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This list is regularly updated as movies rotate on and off of Prime Video. *New additions are indicated with an asterisk.

Action movies are typically among the most popular films available on DVD, VOD, and streaming services. People love to tune in, tune out, and escape while watching beautiful people doing impossible things. If you have an Amazon Prime subscription and are looking to do exactly that, its vast library contains some of the best action titles ever made, alongside its comedies, horror films, and family-friendly options. Amazon cycles films on and off of its service regularly, but these are the best action movies on Prime Video right now.

How We Pick Our Films

Critic Brian Tallerico watches and writes about movies and TV every day. To curate this list, he dives into Amazon Prime Video’s catalogue every month to surface exciting, white-knuckle action titles — using his taste and a lifetime of cinema study as his guide, instead of whatever the algorithm happens to be pushing. After triple-checking to make sure they’re still available, he watches each and writes his recommendation. We highlight more than just the thrilling crowdpleasers: Filmmakers use action to punctuate drama, lighten or heighten the mood of a movie, and explosively make an impact on cinema. Read on to find something to watch.

*Bad Boys

Year: 1995
Runtime: 1h 31m
Director: Michael Bay

When this action film was released, no one involved was anywhere near as big as they would become, including stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, and director Michael Bay. This flick is incredibly rewatchable, and the love for this series is still strong, as proven by the massive success of Bad Boys for Life, released just before the pandemic in 2020, and the current production of Bad Boys 4.

*Breakdown

Year: 1997
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director: Jonathan Mostow

If you’re looking for a good, underrated thriller, look no further than this thriller about a road trip gone horribly awry. Jonathan Mostow directs the always-great Kurt Russell as a man who has some words with a truck driver and learns that road rage is never the answer. A mix of modern fears with a noir sensibility, this a tight, effective little movie of the kind that doesn’t really make it to theaters all that often anymore.

Casino Royale

Year: 2006
Runtime: 2h 24m
Director: Martin Campbell

It’s hard to believe the most famous movie spy in history ever needed a comeback, but that’s really what happened when Daniel Craig stepped into 007’s shoes and it turned out to be one of the most acclaimed James Bond movies of all time. An origin story for the suave superspy, Casino Royale introduced new layers to the classic character, resulting in an action film that felt like it had real stakes. This is one of the best modern action movies, period, not just in the Bond franchise.

*The Crow

Year: 1994
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director: Alex Proyas

The tragic death of Brandon Lee overshadowed the legacy of this adaptation of the comic book of the same name. While it undeniably adds poignancy to the entire affair, there’s more to this clever, well-made movie than morbid fascination. One wishes that there were still comic book movies out there like The Crow, a movie willing to go dark to appeal to adults as much as teenagers.

*Face/Off

Year: 1997
Runtime: 2h 19m
Director: John Woo

There are rumors that a remake of this John Woo classic is on the horizon, so you owe it to yourself to go back and see the very high standard that project will have to meet. This is one of the best action movies of the ‘90s, a wonderfully staged blockbuster by one of the genre’s best filmmakers. And John Travolta and Nicolas Cage were near the peaks of their screen charismas as an FBI agent and terrorist who end up, well, switching faces. It’s a blast.

Goldeneye

Year: 1995
Runtime: 2h 10m
Director: Martin Campbell

The legend of 007 was in a pretty dark place in the mid-‘90s as the response to Timothy Dalton playing James Bond had been pretty much a universal shrug. Enter Pierce Brosnan in this film that revitalized the screen legend in a way that’s still going today. Brosnan’s best Bond film features the character trying to stop a rogue MI6 agent, played by Sean Bean. (Note: There are a bunch of other 007 films on Prime too from all eras.)

Highlander

Year: 1986
Runtime: 1h 50m
Director: Russell Mulcahy

There can be only one. Christopher Lambert stars as Connor MacLeod, who was born in the Scottish Highlands in the 16th century and killed there, only to discover that he was born immortal and is now a part of a massive secret war to leave only one highlander remaining. Yeah, it’s all really silly, but this movie became a massive cult hit, thanks in part to Lambert and Sean Connery’s fun performances.

The Hurt Locker

Year: 2009
Runtime: 2h 6m
Director: Kathryn Bigelow

The director of Near Dark and Point Break became the first female Oscar winner for Best Director for a film that also won Best Picture and stands now as one of the best movies made to date about the American soldier experience in Iraq. Jeremy Renner stars as an explosives expert, the kind of guy who goes in the room that everyone else runs from, and someone who brings home the trauma of what he sees overseas. As precise as the profession it captures, this movie has not one bit of fat on it, and it’s just as thrilling now as when it was released.

The Indiana Jones franchise

Year: 1981
Runtime: 1h 55m
Director: Steven Spielberg

Everyone is getting cautiously excited for James Mangold’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, releasing later this year. It’s the perfect time to catch up with the saga of cinema’s most beloved treasure hunter in the beloved first four (well, at least three) films in this franchise. The perfect Raiders of the Lost Ark and its three sequels are all on Prime, waiting for your marathon.

Interstellar

Year: 2014
Runtime: 2h 49m
Director: Christopher Nolan

The most underrated film from the director of The Dark Knight and Oppenheimer remains this 2014 sci-fi epic, a film that’s better if you approach it as an emotional journey instead of a physical one. Matthew McConaughey gives one of the best performances of his career as an astronaut searching for a new home for mankind, and realizing all that he left behind to do so. It’s a technical marvel with some of the most striking visuals and best sound design of Nolan’s career.

