10 Nearly Perfect Action Movies, Ranked
Some – but not many – action movies are perfect. If you want a rundown of some of those, you’re really only going to get a couple of examples, because if you call too many things perfect (and if you suggest certain movies are perfect to certain people), you can get people angry. So, there’s Die Hard. There’s Seven Samurai. There’s (arguably) Police Story. And there’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
These ones are all hard to fault, but that’s not to suggest the following movies, even if imperfect, are easy to fault. They’re here because the problems they have are minimal, or barely factor into the movie overall, so much so that the films themselves are all still pretty awesome as action movies. It’s okay to be nearly perfect when being perfect is such a wonderful, rare, and – let’s face it – next-to-impossible thing to be in the first place.
10
‘Fast Five’ (2011)
Fast Five was a turning point for the whole Fast and Furious series, as it brought together characters introduced throughout – and explored in – the previous four movies and gave them all a big heist they needed to pull off. Some racing was needed, but it was kind of in the background, and the action sequences got bigger and wilder (while still using lots of fast cars, so don’t you worry too much about the cars being gone for good or anything).
There had been fun action and melodrama in previous Fast and Furious movies, but the action sequences, particularly the scale, really went up another level in Fast Five, and it established – for better or worse – what movies #6, #7, #8, and so on would also try and do. The series eventually collapsed into something of a mess, and a mess with an uncertain (at the time of writing) future, but at least we’ll always have Fast Five; at least Fast Five will always be awesome.
9
‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning’ (2023)
If you’re after the best Mission: Impossible movie, you’ve got Fallout. That one does everything it needs to, for a spy movie with stakes that involve the potential end of the world, and it’s also got Tom Cruise at his absolute peak. Everything came together for that sixth Mission: Impossible, and it was basically perfect, while the seventh movie… eh, it wasn’t too far off.
In some ways, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning really did equal the spectacle and action found in Mission: Impossible – Fallout.
That seventh movie was Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, and in some ways, it really did equal the spectacle and action found in the previous film. The one thing holding it back a bit was the opening 20 to 30 minutes, which were oddly paced and a little confusing. Still, the two-ish hours after that were great, and it was preferable to the eighth movie, The Final Reckoning, which had more like 45 to 60 minutes (or at least it felt that long) of repetitive and sometimes confusing setup.
8
‘The Avenging Eagle’ (1978)
Since The Avenging Eagle is a martial arts movie about getting revenge, and it’s pretty open about that from the title, do you really need much of a plot summary here? Well… okay. There are three main characters, and two of them are younger men who both have reasons to want to either escape from – or take down – an evil clan led by an older (and deadly) martial arts master.
They team up reluctantly, and then they fight a bunch of guys in a way that feels pretty damn close to non-stop, and then they have to take on the main bad guy, and yeah, it’s all revenge, and there’s so much punching, kicking, and flying around all over the place. It’s wonderful, and it’s about as satisfying as old-school kung fu films get. If you want a flaw… perhaps it’s a bit too simple, or blunt, and the first half isn’t nearly as cool as the second half, but these are all common (and usually minor) complaints one can have with an older martial arts movie.
7
‘The Last of the Mohicans’ (1992)
With Michael Mann and his action movies, they usually featured contemporary settings, and an emphasis on modern-day firearms (see Heat, which is probably a perfect action/crime/drama movie). So, The Last of the Mohicans stands out a bit among his other movies, seeing as this one goes back to colonial America, featuring a narrative that blends the war, adventure, action, romance, and melodrama genres pretty seamlessly.
When The Last of the Mohicans wants to inspire, awe, or excite, it’s incredibly successful, and the final act of the movie is breathless and moving in ways that few films ever are. Unfortunately, this whole movie feels like a three-hour epic that was cut down a little too enthusiastically to under two hours. It’s still a phenomenal two-hour viewing experience, but with some more time to breathe for certain scenes – and time to understand some supporting characters a bit more – this could’ve jumped from a great movie to an absolutely timeless one.
6
‘Pacific Rim’ (2013)
Guillermo del Toro does love his horror movies, sure, but do you know what else Guillermo del Toro loves? The idea that, if the world were threatened by giant monstrous invaders, all the countries of the world would band together to defeat this previously unseen foe, and their method of defense would involve constructing pilotable robots just as large as the monsters, thereby punching the hell out of the monsters and getting them to go away.
