The 32 Greatest Action Movies of the 2010s

The 2010s just might be the decade to beat when it comes to having the best action movies. History will decide if the action films of the '00s will be mentioned in the same breath as classics of the '80s, though given the butt-kicking quality of the movies, you could certainly make the case.

Despite the rise of superhero movies in the late '00s, the action flicks of the '10s are not all tights and flights—and even then, there are more than a few superhero films that are legitimately great actioners. There were elaborate car chases (through city streets and wastelands alike), alien invasions, shadowy professional assassins, martial arts throwdowns, and a whole lot of Tom Cruise that all made for big thrills on the big screen throughout the decade.

Strap in, because these are the 32 greatest action movies of the 2010s.

32. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Year: 2011
Director: Guy Ritchie

Guy Ritchie's 2009 take on Sherlock Holmes offered a new spin on the classic detective, reimagining him as a butt-kicking action star in addition to a cunning intellect. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law reprised their roles as Holmes and Watson for the sequel, which has Sherlock facing off with his greatest nemesis, Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris), as he tries to instigate a world war. Naturally, this version of Moriarty can also do slow-motion martial arts, too.

31. The Equalizer

Year: 2014
Director: Antoine Fuqua

For an actor with such a big filmography, Denzel Washington really doesn't do franchises or sequels. The big expectation is The Equalizer, as Washington has starred in three films about Robert McCall, a former marine and retired DIA officer who starts dishing out vigilante justice. The 2014 movie that kicked off the trilogy is an extremely solid action thriller, and there's something innately watchable about an actor with Washington's talents using his wits (and plenty of violence) to punish those who have it coming, like the members of the Russian mafia he targets because of their teenage trafficking.

30. Attack the Block

Year: 2011
Director: Joe Cornish

Future Star Wars star John Boyega made his film debut in this cult classic sci-fi actioner, which follows a rowdy bunch of youths in a South London street gang who suddenly find themselves dealing with something much worse than coppers: invading aliens. Energetic with unique-looking alien creatures and a propulsive sense of style, Attack the Block is a thrill ride that has nice comedy and a dash of horror, too, making it one of the best genre-mashups of the decade.

29. 21 Jump Street

Year: 2012
Director: Phil Lord and Chris Miller

Undoubtedly one of the best comedies of the '10s, the film reboot of the late-'80s TV show about undercover cops in high school is also one of the decade's great action films because it's a spot-on parody of the genre's tropes and cliches. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum star as police officers who must return to high school in order to find the source of a new drug—and some of the funniest jokes in this extremely meta comedy come from how much times have changed since they actually matriculated. The sequel, 22 Jump Street, was released two years later, and it's also incredible.

28. The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Year: 2015
Director: Guy Ritchie

Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer star as a pair of agents from the CIA and KGB, respectively, who must put aside their (many) differences and overcome the literal and metaphorical Berlin Wall between them in order to stop a larger global plot that could bring ruin to America and the Soviet Union. A reboot of an old '60s TV series, Guy Ritchie's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is overflowing with style and charisma, plus some thrilling fights and chases. It's a shame that it didn't enjoy enough success at the box office to launch a franchise.

27. The Hunger Games

Year: 2012
Director: Gary Ross

The first installment of the movie adaptation of Suzanne Collins' dystopian YA book series is about as unflinching in its depiction of the titular duel to the death as a PG-13 movie could hope to be. Although not overly bloody or gory, The Hunger Games is very focused on making the violence and trauma of the games come through, and it goes through great lengths to show how it is all affecting the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence). There are action movies where the fighting is fun to watch; it deliberately isn't the main attraction in this movie—admirably so.

26. Fury

Year: 2014
Director: David Ayer

Brad Pitt leads this extremely tense and stressful World War II movie about the crew of a M4 Sherman tank who are fighting the Nazis as the Allies make their final invasion of Germany. The tanks in Fury are metal monsters, at once huge machines of destruction and claustrophobic metal coffins. A duel between our heroes' tank and an even larger, better-armored German tank is one of the film's highlights, as you'll find yourself holding your breath as the turret agonizingly turns and gets ready to fire—mere inches will determine whether they're all about to get obliterated or not.

