The Best Action Movies of 2018 (So Far)

Despite the range of fiery, computer-generated explosions on display at your local multiplex, this is a peculiar historical moment for the action movie. As major studios increasingly devote their resources to spectacle-filled comic book tentpoles like Avengers: Infinity War or sci-fi extravaganzas like Ready Player One, the more grounded punch-fest has become a specialized commodity for fans who keep track of streaming debuts, OnDemand releases, and the latest international exports. It’s a solid, creatively rich time for action movies. You just need to know where to find them.

Hopefully, the list below, which we will be updating throughout the year — like our other movie lists — will make the task of keeping up with what’s new (and good!) manageable. As you’ll soon find out, we consider the “action movie” to be an elastic concept that can be stretched to encompass genre-blurring stories that some might also describe as thrillers, spy dramas, superhero movies, buddy comedies, or horror films. What makes them action movies? Well, they’re on this list.

‘Are You Afraid of the Dark’ Is Coming Back as a Movie

8. Deadpool 2

Released: May 18
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz
Director: David Leitch (Atomic Blonde)
Why it’s great: There’s an obnoxious aside in Deadpool 2, the latest chapter in the ultra-violent (and ultra-smarmy) X-Men spin-off series, where Ryan Reynolds’s red suit-wearing anti-hero turns to the audience and says there’s a “big CGI fight scene coming up.” He’s not kidding — the Russian tin man Colossus brawls for a while with an animated villain I won’t reveal here — and that’s the irritating part of the gag: The filmmakers are just acknowledging a cliché instead of upending it! In the first Deadpool movie, the comedic “too much-ness” of the character was often used to cover up some perfunctory, uninspired action sequences. Luckily, the sequel, which centers around Deadpool’s efforts to save young Firefist (Dennison) from the clutches of badass time traveler Cable (Brolin), delivers sharper one-liners and more dynamic set-pieces, including a bloody X-Force raid that turns into a Rube Goldberg-like show-stopper for the luck-prone Domino (Zazie Beetz). The CGI battles, meta winks, and constant pop culture references can be exhausting, but there’s an entertaining 90-minute Shane Black-ish comic book movie lurking beneath all the clutter.
Where to see it right now: In theaters (watch the trailer)

7. Beirut

Released: April 11
Cast: Jon Hamm, Rosamund Pike, Dean Norris, Shea Whigham
Director: Brad Anderson (The Machinist)
Why it’s great: This is a film made by seasoned professionals. Anderson is a big screen and TV veteran, and the movie’s screenwriter, Tony Gilroy, was responsible for Michael Clayton and the best entries in the Bourne series. The script for the 1980s-set Beirut, which follows a former US diplomat (Hamm) as he gets pulled back to Lebanon by shady intelligence officials to handle a tense hostage situation, was actually written in the early ’90s and sat on the shelf for ages. (If it feels like a vintage Blockbuster rental, that’s why.) The film’s politics are often glib and reductive — it doesn’t have a keen interest in the Lebanese people or the history of the region — but, if you like spycraft stories in the vein of John le Carré’s work, this is a briskly paced, occasionally clever thriller featuring a winning performance from Hamm, who has struggled to find the right star vehicle since the end of Mad Men. His character is a familiar type: a wounded, hard-drinking negotiator who can talk himself out of any situation. He’s only slightly less morally compromised than the CIA sharks he swims with. The pleasure comes from hearing Hamm turn Gilroy’s cynical, punchy dialogue into a sales pitch.
Where to see it right now: In theaters (watch the trailer)

6. Kickboxer: Retaliation

Released: January 26
Cast: Alain Moussi, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, Mike Tyson
Director: Dimitri Logothetis (Wings of the Dragon)
Why it’s great: It’s been almost three decades since Van Damme’s Kurt Sloan faced off against Tong Po in Thailand at the climax of 1989’s Kickboxer. After four sequels, the series was rebooted for the modern MMA era with 2016’s Kickboxer: Vengeance, which cast former stuntman Alain Moussi as the neck-snapping Sloane and gave Van Damme the role of fedora-wearing Master Durand. Kickboxer: Retaliation is the next entry in this super-formulaic but reliable series — reportedly, there’s another sequel coming next year — and it’s a cut above your average direct-to-DVD slugfest, putting an emphasis on tightly choreographed fights and cleverly executed camera work. (There’s a ridiculous prison brawl that plays like a B-movie take on The Raid: Redemption.) The story inevitably runs out of gas by the time Sloan faces off against The Mountain from Game of Thrones in a lengthy, deadly bout at a muay thai temple, but it feels like a fair trade for all the bone-breaking chaos that comes early on. It’s hard work for an aging fighter to stay this spry.
Where to see it right now: Stream on Netflix; rent on iTunes, Amazon Video, VUDU, and YouTube (watch the trailer)

