Best Action Movies, Films, and Streaming Features of 2021
Lights, camera, and a whole host of non-stop action blockbusters!
2021 was a showcase of the biggest modern action characters, with James Bond, Harley Quinn, Dominic Toretto, Godzilla, King Kong, Batman, Superman, and even Kano gracing our screens.
Not limited to established favourites, 2021 also delivered a slew of new original modern classics, with Nobody, The Harder They Fall, Kate, Boss Level, The Tomorrow War and Gunpowder Milkshake all offering fresh takes on the action genre.
When it comes to action movies, there really has been something spectacular for everyone this year. Please enjoy our Best Action Movies, Films, and Streaming Features of 2021.
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1. The Suicide Squad
James Gunn's cynicism may be gone, but not his nastiness. At times, The Suicide Squad feels less like a movie than a mission statement from a director. Behold, look what I can do with a budget and all the comic book characters I can play with.
But, the unexpected heart at the center of the film, a sneaky anti-imperialist bent, and Gunn’s wild visual leaps make The Suicide Squad a bloody, gory delight.
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2. The Harder They Fall
The Harder They Fall is a bloody pleasure: a revenge Western packed with memorable characters played by memorable actors, each scene and moment staged for voluptuous beauty and kinetic power.
Jeymes Samuel, who co-wrote, directed, and scored the movie, has not just studied the works of the directors he emulates, but understands what they were doing with image and sound, and feels it.
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3. Nobody
Nobody is more violent lark than probing satire, but between Bob Odenkirk’s smartly underplayed performance, the surprises in the screenplay by Derek Kolstad (the “John Wick” series) and the puckishly brutal direction of Ilya Naishuller (“Hardcore Henry”), it’s a wonderfully paced and consistently clever action movie that ups the ante of a genre that’s been dominated by Liam Neeson clones.
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4. No Time To Die
If it wasn’t obvious before, it is now. We have been living through a great era for James Bond movies — and that era ends spectacularly with ‘No Time to Die’. The new movie takes its place among the best of the entire series. Daniel Craig leaves the series in a mammoth, 163-minute extravaganza that audiences will be enjoying for decades. It’s a lovely thing to see.
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5. Godzilla Vs. Kong
Godzilla vs. Kong is a crowd-pleasing, smash-'em-up monster flick and a straight-up action picture par excellence. It is a fairy tale and a science-fiction exploration film, a Western, a pro wrestling extravaganza, a conspiracy thriller, a Frankenstein movie, a heartwarming drama about animals and their human pals, and, in spots, a voluptuously wacky spectacle that plays as if the creation sequence in "The Tree of Life" had been subcontracted to the makers of "Yellow Submarine."
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6. F9
Is F9 the best blockbuster ever? No. Is it absolutely perfect? You bet. If you wanted to teach a course on the platonic ideal of the big-budget, distinctly Hollywood-born action blockbuster, F9 could furnish the whole syllabus.
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7. Zack Snyder's Justice League
This film is gorgeous, massive in scope, well-written, and superbly acted. It goes beyond being a Michael Bay-explosion fest and definitively transcends action and destruction porn. This is a real movie. Every single issue with the original release is fixed—everything from pacing, cinematography, acting, characterization, and even the film’s score.
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8. Kate
It comes together thanks in no small part to its charismatic leads, a heaping helping of style, and a story that is effective, surprisingly emotional and led by sober feelings of remorse and atonement.
For those just looking for bones breaking, faces getting stabbed, assassins delivering perfect headshots, ‘Kate’ more than delivers. This film is a solid, fun action-thriller in a world filled with subpar ‘Wick’-ian clones.
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9. Dune
For science-fiction devotees, especially those who have long-worshipped Frank Herbert’s dense tome and waited decades for it to be brought to the screen in a more successful incarnation than previous filmmakers have managed: Villeneuve’s Dune is the adaptation you always dreamed of. It will wow existing acolytes, and get newcomers hooked on its Spice-fuelled visions.
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10. Black Widow
Part origin story, part action film, Black Widow is a deeper dive into the forces that shaped Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow. And even in a film that should please Marvel fans with its requisite action sequences and detailed plot, it ends up being less about Black Widow’s skills as a trained assassin and, in keeping with the way Scarlett Johansson has played the character throughout the series, more about her soul.
