Action movies have been kicking ass and taking names for decades, and in the 21st century, they haven’t slowed down. The 2000s had bullet-time, shaky-cam, and superhero CGI, while the 2010s had bone-crunching brutality, incredible stuntwork, and more superhero CGI. So far, the 2020s have given us epic-sized action movies, franchise finales, and even more superhero CGI. Needless to say, it’s been one hell of a century so far, and it’s given us some pretty perfect action movies.
The most perfect action movies of the 21st century include martial arts masterpieces, globe-trotting spy thrillers, and buddy cop comedies. Some represent the pinnacles of their respective franchises, or even, arguably, the action genre as a whole. From master filmmakers and featuring iconic characters, these movies are pure adrenaline and popcorn entertainment of the highest order. Any action fan can’t possibly consider themselves as such if they haven’t seen these ten perfect 21st-century action movies.
‘Hero’ (2002)
The wuxia genre has a long, rich history in Chinese fiction, dating back thousands of years. Those storytelling traditions carried through into cinema, and in the 21st century, wuxia movies continued to wow audiences with their elegant martial arts action. Many would argue Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the most perfect of these, but since that movie was released in 2000 and the 21st century technically began in 2001, I can be pedantic and give this spot to the equally worthy and visually sumptuous Hero. Directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Jet Li, this color-coded classic offers dueling narratives and sweeping action that rivals the very best.
Li plays a nameless assassin who is granted counsel with an all-powerful king in exchange for telling him how he was able to conquer three other assassins who had previously made attempts on the king’s life. The nameless assassin weaves a wonderful web recounting his victories, all starkly contrasted by their color schemes. The collaboration between the film’s costume design, production design and Christopher Doyle‘s cinematography makes Hero one of the most beautiful action films ever made, and its action is appropriately artful. It’s a masterpiece worthy of upholding the grand tradition of wuxia in the 21st century.
‘Casino Royale’ (2006)
James Bond came into the 21st century with one of his worst entries ever in the embarrassing Die Another Day. That film’s failure convinced the franchise producers that it was time to shake things up like a vodka martini. They accomplished that by giving 007 his first ever reboot with a film adaptation of the first Bond novel written by Ian Fleming, Casino Royale. Taking over the role from Pierce Brosnan was the blond-haired, blue-eyed Daniel Craig, who, despite the objections of some purists, made the character all his own with a lean, mean approach that brought Bond back to basics. Between him and returning director Martin Campbell, who had helped bring Brosnan into the fold in GoldenEye, Casino Royale was a reinvigorating classic that remains a fan-favorite and is consistently listed as the best that Bond has ever been.
Sticking fairly close to the source material, with some modern plot updates and action upgrades, the movie finds Bond achieving double-0 status after a killer opening and going after the villainous Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen). When the traditional methods of bedding women and engaging in shootouts fail, Bond has to fall back on his card-playing skills and take on Le Chiffre in a high-stakes poker game at the titular resort. The poker playing is almost as enthralling as the action scenes, but even more electric is the scintillating rapport between Bond and Vesper Lynd (Eva Green). Casino Royale gave audiences everything they could ever want from a Bond movie and so much more, renewing the character’s license to kill for the 21st century.
‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ (2007)
The need for Bond to up his game was partially precipitated by the rise of another, grittier cinematic spy who was giving the gadget-bound British agent a run for his money. Matt Damon debuted as the amnesiac Jason Bourne in 2002’s The Bourne Identity, which was released the same year as Die Another Day. It was clear which action hero audiences preferred, as Bourne’s blunt force approach better reflected the post-9/11 cynicism that was sweeping through cinemas. He’d continue his quest for answers in The Bourne Supremacy, which brought on director Paul Greengrass and furthered the franchise’s gritty action aesthetic with his shaky-cam verité style that would become overused in Hollywood action movies. Greengrass’ use of the technique far surpasses all the imitators, giving an urgent, kinetic pacing to his Bourne movies, and never more effectively than in the original trilogy finisher The Bourne Ultimatum.