25. Train to Busan

Year: 2016
Director: Yeon Sang-ho

An instant entry in the canon of the best zombie movies, the Korean film Train to Busan has plenty of thrilling action to go with its undead horror. A workaholic father (Gong Yoo) and his young daughter (Kim Su-an) attempt to take high-speed rail from Seoul to Busan, only for a zombie outbreak to occur just as the train is leaving the station—and there's one infected person aboard. Before too long, the entire train is overrun by hordes of the undead, which charge and crawl over one another as they try to get the ever-dwindling surviving passengers. It's scary, at times deeply sad, and it will have your adrenaline surging.

24. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Year: 2017
Director: Rian Johnson

Episode VIII, the middle installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, is a derisive film for a number of reasons, but it's hard to deny just how great most of the action is. The fight in Supreme Leader Snoke's throne room, which has Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey (Daisy Ridley) fighting alongside one another in a crimson-red, expertly choreographed lightsaber dance, is perhaps the most visually stunning sequence in the whole Star Wars timeline. The Holdo Maneuver may have opened up a can of worms about how hyperspace works, but it's so jaw-droppingly cool in the moment that it's totally worth it.

23. Gemini Man

Year: 2019
Director: Ang Lee

Regrettably, the number of people who say Ang Lee's Gemini Man the way it was meant to be seen—on a big screen in a high frame rate format that made the action impossibly detailed, fluid, and crisp—is tiny. The movie only played at the intended 120 frames per second in a few theaters, and it was a box office bomb. That means few moviegoers got to experience Will Smith fleeing a younger, cloned version of himself on motorcycles in such a visually overwhelming and stunning format. Take it from me: It looked so cool.

22. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Year: 2010
Director: Edgar Wright

Michael Cera stars as the title character in this adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's comic series, playing a 22-year-old slacker in Toronto who falls for a girl named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). The catch? In order to date, he'll have to fight her seven evil exes. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World makes great use of its video game influences, delivering fights that are uniquely stylized and very fun. (It's also a great movie about music, too.)

21. Black Panther

Year: 2018
Director: Ryan Coogler

The final confrontation between Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa and Michael B. Jordan's Killmonger in this Marvel Cinematic Universe standout is frequently criticized—and that's actually a testament to how incredible the rest of the action is. Their final battle is heavy on CGI, but the rest of the film, in addition to being a truly weighty exploration of Black identity and nationalism, is full of astounding, grounded action. A highlight comes when T'Challa and Killmonger engage in ritual combat for the throne of Wakanda; there are no flashy tricks or superpowers. We feel the weight of each punch—and the weight of what winning and losing mean to these characters and the fully realized world they're trying to represent.

20. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Year: 2016
Director: Gareth Edwards

Rogue One didn't just give us Andor, the spin-off TV series that's maybe the best thing Star Wars has produced since Empire Strikes Back. It also gave us a great war story, as the movie, which shows how the Rebel Alliance stole the plans to the Empire's Death Star, is an absolute thrill. The battle on the tropical beach planet Scarif, in part because there are no Force-using Jedi heroes, only a group of brave rebels who are going to die for the cause, feels more like "war" than anything else in this franchise, which has "War" right there in the name. Add to that a sequence where Darth Vader shows off just how terrifying he can be, and you've got the best action flick in the far, far away galaxy.

19. Logan

Year: 2017
Director: James Mangold

Wolverine's superpower basically involves having knives on his hands, and yet most depictions of the most famous member of the X-Men in action are fairly bloodless, including all of Hugh Jackman's previous film appearances. Logan, by virtue of being rated-R rather than PG-13, got to show how brutal and visceral he actually would be in a fight, and the grittiness of the violence compliments the heaviness of the movie, which follows a old, run-down Logan as he tries to get a young girl (Dafne Keen) to safety.

18. Zero Dark Thirty

Year: 2012
Director: Kathryn Bigelow

Kathryn Bigelow's movie about the efforts to find 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden isn't an action movie in the traditional sense, but the climax depicting the raid on Bin Laden's compound might be one of the most gripping and perfectly executed action sequences in movie history. Astoundingly faithful to the actual events (unlike other parts of the movie, which have been fairly dinged for seeming to endorse torture), SEAL Team Six's covert, cooly methodical assault on the Abbottabad complex is a masterclass in tension.

17. The Incredibles 2

Year: 2018
Director: Brad Bird

The first Incredibles is quite possibly the greatest superhero movie ever made, and while the sequel, which came out well over a decade later, can't quite match it, it's certainly one of the best action movies of the decade. Taking full advantage of the leaps CG animation had taken since the 2004 film, Pixar made The Incredibles 2 into a fast-moving visual ride, especially in a highlight sequence when Elastigirl chases after a villain on a motorcycle—the "camera" moving in dynamic ways that match her stretchy superpowers.

