I have watched certain action movies so many times that I know exactly when to stop talking. There is a second before a helicopter drops, a fraction of a second before somebody throws a punch, a particular engine noise that tells me something magnificent is about to happen. And God help the person who decides that is the moment to ask what we're ordering for dinner. I am genuinely incapable of behaving normally around filmmaking this good.
The funny thing is that the spectacle eventually becomes the least surprising part. Once you've memorized the action, you start noticing everything underneath it. How carefully a character has been pushed toward one terrible decision. Why a stunt means something different when you understand who's performing it and what they stand to lose. That's when I start bothering people to watch these movies. The fighting and explosions will get their attention. I want them to experience everything else.
6
'John Wick: Chapter 4' (2023)
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John Wick (Keanu Reeves) has spent three movies killing his way through an international criminal underworld, and John Wick: Chapter 4 finds him attempting to escape the High Table's authority permanently. The Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård) wants him eliminated, while John's old friend Caine (Donnie Yen), a blind assassin, is forced to pursue him to protect his daughter. Suddenly, the world's most dangerous assassin must fight his way toward a formal duel against an organization that can summon seemingly endless killers.
I could happily spend an evening discussing the overhead gunfight involving incendiary shotgun rounds, but the extraordinary Paris sequence is where director Chad Stahelski's (the director) ambitions become almost comical. John battles through traffic around the Arc de Triomphe, survives wave after wave of attackers, and then gets knocked down an enormous staircase just as he approaches his destination. It's hilarious, infuriating, and physically exhausting. Yet Caine gives the spectacle its emotional bite. He understands John better than practically anybody pursuing him, and both men are fighting for the possibility of a life beyond killing. That makes their eventual confrontation unexpectedly moving.
5
'Top Gun: Maverick' (2022)
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Pete Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is still flying experimental aircraft decades after becoming one of the Navy's most talented pilots. In Top Gun: Maverick, he returns to train an elite group of younger aviators for an exceptionally dangerous mission against a fortified underground uranium-enrichment facility. Among them is Rooster (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick's late friend Goose (Anthony Edwards), who resents him for interfering with his naval career. Maverick must somehow prepare the young man for a mission from which he might never return.
The training sequence where Maverick personally demonstrates the supposedly impossible attack run makes me want to stand up and applaud every time. He stops arguing with the skeptical pilots and simply shows them the mission can be flown. But my affection for this movie comes from watching Cruise portray somebody whose extraordinary abilities cannot resolve his personal failures. The reunion with Iceman (Val Kilmer) is beautiful, and the final mission becomes infinitely more affecting once Rooster disobeys orders to rescue Maverick. All those years of guilt finally lead to a situation where protecting each other requires taking exactly the risks Maverick has spent his life trying to prevent.
4
'RRR' (2022)
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Two men become inseparable friends without realizing they are destined to become enemies. RRR introduces Komaram Bheem (N. T. Rama Rao Jr.), who travels to Delhi to rescue a young girl abducted from his community by the British governor's family. Meanwhile, Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan) serves in the colonial police while secretly pursuing a revolutionary objective of his own. Neither understands the other's identity when they meet, setting up an extraordinary collision between friendship, duty, and two very different methods of resisting oppression.
There is a scene where these men rescue a child from a burning river using a motorcycle, a horse, and an almost offensively elaborate understanding of teamwork. That's practically the movie introducing itself. S. S. Rajamouli directed this gloriously excessive spectacle, and I love his absolute refusal to apologize for anything. The interval confrontation involving an army of wild animals is astonishing, but the quieter emotional foundation makes it work. Bheem and Ram genuinely adore each other. Their developing friendship, including that wonderfully exuberant dance sequence, ensures their eventual confrontation carries real pain. The film earns its impossible physical feats by giving its heroes an equally enormous capacity for loyalty. Not to mention the behemoth of traditional South Indian VFX and vibes this film creates.
3
'Mission: Impossible – Fallout' (2018)
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Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) sacrifices an opportunity to recover stolen plutonium when saving his teammate Luther (Ving Rhames), allowing the material to fall into terrorist hands. Mission: Impossible – Fallout follows Ethan's desperate attempt to retrieve it while CIA operative August Walker (Henry Cavill) accompanies him to ensure the mission succeeds. The situation deteriorates when the terrorists' larger plan emerges and Ethan discovers that the people closest to him may once again become targets.
That bathroom fight deserves its own documentary. Cruise, Cavill, and stunt performer Liang Yang create a wonderfully vicious confrontation where nobody looks remotely comfortable, and Cavill famously reloads his arms as though preparing to become an industrial machine. Yet what I admire most is how the entire film develops from Ethan's initial decision to save Luther. Every escalating complication tests his refusal to sacrifice individuals for supposedly greater outcomes. Ethan eventually goes into a helicopter chase that feels completely unreasonable until you remember the personal consequences of failure. The extraordinary stunts keep reinforcing the character's greatest strength and most dangerous weakness. Ethan simply cannot abandon somebody he loves. Christopher McQuarrie directed this film.
2
'The Raid 2' (2014)
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Rama (Iko Uwais) survives his disastrous police operation only to discover that escaping institutional corruption requires another assignment. In The Raid 2, he goes undercover in prison, befriends Uco (Arifin Putra), and infiltrates his father's powerful criminal organization. What begins as an investigation becomes an increasingly complicated gang conflict involving rival syndicates, dangerous assassins, and an ambitious young man whose desire for power threatens practically everybody around him.
I remember finishing the prison riot and wondering how the filmmakers could possibly sustain that intensity. Then came Hammer Girl (Julie Estelle), Baseball Bat Man (Very Tri Yulisman), the extraordinary car chase, and finally Rama's confrontation with the Assassin (Cecep Arif Rahman). Gareth Evans directed a sequel that seemingly has enough action for four separate movies, but that final kitchen fight is still the sequence I would insist everybody watch. The combatants are so evenly matched that the smallest adjustment becomes significant. Every attack requires another desperate response, and their growing exhaustion changes the character of the confrontation. I have revisited that fight an embarrassing number of times. Its precision is remarkable, but watching two extraordinary performers gradually run out of options is what makes it unforgettable.
1
'Mad Max: Fury Road' (2015)
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Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) betrays the tyrannical Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) by smuggling his five captive wives out of the Citadel in an armored War Rig. Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), initially captured and used as a living blood supply for one of Joe's soldiers, becomes an unwilling participant in their desperate escape across the wasteland. Mad Max: Fury Road essentially transforms one enormous pursuit into a story about freedom, survival, and people discovering that their only realistic hope requires trusting complete strangers.
My favorite decision comes when Furiosa discovers that the Green Place she remembers no longer exists. The survivors initially prepare to cross the salt flats in search of somewhere better, until Max proposes the seemingly suicidal alternative of returning to the Citadel. Think about how brilliant that is. George Miller, the film's director, has already spent most of the movie establishing the terrifying machinery pursuing these people. Now the protagonists must turn around and deliberately confront it. The entire return journey feels different because their desperation has acquired a purpose. Every vehicle, collision, explosion, and impossible stunt serves that decision. And when Furiosa finally returns to the Citadel, surrounded by the people she has liberated, Max quietly disappears into the crowd. After two hours of almost uninterrupted action, that little exchange of recognition between them is the moment I love most.
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