As the final ( at the time) entry in Bourne’s investigation into his past and his war with the CIA, Ultimatum pushes the character to his absolute limit. He travels from London to Tangier to New York City, dodging assassins and seeking answers, unraveling a plot that spreads across the world and involves some of the darkest secrets of the intelligence community. The action is the best in the franchise, with chase sequences and fight scenes that are the best kind of chaotic and frenetic. The film ends just as the franchise began, with Bourne’s body floating in the water, but this time he knows exactly who he is. To audiences, though, he’ll always be the first great action hero of the 21st century.
‘Hot Fuzz’ (2007)
By the time of the 21st century, the buddy-cop subgenre had gone from genuine to self-referential and back again. Filmmakers like Shane Black, Walter Hill, and Tony Scott had all put their distinctive stamp on the genre, but there was still more to mine. Enter director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Hot on the success of their zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead, they turned their sights on the buddy-cop formula and came up with a whole new concoction with Hot Fuzz. It’s a small-town thriller combined with big city action, all filtered through a crass English comedic sensibility and directed with endless energy by Wright.
Pegg plays hot-shot London cop Nicholas Angel, who’s so good at his job that he makes the rest of the police force look lazy in comparison, so his superiors banish him to a sleepy hamlet with a low crime rate. There, he’s partnered with Frost’s bumbling constable Danny, who educates Angel on the ways of action movie heroes. Together, this dynamic duo must solve a mysteriously rising death rate that’s too coincidental to be accidental. Hot Fuzz benefits from a clever script by Pegg and Wright that excels in setup and payoff both in its jokes and its action. It may take some build-up to get to the bullets, but when it gets there, it’s as good as any action film of the 21st century, and a hell of a lot funnier.
‘The Raid’ (2011)
The 2010s were defined by how brutal the action was. Picking up where 2000s movies like Ong-Bak and Oldboy left off, the action films of the 2010s got exceedingly and excessively violent. Movies like Hardcore Henry, Dredd and The Night Comes for Us all spilled increasing amounts of blood, but they all bow at the altar of The Raid. The Indonesian action classic made martial artist Iko Uwais into an international star and put Gareth Evans on Hollywood’s action director shortlist. It’s a taut, tightly wound thriller with floor-to-floor action that’s punishing and potent.
Uwais stars as a member of a SWAT team sent into an apartment block to take down a drug lord. Once inside, the team is ambushed, leaving only a few survivors to fight their way out through waves of weapon-wielding thugs. The fight scenes are bone-crunchingly brutal, compounded by Uwais’ full body deployment of pencak silat martial arts and Evans’ frenetic camerawork. There’s a simplicity to The Raid’s plot and a lethal efficiency to its action that makes it the most memorably vicious action movie of the 21st century.
‘John Wick’ (2014)
In the early ’90s, Keanu Reeves gave action fans two classics with Point Break and Speed before closing out the decade with the revolutionary The Matrix. His 2000s were mostly defined by sequels and a few cult favorites. Then, in the 2010s, he became the decade’s most definitive action hero in John Wick. The calculated action classic spawned an expansive franchise that has grown exponentially with each successive film, with bigger action set pieces and more complex mythology, but there’s something particularly perfect about the original film’s simple revenge plot.
The first film finds Reeves’ Wick retired and grieving the death of his wife, with only a beloved beagle to remember her by. That poor doggie’s days turn out to be even more numbered as he is quickly sent to live on a farm upstate by the reckless son of a Russian gangster. That act of canicide compels Wick to come out of retirement and start killing whole swaths of the criminal underworld. While this first foray into the convoluted underworld that Wick inhabits may seem downright simplistic in comparison to its sequels, it tells a satisfying revenge story that feels complete, and Reeves gives his all as the unstoppable canine avenger.
‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’ (2015)
The Mission: Impossible film franchise has spread across four decades, with eight installments that each see Tom Cruise return as IMF agent Ethan Hunt to take down various criminals, get disavowed by the government, and save the day. While the series began with a revolving door of directors who each brought a unique style, by the fifth installment, Cruise had found his favorite collaborator in Christopher McQuarrie. Together, the director and star would finish the franchise together, but nothing beats their first collaboration, the perfect Rogue Nation.