Director Cate Shortland has given us a fast-paced movie with action sequences, character depth, and very subtle social and political subtexts about the way women are seen, treated and exploited in the world.
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11. Monster Hunter
There are monsters, there are explosions and there is Ron Perlman with beautifully feathered hair. This is a film that is all about spectacle. There is no need to ask questions or wonder about certain aspects of the plot: This is another dimension populated with monsters, that’s all you need to know. Monster Hunter asks you to let every fantastical second wash over you.
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12. Till Death
In spite of its icy backdrop, the part home-invasion chiller, part murder-mystery Till Death could prove to be the actual summer action movie you’ve been craving for a while: undemanding, a little silly, but a thoroughly engrossing and handsomely paced edge-of-your seat experience all the same.
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13. The Forever Purge
With Native American activists (Zahn McClarnon), anti-Mexican cartel women vigilantes, and the eye-opening power of white guilt when indebted to someone for your life, The Forever Purge is erasing the line separating its high-concept fiction from the nation outside our window. This franchise has never looked quite so familiar.
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14. Venom - Let There Be Carnage
Forget the plot - it’s a gloriously poly-queer, brain-eating, big-budget serial-killer movie, and it crams a lot into 90 minutes.
Andy Serkis turns out to have been a wise choice to direct “Let There Be Carnage.” With his motion-capture performances in the “Lord of the Rings” and “Planet of the Apes” movies, the actor-turned-filmmaker helped prove to the world that computer-generated imagery can be used to enhance old-fashioned acting, and vice-versa, to create a new hybrid version of both art forms. Serkis, working from an efficient and witty screenplay by Kelly Marcel (Tom Hardy gets a co-story credit), keeps the plot to a minimum and the relationships at the foreground.
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15. Army of the Dead
Snyder’s best movie since his debut, the zombie film “Dawn Of The Dead” (2004), Army Of The Dead is tremendously compelling and deftly navigates a lot of different tones, even if it quickly leaves more interesting ones behind.
Largely captivating and thrilling, for all is gore, darkly twisted comedy, and delicious tension— surely something satisfied audiences will walk away with—there’s also a minor but palatable sense of loss and melancholy. One that echoes the hardships of the pandemic age and ruthless American capitalism and gives the film some socio-political edge.
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16. Wrath Of Man
A star vehicle for Jason Statham at his meanest, "Wrath of Man" is one of Guy Ritchie's best-directed movies—and one of his most surprising, at least in terms of style and tone.
The completeness and sureness of the movie’s aesthetic is a joy to behold, even when the images capture human beings doing savage things. You don’t really root for anyone in this film. They are criminals engaged in contests of will. But the film is not a value-neutral exercise. There is an undertone of lament to a lot of the violent action.
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17. Boss Level
It’s a violent lark playing fast and loose with its science fiction so that star Frank Grillo can have a blast.
With sardonic narration dripping with the frustration that comes from constantly waking up to deadly assassins ensuring death arrives before 1:00pm each day, it never tries to be something it’s not.
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18. Mortal Kombat
The Mortal Kombat reboot nails every neck-snapping reason people love the series. Heart-ripping? Yes, there’s heart-ripping too.
That go-for-broke violence has always been a core component of Mortal Kombat, and this reboot succeeds because McQuoid and his team remember that, and have the self-awareness to acknowledge it. It isn’t a flawless victory, but it is lizard-brain fun.
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19. The Tomorrow War
The Tomorrow War is a big, dumb, beautiful blockbuster starring Chris Pratt as a time-traveling ex-soldier science teacher battling aliens who look like giant killer lice. I appreciate a film that takes big swings, and The Tomorrow War is the Babe Ruth of narrative conceits. Never before has a streaming release so capably evoked “Summer blockbuster.”
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20. Jolt
A gloriously silly gender-flipped version of ‘Crank’, Jolt is the best kind of joyous action-thriller trash.