Jurassic Park

Year: 1993
Runtime: 2h 1m
Director: Steven Spielberg

An instant classic when it was released in 1993, Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur blockbuster spawned a franchise that’s still humming almost three decades later with the 2022 release of the wildly successful Dominion. The first three films in the series, including Spielberg’s sequel The Lost World, are on Prime right now.

*Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Year: 2018
Runtime: 2h 8m
Director: J.A. Bayona

The Chris Pratt-led reboot of the Jurassic franchise has been wildly commercially successful but critically panned, for the most part. Join us on this limb: This is the best of the new trilogy. It’s largely because the director of Society of the Snow and The Impossible knows how to do spectacle, especially in the back half of this movie, which contains some of the best filmmaking in the entire series, Spielberg films included.

*Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

Year: 1981
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director: George Miller

Mad Max was fun, and it helped put both Mel Gibson and George Miller on the map, but it was the sequel, often just called The Road Warrior that blew the roof off. With some of the best car sequences of all time, this was a game-changer, a film that felt completely fresh and new, while also paying homage to classic tropes of the Western. Movies would never be the same.

The Mission: Impossible franchise

Year: 1996
Runtime: 1h 50m
Director: Brian De Palma

Do you think Tom Cruise thought he’d still be playing Ethan Hunt over a quarter-century after the first adaptation of the hit TV show about the super spy? He’s basically created his own James Bond with the excellent Dead Reckoning – Part 1 coming out last summer. Go back to where it all began with a film that looks downright quaint now compared to the sequels but a film that still plays perfectly. Note: The first four films in the franchise are on Prime Video, including the great Ghost Protocol.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Year: 2005
Runtime: 1h 54m
Director: Doug Liman

It not only launched Brangelina, but Mr. and Mrs. Smith also launched a TV series adaptation that’s dropping on Prime in February 2024. Catch up before then with the tale of a married couple who discover that they’ve each been keeping secret lives as hired assassins from one another. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are charming in this film that made a fortune at the box office on largely their star power alone.

*San Andreas

Year: 2015
Runtime: 1h 54m
Director: Brad Peyton

Some action movies are about heroism; some are about spectacle. San Andreas falls into the latter category, an ode to the ‘70s disaster movies with the CGI of the 2010s. Dwayne Johnson stars as an L.A. Fire Department helicopter pilot who becomes our eyes into the “big one” hitting California. As earthquakes ravage the landscape and send buildings tumbling, the film never lets up. Is it highbrow genre fare? Nah. But it’s undeniably fun.

Sicario

Year: 2015
Runtime: 2h 1m
Director: Denis Villeneuve

Denis Villeneuve has become one of the biggest directors in the world on the back of beloved films like Blade Runner 2049 and Dune, but Sicario was really his breakthrough, a thriller about an FBI agent (Emily Blunt) who gets drawn into the war between the U.S. government and the Mexican drug cartels. Benicio Del Toro gives one of the best performances of his career here.

Stagecoach

Year: 1939
Runtime: 1h 36m
Director: John Ford

It won’t play the same as modern action movies, but this could be the gateway to classic Westerns for someone in your family. Give them the gift of a flick that really changed the genre, in no small part because it really introduced the world to a young man named John Wayne. Based on a 1937 short story by Dudley Nichols, this is the tale of a group of strangers on a stagecoach as it travels through Apache territory. It has influenced too many action films since to count them all.

*Superman: The Movie

Year: 1978
Runtime: 2h 23m
Director: Richard Donner

It’s been over forty years since the world believed a man could fly. As the 2010s-20s DC Universe comes to a grinding halt, go back to one of the blockbusters that really changed the form, a movie that proved that comic book culture could be mainstream. Christopher Reeve gives a timeless performance as the title character in an acting turn that blends heroism and everyman qualities in a way that whoever plays Kal-El next should model.

*Total Recall

Year: 1990
Runtime: 1h 58m
Director: Paul Verhoeven

Ah-nuld! Near the peak of his fame, the future Governor went to Mars in this landmark sci-fi film by the great Paul Verhoeven. Loosely based on a Philip K. Dick short story titled “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” Total Recall is about an average man caught in an uprising on Mars…or is he? Most 1990 action movies have aged poorly, but Total Recall still has something to entertain even the many Prime Video subscribers born after it was released.

Violent Night

Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 51m
Director: Tommy Wirkola

Who wants a different kind of Christmas movie this season? Hoping to start an annual tradition, Prime grabbed the streaming rights to this action flick about a Santa Claus (David Harbour) who ends up having to save a family from a group of mercenaries who have taken them hostage. It’s ridiculous in mostly the right ways.

Wonder Woman

Year: 2017
Runtime: 2h 15m
Director: Patty Jenkins

A major chapter of the DC Universe is about to end, which means it’s time to assess what worked best. This is undeniably near the top of the list. Take the recent DCU drop to Prime to go back and check out the phenomenal and best non-Batman film in the modern DC Universe. Gal Gadot stars in the title role and really anchors what’s an old-fashioned adventure film, one that owes as much to serial action flicks of the ‘40s and ‘50s as it does to movies with Batman and Superman.

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Annnnnd: Action!

• The 20 Best Action Movies on Netflix Right Now
• The 20 Best Action Movies on Max
• The 20 Best Action Movies on Hulu Right Now

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