’s closing scenes.
1
‘Jaws’ (1975)
It’s wild to think that Steven Spielberg made Jaws before he turned 30, and though it ended up being far from his only great movie, it might well be his closest to genuinely perfect. Things are set up steadily and confidently for the first half or so of the movie, with a big shark racking up more of a body count, which in turn motivates three men to venture out to stop it for good.
And it’s the second half of Jaws that depicts much of this, and it’s even more thrilling and exciting than the dread-heavy feel of the movie’s first hour or so. It’s just a perfectly structured thriller/horror movie that also becomes an adventure film, and though 50 years have passed since it first came out, Jaws remains scary, nail-biting, and hugely entertaining.