5. Manhunt

Released: May 4
Cast: Zhang Hanyu, Masaharu Fukuyama, Ha Ji-won, Angeles Woo
Director: John Woo (Face/Off)
Why it’s great: Any movie with a Jet Ski chase gets an automatic spot on this list. Luckily, Manhunt, the frequently ludicrous chase thriller from action filmmaking master John Woo, is more than simply one good scene where grown-men pursue each other on personal water crafts. It also has motorcycle rampages, sword fights, gun battles, and a secret super-soldier serum that can turn a senior citizen into a grizzled, roided-out warrior. The pharmaceutical conspiracy plot about wrongly accused lawyer Du Qiu (Hanyu) running from noble detective (Fukuyama) is merely a way to connect all the pieces in this insanely elaborate, goofy puzzle. The film has been described as a greatest hits collection for Woo, a showcase for all his favorite narrative tropes (Convoluted backstories! Orphans!) and his visual tics (Slow-motion! Pigeons!), but it’s really more like a return-to-form record from an aging rock band: He knows what works and has delivered a slick, dutiful version of it. Manhunt can’t touch his Hong Kong classics like Hard Boiled or The Killer — and it’s not as gleefully absurd as his Hollywood work like Face/Off or Broken Arrow — but it’s an impressive hybrid with style to spare. (And jet skis!)
Where to see it right now: Stream on Netflix (watch the trailer)

4. A Quiet Place

Released: April 6
Cast: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe
Director: John Krasinski (The Hollars)
Why it’s great: It’s reasonable to be skeptical of John Krasinski’s tastefully composed, PG-13 rated, Michael Bay-produced horror contraption, which also works as a sneaky action movie. There was little in his previous two directorial efforts, the indies Brief Interviews With Hideous Men or The Hollars, that suggested Jim from The Office was a budding genre filmmaker. And yet: A Quiet Place is a top-notch roller coaster in the Spielberg-ian mold. After sound-hating monsters take over the planet, a husband (Krasinski) and wife (Blunt) live a life of extreme caution with their two children, protecting them in a carefully maintained world of hushed whispers and relative silence. As you’d guess, the monsters have other plans. The political allegory component of the story isn’t particularly compelling — it’s been interpreted as a commentary on the hysteria of the Trump era — but as a movie about parental anxieties, it’s steely and effective.
Where to see it right now: In theaters (watch the trailer)

3. The Commuter

Released: January 12
Cast: Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows)
Why it’s great: The last thriller from the team of Neeson and Collet-Serra was Non-Stop, a bracing and clever whodunit on an airplane. The pair are back in high-octane Agatha Christie mode with The Commuter, a mystery that begins with Farmiga’s chatty passenger Joanna presenting Neeson’s haggard ex-cop (and loyal transit-enthusiast of the title) Michael MacCauley with a bizarre hypothetical: If you could perform a seemingly insignificant task that would have disastrous consequences for another commuter in exchange for a generous financial reward, would you do it? It’s a convoluted twist on Richard Matheson’s “Button, Button” short story that was adapted into a classic Twilight Zone episode and the bonkers Richard Kelley movie The Box, but Collet-Serra is less interested in the moral dilemma. Instead, he simply wants to strip the giant locomotive — and his star’s lumbering frame — for parts, finding Hitchcockian tension in each padded seat, empty corridor, and nervy patron. It’s action filmmaking as controlled demolition — and the best train potboiler since Steven Seagal’s Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.
Where to see it right now: Stream on Amazon Prime; rent on iTunes, Amazon Video, VUDU, and YouTube (watch the trailer)

2. Black Panther

Released: February 16
Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira
Director: Ryan Coogler (Creed)
Why it’s great: Coogler’s deft balancing of a high-tech spy gadgetry, ceremonial palace intrigue, fantasy action mayhem, and subversive political critique is unparalleled in the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe that Black Panther springs from. In the same way Creed, his propulsive and knowing reboot of the Rocky franchise, paid tribute to and upended boxing iconography, Coogler’s take on superhero-dom is both pleasing and probing. Basically, he’s got Soundcloud jokes, rhino battles, and takes on imperialism. The larger ideological conflict between the new king T’Challa (Boseman) and the American revolutionary Killmonger (Jordan) has been seen before in the pages of history books and comics, but it’s never been given this type of eye-popping, brain-scrambling, heart-pounding blockbuster treatment.
Where to see it right now: In theaters (watch the trailer)

1. Annihilation

Released: February 23
Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson
Director: Alex Garland (Ex Machina)
Why it’s great: Writer Jeff VanderMeer’s hallucinogenic, Kafka-like science-fiction novel proves to be fertile ground for filmmaker Alex Garland in this unsettling and surreal adaptation. Garland doesn’t stick to the book’s plot but he keeps the core concept: A team of women, including Portman’s grief-stricken biology professor, venture into a quarantined territory of Florida known only as “Area X” to investigate a series of unexplained phenomena and disappearances. The journey quickly turns perilous and it becomes clear that the group won’t make it out alive. Working in the same white-knuckle register as John Carpenter’s The Thing, the movie unnerves and stuns in equal measure. Refusing to provide the type of puzzle-box solutions viewers have been trained to look for, Garland leaves us with psychedelic images: grotesque animal hybrids stalking their prey, quizzical humans transforming into flowers, and shiny doubles performing interpretative dance moves. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, it dares to dream in a language we can’t quite comprehend.
Where to see it right now: Streaming on Netflix outside the US, out on VOD/Blu-ray on May 29 (watch the trailer)

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Dan Jackson is a staff writer at Thrillist Entertainment. He’s on Twitter @danielvjackson.