Ready to kick back, fire up your Prime Video, and have a chill night at home watching a movie? No! Of course not! You’re looking to kick your eyeballs’ friggin’ asses with a pulverizing action film! Action junkies these days have a lot to pick from when it comes to streaming choices. We’ve done you a favor and cut through the clutter, cherry-picking the best action movies currently available on Amazon Prime. With 2010s South Korean revenge thrillers, 1990s American classics, 1980s Australian post-apocalyptic fantasies, and everything in between, there’s something for everyone available on the streaming service. Get your stretches in — it’s time for the best action movies on Prime Video.

For more recommendations, check out our list of the best movies and shows on Prime Video.

‘The Courier’ (2021)

Rotten Tomatoes: 85% | IMDb: 7.2/10

Just your average story about a salesman thrust into a nuclear crisis. The beautifully written and acted film The Courier tells the chilling true story of unassuming British businessman Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) who is recruited by a CIA officer (Rachel Brosnahan) and an MI6 officer (Angus Wright) to help retrieve information on Soviet nuclear missile plans. While in Russia, Greville secretly meets with Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze), a man with strong intel into the Soviets’ war plans and nuclear capabilities. Between Tom O’Connor’s stellar script and Cumberbatch’s honest and unflinching performance, The Courier is sure to impress. — Emily Bernard

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‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (2022)

Rotten Tomatoes: 96% | IMDb: 8.3/10

Tom Cruise reaches new heights in Top Gun: Maverick, once again touching the sky as Capt. Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell. An incredible Top Gun sequel 30 years in the making, Top Gun: Maverick features incredible young talents like Miles Teller (Fantastic Four), Monica Barbaro (UnReal), Jay Ellis, and Glen Powell, all supporting the iconic action star. Director Joseph Kosinski pays homage to the original film and captures unbelievable aerial stunts, right along with an exciting story about Navy fighter pilots. Throw in a bit of romance, some male bonding on the beach, and higher rank officers forced to face their haunted past, and Top Gun: Maverick has something for everyone. – Yael Tygiel

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‘Shotgun Wedding’ (2023)

Rotten Tomatoes: 45% | IMDb: 5.4/10

Shotgun Wedding is an action-packed romantic comedy from Jason Moore (Pitch Perfect) about a wedding gone wrong when pirates hold the guests hostage. Starring Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel as the engaged couple, Shotgun Wedding finds its charm in both the explosive stunts and the incredible casting. Featuring Jennifer Coolidge (The White Lotus), Lenny Kravitz, and Cheech Marin, Shotgun Wedding is uproariously funny, even with its traditional romantic narrative delivering the tone of The Lost City mixed with Marry Me. Grounded in entertaining quips and over-the-top punches, Shotgun Wedding unites a sweet and exciting adventure. – Yael Tygiel

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‘Jolt’ (2021)

Rotten Tomatoes: 41% | IMDb: 5.6/10

Kate Beckinsale (Underworld: Blood Wars) stars in Jolt, an action-packed flick directed by Tanya Wexler (Hysteria). In Jolt, a cinematically gorgeous past-paced feature stylized similar to Atomic Blonde, Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Kate, and Karen Gillan’s Gunpowder Milkshake, Beckinsale plays the short-tempered Lindy, a bouncer who attempts to control her anger with a high-tech electrode-lined accessory that shocks her whenever her fists or trigger fingers gets itchy. Wexler’s keen eye displays the beautiful frenzy of fighting, shoot-outs, and car chases in Jolt without compromising story, heart, and humorous quips, allowing the supporting cast, including Stanley Tucci and Laverne Cox (Inventing Anna), their opportunity to shine. – Yael Tygiel

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‘Samaritan’ (2022)

Rotten Tomatoes: 38% | IMDb: 5.7/10

When a young teenager named Sam (Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton) finds out that his crotchety neighbor (Sylvester Stallone) is a former superhero – one who’s been missing since an epic battle two decades ago – he attempts to get him to jump back into the action to save their town. Director Julius Avery crafts compelling action sequences that pop, especially when paired with the sharp dialogue and performances. The scene-stealer is, unsurprisingly, Stallone, who is pitch-perfect as the grumpy, wisecracking elder with a secret heart of gold; his chemistry with the talented newcomer Walton makes Samaritan an irresistible watch. – Taylor Gates

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‘Without Remorse’ (2021)