Bringing in the Syndicate as antagonists in homage to the original television series, Rogue Nation gives Ethan his most dangerous adversary yet in what is essentially the anti-IMF, led by the ruthless Solomon Lane, played with whispering intensity by Sean Harris. As with all the Mission: Impossible films, the plot is a series of twists and double crosses designed to connect some thrilling action set pieces, and the movie has some of the franchise’s best. From the opening where Ethan hangs from the outside of a cargo plane during takeoff to the Hitchcockian opera house sequence that introduces Rebecca Ferguson as fan-favorite Ilsa Faust, the film is firing on all cylinders. The 21st century has had lots of spy action to choose from, and Rogue Nation is on the top tier.
‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)
Unlike Bond or the Mission: Impossible franchise, Mad Max had long been dormant by the time of the 21st century. Audiences weren’t exactly dying for a return to the desert wasteland of Australia, and the film’s prolonged and troubled production didn’t inspire confidence either, nor did the fact that director George Miller hadn’t made anything in the new millennium that didn’t feature dancing penguins. Then Miller unleashed Mad Max: Fury Road on the world and had everyone wanting to ride shiny and chrome to Valhalla. Unlike so many belated sequels to beloved franchises, Fury Road isn’t at all interested in treading over the same path as its predecessors, instead forging a bold new one forward by stripping the series down to its most essential parts.
Max, now played by Tom Hardy, is still wandering the wasteland when he’s taken captive by the war boys of the deranged despot Immortan Joe, played by original Mad Max villain Toecutter’s actor Hugh Keays-Byrne. The road warrior’s escape is precipitated by Furiosa, the bald badass played by Charlize Theron, who’s on a rogue mission to liberate the wives of Joe to greener pastures. A feature-length car chase across the barren desert ensues, with some of the most immaculately crafted action ever put on screen. Fury Road is an undisputed masterpiece that proved Miller still had more vigor and talent in him than most action directors half his age. The film is a non-stop thrill ride and is the best action film of the 21st century, if not all time.
‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ (2018)
Superhero movies became the dominant blockbuster in the 21st century, with Marvel and DC bringing their biggest names to the big screen with action to match. The best of these have been movies like The Dark Knight, Logan, and, especially, Spider-Man 2. It’s tempting to list Sam Raimi’s action-packed sequel here, but it’s ever so slightly eclipsed by the animated perfection of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Setting itself apart from its live-action counterparts, this stylish animated action movie focuses on the alternate universe Spider-Man Miles Morales, alongside a whole crew of alternate Spider-People.
Morales (Shameik Moore) is just a gifted teen until he’s bitten by a radioactive spider. His origin story is interrupted by a multiversal collision that brings him into contact with an older, sadder Peter Parker (Jake Johnson). Together, the two heroes team up to take down Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) and are joined by several other counterparts from across the Spider-Verse. The film is fast and furious with its character introductions, using its comic book-inspired visual style to whisk audiences along for the ride while barely taking a moment to breathe. Into the Spider-Verse is visually the closest thing we’ve ever gotten to a living, breathing comic book, and its action is as inspired as the panels of the web-slinger’s best adventures, which are brought to life with high-tech 21st-century style.
‘RRR’ (2022)
Who needs superheroes when you’ve got Indian folk heroes? RRR stormed theaters in 2022 and took most Western audiences by surprise with its bold, colorful action, which was accentuated by musical numbers and CGI animals that put pretty much every other action film of the year to shame. It’s an anti-colonial action epic that brought international attention to Telugu-language cinema and put Hollywood on notice to step up its game.
Set in the 1920s in Delhi, the film imagines a meeting of historical revolutionaries Komaram Bheem (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.) and Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan), as they go from foes to friends and join forces to take on the British colonial ruling force. It’s an epic-sized film with appropriately epic-sized action from start to finish, but its elaborate stunt choreography, relentless pacing and its wild melding of genres and tones make it so that the film never drags or bores. RRR is a perfect example of why the action genre is alive and kicking in the 21st century.