16. The Grandmaster

Year: 2013
Director: Wong Kar-wai

Lots of fight scenes are cool; fewer fight scenes are beautiful. The great Wong Kar-wai's martial arts epic The Grandmaster, a biopic about the legendary Ip Man, is full of fights and duels that are jaw-droppingly gorgeous and exciting. It culminates in a showdown between Zhang Ziyi's Gong Er and the disciple who betrayed and killed her master. Their fight, which takes place on a train platform as it speeds out of the station and the snow slowly falls, is a work of art.

15. Atomic Blonde

Year: 2017
Director: David Leitch

Though sometimes compared to John Wick with a gender-swapped protagonist (understandably so, as director David Leitch was the uncredited co-director of the first John Wick), Atomic Blonde is absolutely a killer action flick in its own right. Charlize Theron stars as a spy who must recover a list of covert agents as the Berlin Wall falls. Full of gnarly choreography, Atomic Blonde makes the Cold War hot, and it cemented Theron's reputation as a legitimate action icon.

14. Creed

Year: 2015
Director: Ryan Coogler

Like the Rocky films it's a spin-off of, a solid chunk of Creed's runtime is a drama, and director Ryan Coogler makes Sylvester Stallone's aged boxer-turned-mentor and Michael B. Jordan's fiery upstart into deep, fully realized characters. But when Creed steps into the ring, it becomes an incredible action movie, especially a round that was filmed in a single four-minute-long take. By the time the horns of Rocky's iconic theme music finally kick in during the final bout, you'll feel like you could punch through a brick wall.

13. John Wick: Chapter 2

Year: 2017
Director: Chad Stahelski

Due to the overwhelming (and surprising) success of the first John Wick movie, Keanu Reeves' titular assassin stayed out of retirement for the sequel, which expanded the world of covert contract killers, adding a bunch of lore to go along with John Wick's gun-fu takedowns. Having gotten vengeance on those jerks who killed his dog, John finds himself dealing with old business when a crime lord (played by Riccardo Scamarcio) calls upon him to uphold a blood oath. Double-crossings and lots of bloodshed ensue.

12. Pacific Rim

Year: 2013
Director: Guillermo del Toro

"Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!" Guillermo del Toro pretty much smashed giant monsters against giant robots in 2013's Pacific Rim, but he was the Michelangelo of smashing 'em together. A tribute to the mecha and kaiju subgenres, Pacific Rim is a super-sized thriller, and while it maybe isn't the deepest movie in the world, it's doing what it does with so much love and so much expertise that you can't help but hoot and holler when a robot (known as Jaegers) named Gipsy Danger reveals it has a sword and uses it to defeat a kaiju.

11. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Year: 2018
Directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse revolutionized CG animated films, as its use of different styles, textures, and aesthetics helped make other animators (and audiences!) realize that not all CG needed to look the same. That visual inventiveness extends to Spider-Verse's action scenes, too. Web-slinging has never looked as good as it does in Spider-Verse, which culminates in a dazzling, colorful brawl inside a dimension-blending collider that features clashing styles in addition to the superhero vs. supervillain stand-off.

10. Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol

Year: 2011
Director: Brad Bird

Brad Bird is best known as a director of animation, as he helmed movies like The Iron Giant and a couple of Pixar films, including The Incredibles. His animation origins show in Ghost Protocol, his live-action debut, which helped kick-start the next era of the Mission: Impossible franchise. Showcasing his understanding of visual storytelling, Bird makes Ethan Hunt's exploits thrilling as he and his team try to clear their names after being framed for bombing the Kremlin. On top of that, this is the first M:I movie where "Tom Cruise doing his own stunts" became a major selling point, and the sequence where he climbs the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, is exhilarating, easy to follow, and vertigo-inducing.

9. Edge of Tomorrow

Year: 2014
Director: Doug Liman

Tom Cruise stars in one of the great sci-fi movies of the decade as a cowardly public affairs officer in the army's fight against aliens who is sent to the front lines as humanity tries to stop the invaders from crossing the English Channel. However, an encounter with one of the extra-terrestrials causes Cruise to be stuck in a time loop, and every time he dies (which happens over and over again), he wakes right back up on the previous day. Edge of Tomorrow follows him as he lives, dies, and repeats it all over and over again with the help of Emily Blunt's hard-edged Sergeant Rita Vrataski, getting a little better and a little further each time.

8. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Year: 2014
Directors: Anthony and Joe Russo

Movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe aren't often praised for their action, which far too often descends into a big CGI extravaganza without a real sense of stakes, regardless of how huge the spectacle is. That is certainly not the case for the second Captain America movie, widely regarded as one of the best films in the franchise. Following Chris Evans' Cap as he deals with the unexpected return of his seemingly lost best friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan), now revived as a brainwashed Hydra agent, The Winter Soldier is full of expertly choreographed fights that pull off the deceptively tricky task of being superhuman and grounded. The elevator fight, in particular, might be the single best action sequence in the Marvel timeline.

7. Inception

Year: 2010
Director: Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan's Inception may have had one of the great ambiguous movie endings in all of cinema history, but one thing that's not ambiguous is how much the action in this mind-blowing dream caper rules. Inception's action sequences take advantage of the dream logic, allowing for ambitious setpieces that couldn't work in the "real" world, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt brawling with a dream defender in a hallway as it spins 360 degrees. (This effect was achieved practically, as the fight was filmed on a 100-foot-long hallway that actually rotated as the actors fought.)

6. The Raid

Year: 2011
Director: Gareth Evans

This Indonesian flick is one of the most acclaimed and beloved movies of the decade by action aficionados—and for good reason. The Raid follows a police squad who believe they're raiding a drug lord's hideout in an apartment building in a Jakarta slum, only to discover that they've been surrounded, and the only chance at safety is to fight their way to the top of the building, one floor at a time. Brutally propulsive, The Raid hits the gas very quickly and doesn't let up until the credits are rolling.

5. Skyfall

Year: 2012
Director: Sam Mendes

The best of the Daniel Craig James Bond movies is either Casino Royale or Skyfall, and the former is not eligible to be on this list because it came out in 2006. That's okay because, for as cool and visceral as the fights and spycraft in Casino Royale are, Skywall might be the better actioner. Sam Mendes makes each chase and conflict into a visually stunning display, perhaps never more so than when Bond fights in Shanghai, illuminated beautifully by LCD screens. Even the climax, which is basically Bond doing Home Alone in the Scottish Highlands, delivers.

4. John Wick

Year: 2014
Director: Chad Stahelski

"Yeah, I'm thinking I'm back!" Keanu Reeves, who had already had a few major career resurgences, had another when John Wick became an era-defining action classic. Starring Reeves as the titular assassin who comes out of retirement to hunt back the thugs who killed his dog and had no idea who they were messing with, John Wick is full of gunfire, deftly choreographed stunts, hardcore fights, and an intriguing mythology that would only deepen as the sequels further expanded the deadly-but-honorable world of professional assassins.

3. Fast Five

Year: 2011
Director: Justin Lin

This is the one where they steal the safe! Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) attach an entire bank safe to their cars and tag-team tow it through the streets of Rio while a bunch of corrupt cops pursue them, many getting pancaked by the very safe they're chasing. It's one of the greatest things ever to happen in the history of the silver screen! Fast Five is the movie that turned the Fast & Furious franchise from a street racing series to the increasingly over-the-top vehicular action and heist setpiece showcase, and we are all so blessed to have seen it.

2. Mission: Impossible — Fallout

Year: 2018
Director: Christopher McQuarrie

There are a half-dozen action sequences in Fallout, the best Mission: Impossible movie, that on their own would make any other movie that featured them one of the greatest action films ever made. That's how good and how consistently good Fallout is. As Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt and his team race to stop an extremist from detonating a devastating nuclear device, they HALO jump, have a knockdown bathroom brawl, have a car and motorcycle chase through the streets of Paris, and have a helicopter vs helicopter fight while flying through a very narrow rocky canyon. It's action filmmaking at the highest level.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road

Year: 2015
Director: George Miller

How good is Mad Max: Fury Road? The fourth Mad Max movie, which came decades after the previous installment and has only a loose connection to the Mel Gibson-led films, was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars and is frequently brought up when people are discussing the greatest movies of all time. Not "best action movies of all time." Just movies, period. Staring Tom Hardy as the taciturn wasteland wanderer and Charlize Theron as the extremely cool and capable Imperator Furiosa, Fury Road is basically a non-stop car chase taken to its most extreme, but George Miller's mastery of visual storytelling makes it so that each moment is not only the most exciting thing you've ever seen but also fuel for the engine as it moves plot and develops character. What a lovely day indeed.