Rotten Tomatoes: 45% | IMDb: 5.8/10

Without Remorse is based on the espionage characters of Tom Clancy, but the action-packed thriller is very different from the Jack Ryan franchise. While the Ryan films focused on mystery-solving and analysis, Without Remorse is just as bloody and ruthless as the title suggests. The film is centered around the assassin John Kelly (Michael B. Jordan), who was first played by Willem Dafoe in Clear and Present Danger. Sicario: Day of the Soldado director Stefano Sollima depicts realistic sequences of modern military combat, and as always, Taylor Sheridan is fascinated by the political conspiracies at play. Michael B. Jordan hasn’t been this jacked onscreen since the Creed films, and you don’t doubt his intensity for a moment. You’ll also want to stick around for a particularly memorable, scenery-chewing performance from Guy Pearce. — Liam Gaughan

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‘The Lost City of Z’ (2017)

Rotten Tomatoes: 86% | IMDb: 6.6/10

A melancholic masterpiece from writer-director James Gray, The Lost City of Z tells the story of real-life explorers who find themselves lost in the vast jungles of the Amazon in the 1920s. It is an incisive film that recalls works like Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God in how it exposes the hubris and arrogance of explorers who believe they can supposedly discover new places for their own ego. It is also a gorgeously shot film, finding beauty in the unexplored areas where it takes place in. It creates a complicated feeling of both awe and disillusionment, taking your breath away at all the landscapes while also making you contemplate the foolhardy reason the characters are there. By the time you reach the gut punch of an ending, which Gray handles with a deep sense of care and reflection, you’ll never think of exploration the same way again. — Chase Hutchinson

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‘Project Gutenberg’ (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes: 83% | IMDb: 6.8/10

Sadly, Project Gutenberg is not an action film biopic of the Short Circuit actor’s life, which we would greenlight in a heartbeat. However, it’s still worth your time and then some. From director Felix Chong, best known for writing Internal Affairs (which Martin Scorsese remade into The Departed), Project Gutenberg is a similarly twisty crime thriller about the shady world of counterfeit money. It stars action maestro Chow Yun-fat (Hard Boiled) as a notorious counterfeiter named, simply, the Painter, giving the otherwise real-world pleasures of Project Gutenberg a heightened, even mythic sense of stakes. The Hong Kong film industry took notice, awarding the movie the Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. It’s a mature, complicated picture, with as much to say about politics and love as it does about double-crossing action sequences. Oh, and if you watch Project Gutenberg, you just might learn how to counterfeit money yourself! (Please don’t do this.)

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‘Dolemite’ (1975)

Rotten Tomatoes: 57% | IMDb: 5.6/10

In 2019, Netflix released an Eddie Murphy comeback vehicle of sorts: Dolemite Is My Name, a biopic about comedian Rudy Ray Moore’s Herculean attempts to make a low-budget action flick centered around one of his characters. If you saw this movie and loved it, you owe it to yourself to see its subject: Dolemite, a stone-cold blaxploitation classic from 1975. Moore’s performance as Dolemite is both ideologically complicated and intoxicatingly silly. Dolemite is, like many protagonists of blaxploitation cinema, a smooth-talking, smoother-walking pimp. But his particular ways of speaking in rhymes that skirt the lines between profane and enlightening — coupled with his badass kung-fu skills — catapult him to “underrated screen icon” status (If you’ve liked a hip-hop act in the past 30 years, they’ve referenced Dolemite in some way). When Dolemite is finally released from prison after getting framed by rival Willie Green (director D’Urville Martin), he embarks on an ass-kicking journey of revenge, assisted by a capable madam of his brothel, Queen Bee (Lady Reed). Some of the film (okay, maybe all of the film) has cringe-inducingly reductive views on gender and racial politics. But these components add not only to the hilarious, entertaining, low-budget charm of the whole affair, but to the extratextual analysis of the film and its interactions with its place in a white-centered film industry.

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‘Highlander’ (1986)

Rotten Tomatoes: 71% | IMDb: 7.0/10

“There can be only one.” Well, actually, there are thousands of movies available to stream on Prime Video. But when it comes to Highlander’s particular blend of high fantasy, sci-fi time-traveling shenanigans, and campy ‘80s bombast, there can, indeed, be only one. Russell Mulcahy, director of the first music video ever aired on MTV (“Video Killed the Radio Star”), has a particular visual style that we’d describe as “totally bonkers wackadoo.” He has widescreen, sweeping panoramas of fantastical landscapes, sure — but it’s jammed up against rapidly cut, neon-stroked with strange rhymes and little reason. Somehow, this is the perfect aesthetic to capture Highlander’s narrative, a story of an immortal swordsman (Christopher Lambert) and his journey to kill his one final remaining immortal enemy (Clancy Brown) to become “the one.” Also, Sean Connery plays a Spaniard and doesn’t bother with an accent. Also, Queen’s soundtrack is bangin’. Also, get yourself some brews and have a ball with Highlander, posthaste.

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