The action and thriller genres go together amazingly well for hopefully obvious reasons. A thriller doesn’t always have a lot of action (see the likes of Vertigo, Rear Window, or most Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, for example), and a movie can belong to the action genre without necessarily being a thriller (like, say, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). But if something is simultaneously thrilling and action-packed, then you’re usually in for quite a ride.
What follows isn’t necessarily a look at the best action thrillers ever made, but something concerned with those particularly suspense-heavy action/thriller movies out there. So, maybe some of these emphasize being thrillers over action movies, or work better as thrillers with a little action sprinkled in, but either way, they all offer quite a lot, and they’re all worth watching if you’re in the mood for something intense.
10
‘Run Lola Run’ (1998)
Image via Prokino Filmverleih
Even with it sort of being three films in one, Run Lola Run won’t take up much of your time, because it tells those three “different” stories within about 80 minutes. Okay, it’s more like the same story told three different times, which stops it from being an anthology movie made up of different shorts, because it’s instead about the butterfly effect, with a race to get much-needed money at short notice playing out differently each time because of small changes made early on.
There is also a lot of running, and that keeps things feeling speedy pacing-wise. Run Lola Run also impresses because it never gets boring, even with the intentional repetition that’s worked into the film and its structure. They had a cool idea for a movie, and they executed it well. It’s all that simple, and all that’s all Run Lola Run really needed to be.
9
‘A Hard Day’ (2014)
Image via Showbox
There’s no shortage of suspense to be found in A Hard Day, which is indeed about a guy having a pretty awful time. Some of it’s also darkly funny alongside being suspenseful, and then when A Hard Day wants to focus on action, it gets fairly brutal and nasty, with the balance between comedy, drama, suspense, and action being handled surprisingly well throughout.
The main character is a police officer, and he gets himself into an ever-worsening situation after he tries to cover up a car accident, only to get threats from someone unknown to him who claims he knows about the cover-up. A Hard Day is like an action/thriller-tinged farce, and it’s pretty great as a “wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time” sort of movie; it’s a lot of fun, strangely enough, to watch all the dominoes fall here.
8
‘Speed’ (1994)
Image via 20th Century Studios
Living up to its title as effectively and obviously as Run Lola Run, Speed is another action thriller from the 1990s that never once shows any desire to slow down. So, yes, considering what it’s called, that’s a good thing. And it’s also a movie about a bus that has to keep going at a certain speed, because if it drops below that speed, there’s a bomb on board that will explode, killing everyone on the bus and probably a fair few people unlucky enough to be nearby.
It’s got a well-cast Keanu Reeves in the lead role, with Dennis Hopper also impressing as the villain in the way he so often did with what felt like relatively little effort. Not that you even need particularly good performances when everything else about Speed is so tight and efficiently done, but it helps, and really, everything here contributes at least a little toward it being one of the best action/thriller movies of its decade. Speaking of good action thrillers that came out in the 1990s…
7
‘The Fugitive’ (1993)
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
…You also can’t really overlook The Fugitive, when talking about movies that belong in these genres while highlighting suspense to a particularly great extent. You probably know the premise here, and like, you probably knew the premise of Speed, too, but just as that one was summarized quickly, here are the basics of The Fugitive: there’s a man and he’s a fugitive. He has to prove his innocence. He did not kill his wife. Those chasing him don’t care.
Again, that’s all you need narratively. The Fugitive is always very sure of itself, and you can look back on the whole thing and feel it was all a little broad or even predictable in hindsight, but in the moment, it’s easy to get swept up in (hell, look at how rewatchable something like Titanic is, with that sense of wanting them to avoid the iceberg every time, even though you know they won’t… good storytelling is just good storytelling).
6
‘Oldboy’ (2003)
Image via Show East
Standing as more of a thriller with a little by way of action thrown in for good measure, Oldboy is as suspenseful as it is heavy, and that’s the main thing, because it’s seriously heavy-going. It begins with a man being captured and imprisoned for 15 years, then setting out to find answers for the whole ordeal after being abruptly released. From there, Oldboy goes to some strange and oftentimes unpleasant places.
It’s an undeniably engaging watch, though, so long as you’re fairly well-braced for something more than a little confronting. It’s the most popular movie within a thematic trilogy directed by Park Chan-wook, so those other movies might be worth checking out if you’ve seen and liked Oldboy (though the two of them, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance, are ultimately lighter on action).
