Looking for the best action movies on Netflix? Here's a collection of some of the best classic and modern action movies available to stream on the platform now.
Red Notice (2021)
Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, Red Notice stars Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot.
In the film, Johnson plays John Hartley, an FBI profiler forced to team up with the expert art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) when he is framed by “The Bishop” (Gal Gadot), a rival art thief with a penchant for sabotage. The plot twist is that he isn’t an FBI profiler and wasn’t framed. It was all a setup to outsmart Nolan Booth(Ryan Reynolds).
Red Notice is a fun watch and one of the best action movies of 2021.
2. Army Of Thieves (2021)
In this prequel to Army of the Dead, a mysterious woman recruits bank teller Dieter to help her crew crack three legendary safes across Europe. Matthias Schweighöfer directs and stars as Dieter in this expansion of Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead universe.
Army of Thieves takes place six years before the action of Army of the Dead as the world is just starting to come to terms with the reality of a zombie outbreak—it’s mostly seen on news reports in the background and a few of Dieter’s prophetic dreams.
3. Total Recall (1990)
This 1990 American dystopian science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, and Ronny Cox.
The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a bored construction worker whose dreams about being a spy on Mars turn out to be real memories that had been wiped from his brain.
If you’re wanting a great throwback 80s/90s sci-fi action, then definitely check this out.
4. Project Power (2020)
On the streets of New Orleans, word begins to spread about a mysterious new pill that unlocks superpowers unique to each user. The catch: You don’t know what will happen until you take it. While some develop bulletproof skin, invisibility, and super strength, others exhibit a deadlier reaction. But when the pill escalates crime within the city to dangerous levels, a local cop (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) teams with a teenage dealer (Dominique Fishback) and a former soldier fueled by a secret vendetta (Jamie Foxx) to fight power with power and risk-taking the pill to track down and stop the group responsible for creating it.
5. Army Of The Dead (2021)
A road accident compromises a confidential payload transported by the US Military from the famous Area 51. The container unleashes a meta-human zombie who not only kills the soldiers but also infects the nearby Las Vegas city. To protect the country, the US government quarantines the city, locking the zombies inside it.
A band of mercenaries, carrying guns and grenades, helped the government to seal the city, but after the work was done, their efforts were ignored and abandoned. The head mercenary, Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) now lives an infamous life, flipping burgers. His life was mundane until the owner of the Las Vegas Casino, Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) offers him a job to extract 200 million dollars from his casino’s vault situated at the heart of the quarantined Zombie City. To support his daughter’s future, Scott gambles upon his life. He assembles his team of bandits, recruiting his old pals and helping hands needed for the mission.
However, the US government plans on nuking the entire city in the next 96 hours, and hence, Scott needs to make fast decisions. His future depends on it. But once they enter the Zombie city, the new challenges and the Zombie Kingdom amp up the conflict. There is much more in store for them than just wads of cash.
6. Extraction (2020)
Extraction is based on a graphic novel that was written, and is now adapted by, Avengers: Endgame co-director Joe Russo.
Extraction follows Tyler Rake(Chris Hemsworth), who’s assigned the operation to rescue Ovi Mahajan, India’s biggest crime lord’s son, who is kidnapped by Bangladesh’s biggest crime lord. Things go unimaginably out of control for Rake when hell breaks loose to find Ovi in Bangladesh as Rake frees him from the clutches of gangsters.
7. Mortal Kombat (1995)
Mortal Kombat holds the dubious honor of being generally considered the best video game movie adaptation of all-time.
8. The Sleepover (2020)
The Sleepover tells the story about a girl and her friends having a sleepover when they learn that her mother is a former thief under witness protection that gets roped back into that life when her old group successfully locates her.
9. The Old Guard (2020)
Led by a warrior named Andy (Charlize Theron), a covert group of tight-knit mercenaries with a mysterious inability to die have fought to protect the mortal world for centuries. But when the team is recruited to take on an emergency mission and their extraordinary abilities are suddenly exposed, it’s up to Andy and Nile (KiKi Layne), the newest soldier to join their ranks, to help the group eliminate the threat of those who seek to replicate and monetize their power by any means necessary.
