10 Best Action Movies That Are Over 3 Hours Long, Ranked

2 days ago 5

Published Feb 9, 2026, 7:49 AM EST

Jeremy has more than 2300 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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There’s so little wrong with an action movie clocking in at about 90 minutes that, if anything, you'll probably find more people bemoaning action movies that are two or more hours long, rather than complaining about any feeling too short. It’s a bit like that with horror, too. Most, but definitely not all, movies in these two particular genres benefit from keeping runtimes as manageable/slim as possible.

Focusing on action, though, not everything needs to keep things short to keep things fun. The following movies are either wholly action movies, or belong to a few genres, with the action genre being one of them. They're all over three hours long, too, being ranked below not by how much longer than 180 minutes they are, but roughly in terms of quality, starting with the very good and ending with the great.

10 'Zack Snyder's Justice League' (2021)

242 Minutes

Justice League (2017) was too rushed, and probably too short. It’s a fair criticism to make, because it felt like it was mandated to be no longer than two hours, and the runtime was exactly 120 minutes. If you wanted to be charitable, you could say, “Not a second was wasted.” But at what cost was no second wasted? Shouldn’t the film just have been given a few more seconds? No, a lot more seconds.

It was, actually, given that, a few years later. Zack Snyder’s Justice League was about double the length of Justice League (2017), and though it wasn’t a perfect epic (the non-stop epilogues were a bit much), it was a huge improvement. The first cut of Justice League is best avoided, no matter how much you might like this sort of superhero movie. Zack Snyder’s Justice League, on the other hand, has some great parts, and is mostly worth devoting one’s evening (or most of one's afternoon) to.

9 'Avatar: The Way of Water' (2022)

192 Minutes

Time will tell whether this one remains the second part of a trilogy, or if the series becomes something bigger, but for now, the Avatar movies make up a trilogy, and it’s a tremendously jaw-dropping trilogy, too. Say what you want about all the non-technical stuff, and so many already have, but when it comes to delivering amazing special effects and satisfying action scenes that continually escalate in scale, James Cameron tends to deliver.

But there’s some déjà vu with certain parts of Fire and Ash, and The Way of Water delivers a bit more of a punch for a few different reasons.

Avatar: The Way of Water might well be the best of the three so far, but it’s not the longest. The third, Fire and Ash, is, and that one might well have even more action. But there’s some déjà vu with certain parts of that movie, and The Way of Water delivers a bit more of a punch for a few different reasons. Or it delivers a few more punches or something. Whatever. Punches, here, are good. Cameron’s always punching above his weight. There are always things to admire with his mega-budget blockbusters, flaws be damned (if they're even noticeable/not overshadowed to begin with).

8 'Avengers: Endgame' (2019)

181 Minutes

There was so much in Avengers: Infinity War that it’s a little surprising that movie only clocked in at about 2.5 hours. To their credit, they made it work within that kind of runtime, even with so many different characters and various battles being fought in different areas. Everyone was united against Thanos, though, which kept things consistent. But then it all went to hell when he won.

So, Avengers: Endgame is about trying to reverse that victory. It ends up bringing many characters back, but before the final battle, it’s got a smaller cast than Infinity War. It’s still an epic with all the travel done (much of it through time), and then the runtime does end up being right on three hours, but justifiably so, since there’s a lot of story, emotion, and action packed into the runtime here.

7 'RRR' (2022)

185 Minutes

RRR takes place during an actual time in history, and the two main characters were also real-life people, but their meeting – and much of what they do here – is fictionalized. Call it historical fiction, then, with a revolutionary spirit and a glee in depicting action and spectacle, because RRR is a wild epic filled with absolutely massive action scenes that aren’t afraid to get over the top.

It’s over the top while also being easy to get wrapped up in emotionally, and such a balance can’t have been easy to achieve, but that’s just what RRR manages to do. Also, out of all the 180+ minute-long movies out there, this is one of the easiest to watch and enjoy. It’s exceptionally well-paced, and it has a real knack for making sure each big set piece impresses a little more than the last.

6 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' (1963)

192 Minutes

Dorothy Provine, Ethel Merman, Terry-Thomas in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

A bit sillier compared to everything else, but what else can you expect out of an epic-length slapstick comedy? The film is It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and it’s about greedy people racing each other to a supposedly massive fortune buried somewhere, and the lack of teamwork is where most of the comedy comes from. And the whole adventure angle it has also leads to action.