5
‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol’ (2011)
Image via Paramount Pictures
There’s something to get out of pretty much every movie in the Mission: Impossible series, though it’s probably movies #4 through #6 that are the strongest and most popular. So, picking a single one for present purposes feels tough, and the fact that each movie has a kind of similar premise doesn’t make things much easier, but Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (movie #4) is going here because it might well be the movie in the series with the most frightening sequence: Ethan Hunt scaling the Burj Khalifa.
That’s about as suspenseful and entertaining as Mission: Impossible has ever gotten, but then Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol does also have plenty of other great scenes, and it keeps the level of excitement and suspense pretty high throughout, all things considered. Still, honorable mentions to the other movies in the series, if we’re talking great spy/action/thriller movies, and an especially honorable mention to the two films that followed Ghost Protocol: Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and Mission: Impossible – Fallout.
4
‘The Raid’ (2011)
Image via XYZ Films
It’s going to be hard to fully discern the influence that The Raid has had on the action genre until a few more years have passed, but for now, it does already feel like it broke some pretty serious ground and raised the standards of hand-to-hand fight scenes. Or it might be more accurate to say that it ushered in a newfound popularity of – and desire for – a different, more realistic-feeling kind of martial arts movie.
That’s before getting to the plot, which is novel, since there’s more to talk about regarding what The Raid doesn’t have narratively than what it does. It’s a movie about some police officers having to fight their way out of an apartment building filled with criminals who want to kill them. That set-up, plus some of the best fight choreography of the century so far, proved more than enough to make this feel like an instant all-timer as far as suspenseful action/thriller/martial arts movies go.
3
‘Die Hard’ (1988)
Image via 20th Century Studios
Well, it’s Die Hard. There would be complaints if it weren’t featured in a ranking like this, and there might well still be complaints about it not being #1. It is about as essential and perfectly crafted as action thriller movies get, though, with that surprisingly influential premise featuring an underdog hero taking on a much larger villainous force within a confined setting, but not necessarily being like a one-man army.
McClane can’t just bulldoze his way through every single situation he finds himself in, and Die Hard is very suspenseful because he’s outmatched for so much of the film.
Bruce Willis as John McClane is more vulnerable than, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando, or Sylvester Stallone in the Rambo sequels. That’s where the thriller elements come in, over the action stuff, because McClane can’t just bulldoze his way through every single situation he finds himself in. It’s all very suspenseful because he’s outmatched for so much of the film, and because the bad guys feel a little more effective at their job than the bad guys usually do in your average action/thriller movie.
2
‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
Since it’s rated PG-13, The Dark Knight is technically milder in terms of violence than most of the other movies being mentioned here, though it finds some unexpected (and undeniable) ways to be intense regardless. It’s a comic book movie about Batman, to some extent, all the while also being an epic crime film and something that feels pretty in line with Michael Mann and his sensibilities (especially Heat, which isn’t here because it’s not as much of a thriller as the other films being mentioned).
The Dark Knight takes off with style almost straight away, and then it doesn’t really ever let up. There’s a sense of danger here, with turns in the plot you don’t often see in blockbusters made at such a scale, and that, plus the relentless pacing, is a big reason why The Dark Knight manages to feel especially suspenseful throughout.
1
‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ (1985)
Image via MGM
One of those movies that’s simply just cool, and that’s enough, To Live and Die in L.A. is very, very 1980s, and also unapologetically dark and violent in a way that still hits pretty hard if you watch it for the first time nowadays, 40+ years on from its release. It’s about a no-nonsense cop who wants to get revenge for the death of his partner, and a rather spectacular mess is made during the pursuit of this goal.
No, really. It’s hard to get into it without giving too much away, but To Live and Die in L.A. doesn’t come anywhere close to pulling even a single punch, and it throws out what feels like at least some kind of punch every minute or so. The whole thing is relentless and designed to put you on edge, since it’s the sort of film where just about anything can happen at any time, and many of its boldest sequences also looked dangerous to film, which just intensifies the intensity of it all. It moves fast, there’s lots of violence, and the particular brand of suspense here is still likely to cause nail biting all these decades later.