10. The Tuxedo(2002)
This 2002 science fiction action comedy film, directed by Kevin Donovan and stars Jackie Chan and Jennifer Love Hewitt.
It’s a spy parody that involves a special tuxedo that grants its wearer special abilities. It also involves a corporate terrorist, threatening to poison the United States’ fresh water supply with bacteria that spills electrolytes into the blood and totally dehydrates the body.
If you’re looking for an entertaining, lighthearted Chan movie, then this is the one.
11. Gladiator(2000)
Released over 20 years ago, Gladiator remains one of the most influential and popular blockbusters of the early 21st century.
Gladiator tells the story of Maximus Decimus Meridius, a high-ranking Roman officer who is forced into slavery following the death of his family. Maximus, who is played by Russell Crowe, eventually becomes a gladiator and vows to work his way up through the ranks so that he can take revenge on the man responsible for the deaths of his family and his former emperor.
12. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Set in snowy Toronto, Michael Bacall and Wright’s co-scripted feature adaptation follows Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim, who must defeat the seven exes of his new girlfriend Ramona Flowers, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, to win her heart. Meanwhile, Knives (Ellen Wong) has her eyes on Scott.
13. 3 Days to Kill (2014)
Facing a terminal disease, spy Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) has decided to give up his dangerous, high-stakes life to rebuild his relationship with his estranged wife and daughter (Hailee Steinfeld), whom he previously pushed away to keep them out of harm’s way. However, in exchange for a potentially lifesaving drug, he must complete one final mission: apprehend one of the world’s most ruthless terrorists while looking after his teenage offspring in her mother’s absence.
14. Unknown (2011)
Released at the height of Liam Neeson’s career comeback post-Taken, implausible but fun Unknown stars the Irish action hero as a man who awakes from a car accident to discover his wife doesn’t recognize him, and his identity’s been stolen. Co-starring January Jones and Diane Kruger, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who has a way of taking B-grade genre premises and making them better than they needed to be (see House of Wax and The Shallows).
15. Fear Street Trilogy
The Fear Street trilogy is one of Netflix’s most popular film series and a welcome addition to the horror genre.
Told in three parts and loosely inspired by R.L. Stine’s books of the same name, the Fear Street trilogy follows a group of teens in the ‘90s working to rid their troubled town of an age-old curse from young witch Sarah Fier.
16. Blade Runner (1982)
In a cyberpunk version of the future, man has developed the technology to create replicants — humanoid androids with short, fixed lifespans — which are illegal on Earth, but are used in the off-world colonies. In Los Angeles, California, 2019, Deckard is a “blade runner”, a cop who specializes in terminating replicants. He is forced to come out of retirement when four replicants escape from an off-world colony and come to Earth.
17. Fearless (2006)
After a terrible tragedy, a martial artist (Jet Li) retreats to a remote village to gain a new appreciation for the important things in life, but when he returns to the city to reconcile his past with the present, he gets caught up in a duel to the death defending China’s honor.
If you love martial arts movies, you can’t miss Fearless, one of Jet Li’s finest and final films.
18. Charlie’s Angels (2000)
Starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu, this 2000 action comedy grossed more than $264 million on a $93 million budget.
The plot follows a trio of elite private investigators armed with the latest in high-tech tools, high-performance vehicles, martial arts techniques and an array of disguises who unleashes their state-of-the-art skills on land, sea and air to track down a kidnapped billionaire-to-be and keep his top-secret voice-identification software out of lethal hands.
19. Ip Man (2008)
This 2008 martial arts essential stars Donnie Yen as Ip Man, the legendary Wing Chun master who went on to train Bruce Lee. A wealthy martial artist living the dream life, Ip Man’s life is thrown into chaos when the Japanese occupy his hometown during wartime. With little means of providing for themselves, Ip Man and the remaining members of the city must find a way to survive.