Of course it’s ridiculous, but del Toro leans into it all without getting too wink-wink-nudge-nudge, so with Pacific Rim, you get something both silly and sincere at once, somehow. It’s still thin on a narrative front, and some of the leaps in logic won’t be cleared by viewers of certain mindsets, but if you really like kaiju movies and want to see one done by a director who has both a lot of money to work with and a clear passion for the history of giant monster movies, then Pacific Rim is essential viewing.
5
‘Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack’ (2001)
After nearly 50 years of Godzilla movies, sometimes with one a year, maybe there was difficulty naming them by 2001, so the world was gifted: Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack. This one’s a fan-favorite, and has a super evil Godzilla as well as Mothra and King Ghidorah having slightly different origins than usual, and the latter even being a good guy, for once.
That’s because Godzilla is just a mean old son of a… y’know, and he’s violent enough against humanity and the other monsters that there’s quite a bit of action. Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack moves at a good pace, but the climax is the only thing that lets it down a bit on an action front. Emotionally, with the human characters, it ends where it needs to, but there’s just this faintest sense that they were, unfortunately, rushing the final monster fight just a tiny bit.
4
‘Bullet in the Head’ (1990)
Between making two pretty much perfect heroic bloodshed movies (The Killer and Hard Boiled), John Woo also helmed Bullet in the Head, which was a considerably more downbeat affair. There’s violence and numerous people dying across all three movies, but Bullet in the Head is more despairing because the lead characters end up fleeing Hong Kong, and find that it makes their experiences worse.
They end up entangled in the Vietnam War, and that includes being made prisoners of war in a way that feels a bit reminiscent of the similarly grim The Deer Hunter. It’s amazing that there’s any entertainment value at all here, and while John Woo doesn’t balance all these wildly different things perfectly, there is still some balance, and just enough coherence in terms of making a tense but thrilling action movie and a film with a truly anti-war message all at once.
3
‘Snowpiercer’ (2013)
About as dystopian as things get before a full-on post-apocalyptic setting is reached, Snowpiercer takes place on a large train that houses what’s left of humanity. The poor live near the back, the rich live right at the front, and everyone in between is, you know, in between. Conditions are so bad at the back that revolution eventually seems like the only option, and then there’s a battle from the back to the front that ensues for much of the film.
It’s super thrilling and engaging stuff, and there’s some stuff to think about here, as is the case with most great science fiction. Snowpiercer is also moving while being exciting, so what’s the problem? The cast members don’t always seem like they’re in the same movie, which is maybe intentional, when so many of them play characters who aren’t really in the same “world” as the others, but it does make the film feel a bit unusual or muddled in ways both intentional and potentially unintentional at times, too.
2
‘The Crow’ (1994)
The Crow really does feel like something special, albeit it was also an incredibly tragic and moving film before Brandon Lee regrettably lost his life making it, which adds this whole other feeling of eeriness and sadness to it… or maybe something not so bad. The movie sees his character coming back to life to get revenge for his murder, and that of the love of his life, and so the movie itself also brings Lee back to life, in a way, because that performance is immortalized in this film.
And it’s a great performance, while also likely being a sign of even greater things to come. Anyway, there is also the action to talk about. But Brandon Lee hangs heavy over this in so many ways, and it’s hard to focus on much else. Imperfections here are largely due to Lee not being able to finish 100% of his scenes, but most of the workarounds were done effectively, and were understandable, because recasting fully at that late stage in production would’ve been difficult – or just outright wrong – for so many reasons. Anyway, The Crow is also an all-timer of a superhero movie, and it has an absolutely incredible soundtrack on top of the lead performance, the visuals, and the intense bittersweet feelings that come about through watching this film.
1
‘The Raid 2’ (2014)
Even though The Raid 2 might have a lot of stuff in it that makes it even better than The Raid (2011), there’s a stronger argument to be made that The Raid is perfect, and The Raid 2 is flawed, albeit with higher highs. So, that’s why the second movie is here, and the first movie gets a pass, even if the first movie pales in comparison to the second when it comes to having an (almost) epic scope and a large variety of action sequences.
There is a good deal of martial arts fighting here, but it’s also really brutal martial arts fighting, and some action set pieces move beyond hand-to-hand combat, too. Flaws-wise, the story is a bit hard to follow, and The Raid 2 could also be a tiny bit long, but the highs here are just so high; undehighable. You get countless all-timer fight sequences here, and also some of the most savage action you’ll ever see in any movie, martial arts-related or otherwise.
The Raid 2
- Release Date
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March 28, 2014
- Runtime
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150 minutes
- Director
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Gareth Evans
- Writers
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Gareth Evans