Comedic action, sure, but there are stunts and spectacular scenes regardless, and so much of it’s surprisingly fun to watch. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has a few different cuts, but the longest one clears the three-hour mark quite comfortably (at 3 hours and 12 minutes all up), so that also makes it eligible to be included here.

5 'A Touch of Zen' (1970)

180 Minutes

You could watch about an hour or so of A Touch of Zen and find yourself wondering why people tend to call it a martial arts movie. It is one eventually, and a great one at that, but it spends three hours doing some other things before it gets around to the well-choreographed fights. And, honestly, that’s okay, because the vaguely mysterious slow-burn sort of story it tells earlier on is intriguing in its own way.

Characters are introduced and developed slowly and, all the while, A Touch of Zen never stops looking phenomenal, being visually one of the most striking epics ever made. Then there’s fighting, and the fighting is excellent, so long as you're a fan of the wuxia sub-genre (a different kind of martial arts fighting compared to what you might find in, say, a Jackie Chan film, or The Raid movies).

4 'Gangs of Wasseypur' (2012)

320 Minutes

In a bit, there’s going to be a mention of a certain revenge epic released in two parts, and a fantasy trilogy released as three movies, even though those two projects are single stories. And the same kind of thing goes for Gangs of Wasseypur, which is one huge movie, but it was split into two, with both halves also being quite long on their own. And both those parts were released in 2012.

So, that makes it possible to count Gangs of Wasseypur as one epic, and you can indeed watch it as a single film that exceeds five hours in length. It’s paced in such a way that you honestly feel like you're watching about four or five movies crammed into one, with it being an impressive gangster epic spanning decades and generations, and succeeding as an action movie, since there’s a ton of violence and death here. It’s a bit like Scarface, Goodfellas, The Godfather Part II, and City of God thrown into a blender and then served to you as one gloriously messy yet hard-to-resist dish.

3 'Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair' (2003–2004/2006/2025)

Time to admit a fault. This ranking originally began with Grindhouse, which is a double-feature that’s technically one that belongs to the action genre, being a throwback to exploitation movies and all. And one part of that double feature was directed by Quentin Tarantino. But including that and forgetting about Kill Bill is quite the oversight, and Grindhouse wasn’t quite better than any of the other movies being featured here.

Still, for a while, it was hard to appreciate Kill Bill as one movie, but it was originally screened as The Whole Bloody Affair in 2006, and then a larger number of screenings much later, in 2025, which was the first time many got to see it truly as one movie, as opposed to watching Vol. 2 right after Vol. 1 ended. It’s perhaps the definitive revenge epic, not to mention maybe the most exciting English-language martial arts movie of all time, so it deserves some praise in a ranking like this.

2 'The Lord of the Rings' (2001–2003)

558 Minutes

The Lord of the Rings_ The Two Towers - 2002 (4)

There’s obviously more than just action to be found in The Lord of the Rings. This trilogy was based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s book (split into three parts itself) of the same name, and battle scenes were de-emphasized there, to some extent. You got some action, but that action is kind of focused on a little more in the movie adaptation(s), but not in a way where the adventure or fantasy elements get crushed, nor in a manner that sacrifices character drama.

Most of The Lord of the Rings is still about a journey undertaken by two unlikely heroes who aren’t exactly warriors, and all the while, the war they're endeavoring to conclude gets waged around them. There are big battles, heroic moments, memorable villains, and then a whole lot of well-earned tear-jerking scenes, especially near the end (or ends) of The Return of the King.

1 'Seven Samurai' (1954)

207 Minutes

Takashi Shimura holding a sword and moving forward in Seven Samurai.

Perhaps the definitive epic that’s also an action movie, Seven Samurai broke ground back in 1954, and you can still see the cracks such a breaking of the ground caused more than 70 years later. Well, that suggests destruction, but that’s not really true, because the groundbreaking stuff here was good, and indeed probably led to the making of a bunch of the already-mentioned epic-length action movies.

You’ve got a perfectly written screenplay here, as enough attention is paid to character development, dialogue, structure, and the events of the narrative itself. Everyone’s also fantastic on an acting front, Akira Kurosawa directs the movie perfectly, and… look, this could go on and on. Like a fan of gangster movies talking about The Godfather and trying to mention everything great to be found there. This one is Seven Samurai, and it is also perfect, so that’s that; that’s all that needs to be said, really.