A B-movie designed by people who knew exactly what kind of enjoyable trash they were making, Jolt is unabashedly silly, sloppily written, and overly reliant on the likability of Kate Beckinsale and fellow cast members Stanley Tucci and Jai Courtney. But it’s also a breezily entertaining reminder of how delightful it is to watch Beckinsale get pissed off.
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21. Riders Of Justice
It riffs on the “old man action hero” niche, recently dominated by Liam Neeson. Mikkelsen plays Markus, a soldier serving in Afghanistan, called home to Copenhagen when his wife dies in a train accident. But the accident appears not to be an accident at all. Riders Of Justice ties together gun fights seamlessly with melancholy and masculinity, putting them on similar footing without one gobbling up the others.
Read more here.
22. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Spectacular is the word for the martial-arts action in ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.’ As the first Asian hero in Marvel history, former stuntman Simu Liu is action poetry in motion and his epic starring debut kicks off the fall film season on a rousing high note.
Hawaii-raised director Destin Daniel Cretton makes the move from indies (‘Short Term 12,’ ‘Just Mercy’) to blockbuster without a stumble. There's nothing he won't throw at the screen to keep our pulses pounding. And pound they do.
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23. Prisoners Of The Ghostland
This is the one where Nicolas Cage’s testicle gets blown off halfway through. Sion Sono’s Prisoners of the Ghostland throws so much extreme weirdness and violence at us that we might overlook the fact that there’s method to its madness: Beneath the craziness and cacophony lies a tender, tragic tale of emotional paralysis and a civilization eating away at itself.
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24. The Protégé
Director Martin Campbell, screenwriter Richard Wenk, and Maggie Q deliver. The Protégé is good action-y thriller-y fun with great repeat value. It falls in that mid-range budget for an action film, maybe just a few notches below the Bourne films, so it’s the perfect popcorn movie outing for the weekend.
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25. Gunpowder Milkshake
If you’re going to do an insanely over-the-top, deeply stylized, bullet-riddled and female-centric riff on the “John Wick” movies, you might as well give it a fantastically ridiculous title. Leave all logic and reality at the door and settle in for a violent slice of Netflix original movie entertainment featuring an outstanding cast of first-rate actors clearly having a great time shooting up the joint.
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26. Sweet Girl
Aided by Steven Price’s enthusiastic score, Brian Andrew Mendoza’s vigorous direction keeps things speeding along, and Jason Momoa is such a charismatic presence — whether sensitively interacting with Rachel (skillfully embodied by Isabela Merced) or inventively snapping an adversary’s neck — that the proceedings’ lack of realism works to its advantage.
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27. Copshop
Joe Carnahan’s formal proficiency makes for a more sharpened and accomplished piece of work than many modern counterparts attempting to draw from the same well of cheap-o homage. That sense of precision doesn’t detract from the down-and-dirty fun, either; everyone on screen appears to be having the time of their lives gnawing on the rare slab of beef they’ve been thrown.
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28. The Vault
In a film that's preposterous but rich with personality, Liam Cunningham and Freddie Highmore lead the sparkling cast of thieves just crazy enough to try to claim treasure buried deep under the Bank of Spain. It’s an entertaining thriller with some pulse-pounding sequences where nearly every move is fraught with peril. We hold our breaths hoping our antiheroes can pull off the Heist of the Century, as it all leads to a thrilling climax.
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29. The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard
Directed by Patrick Hughes, this comic book-energy spy adventure, gorgeously captured by cinematographer Terry Stacey and keenly scripted with barbed laden dialogue from Tom O’Connor, Brandon Murphy, and Phillip Murphy, is heavy on blood, guts, action, and star power.
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30. Red Notice
If you’re looking for something realistic with true emotional relevance, well, then director Rawson Marshall Thurber’s action-comedy isn’t for you. There are touching tidbits sprinkled throughout, but what you get is the high-octane action and incredible stunts for which Dwayne Johnson has come to be known. In terms of action and story, the action flick is precisely what one might expect going in, but even more fun than you are probably hoping for.
Read more here.
For more of the best movies of 2021, head here for our Best Movies, Films, and Streaming Features of 2021.
Want more action movie reviews? The Sea Shell mobile app is available worldwide as a free download on the App Store and the Play Store. Download it today.