The 20 Best Action Movies on Max

This article is updated frequently as titles leave and enter Max. *New additions are indicated with an asterisk.

Action movies have long been the most successful genre at home, as viewers try to replicate that rush they got at the movie theater in their own living room. The Max (formerly HBO Max) selection of action flicks is predictably dense, bringing in some of the DC Universe, classic genre movies, and modern hits. Everyone from Martin Campbell to Martin Scorsese can find a home here, and you’ll often find a Batman, too. We will update this list regularly to give readers a new action movie to watch whenever they need a fix, or a reminder to watch a classic they’ve already seen.

*The Bank Job

Year: 2008
Runtime: 1h 52m
Director: Roger Donaldson

Roger Donaldson directed Jason Statham to one of the best performances of his career in this heist movie based on the true story of the 1971 Baker Street robbery. Saffron Burrows plays a woman who is blackmailed into leading an operation to retrieve a safety deposit box that contains compromising photos of Princess Margaret, and she calls in Statham to lead the team to pull it off. Clever and character-driven in ways that Statham films aren’t often allowed to be, The Bank Job is a unique movie in his filmography.

Batman

Year: 1989
Runtime: 2h 7m
Director: Tim Burton

The modern superhero movie owes an incredible debt to what Tim Burton did in 1989 with Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Kim Basinger. It wasn’t the first superhero movie, but it felt darker and different from the candy-coated men in tights movies that came before, especially the superior sequel, also on Max. Watch them both.

The Batman

Year: 2022
Runtime: 2h 56m
Director: Matt Reeves

Matt Reeves now owns the saga of the Dark Knight as a sequel to his March 2022 action blockbuster has already been announced. Dropping on Max while it was still in theaters, The Batman is an ambitious epic reboot of the legendary hero, anchored by Reeves’s craft and fascinating performances from Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano, and many more.

Civil War

Year: 2024
Runtime: 1h 49m
Director: Alex Garland

When it was released, Garland’s latest film earned quite a bit of flack for not exactly taking sides regarding the issues it raises, but it’s already proven to be surprisingly resilient, even appearing on a few EOY lists for the best of 2024. Kristen Dunst stars in a story that’s really more important the importance of journalism as the world collapses than anything else. Say what you will about its politics, or lack thereof, it’s definitely a conversation starter.

*Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Year: 2000
Runtime: 2h 1m
Director: Ang Lee

One of the most successful foreign language films of all time, Ang Lee’s wuxia epic was so popular that it landed an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, along with nine other nominations (winning four). It’s a gorgeous epic based on the Chinese novel by Wang Dulu that stars the legendary Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, and Chang Chen. It hasn’t aged a day in the quarter-century since its release.

Deadpool

Year: 2016
Runtime: 1h 49m
Director: Tim Miller

R-rated Disney Movie! Well, sorta. Deadpool was really one of the biggest box office hits of the entire 2010s, making almost $800 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie at the time. It changed so much in the blockbuster world, making Ryan Reynolds into a household name and proving that movies about men in tights don’t always have to be for kids.

Dune: Parts One & Two

Year: 2021, 2024
Runtime: 2h 36m, 2h 46m
Director: Denis Villeneuve

You can now watch the entire Dune saga to date on Max, the exclusive home to the highest grossing film of 2024 so far. The second half of Villeneuve’s saga fulfills the promise of the first, turning the set-up of the 2021 film into a full-blooded action tale of a new messiah. Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya lead an all-star cast in a film that understands both scope and character. It may not play quite as well at home as it did in theaters, but it still rocks.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Year: 2024
Runtime: 2h 29m
Director: George Miller

One of the best films of 2024 is exclusively on Max right now. Ignore the haters, this is robust action filmmaking at its greatest, serving as a prequel to Fury Road but also a fantastic film in its own right. Anya Taylor-Joy captures Furiosa as a survivor in a desperate world, but it’s Chris Hemsworth who steals the movie, sketching a tyrant too power-mad to comprehend his own stupidity.

Godzilla

Year: 2014
Runtime: 2h 4m
Director: Gareth Edwards

The new MonsterVerse is on Max in its entirety, but let’s take a minute to lavish some praise on the one that restarted it all, Gareth Edwards’s underrated 2014 blockbuster. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, and Bryan Cranston star in the reboot of the classic Toho series that pits the big lizard guy against two monsters of equally unfathomable size. It’s a rocking good time.

Greenland

Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 59m
Director: Ric Roman Waugh

An end-of-the-world movie released during the first Summer of the pandemic, this genre exercise wasn’t seen by enough people. It’s really solid, a reminder of how much Gerard Butler can carry a movie like this one, which reunites him with his Angel Has Fallen director in a film that’s quite literally about the end of humanity. The movie takes a micro approach to the most macro issue as it tracks one family trying to find a way to survive the impending impact from a planet-destroying comet.

Infernal Affairs

Year: 2002
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director: Andy Lau, Alan Mak

A lot of people probably don’t even know that Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winner The Departed was a remake of an awesome Hong Kong action film from just a few years earlier. Andy Lau and Tony Leung star in the story of a cop who goes undercover in a Triad while a criminal becomes a mole in the other direction at the same time. It was followed by two sequels, both of which recently dropped on Max too.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Year: 2001
Runtime: 2h 58m
Director: Peter Jackson

The Oscar-winning franchise by Peter Jackson bounces around the streaming services with alarming regularity, now finding its way to Max for an indeterminate amount of time. Watch the entire saga of Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gange, and the rest of the Fellowship while you can.

The Martian

Year: 2015
Runtime: 2h 22m
Director: Ridley Scott

One of the best late films from an all-time master, this sci-fi gem sees Matt Damon playing an astronaut who gets stranded on Mars, and has to use his ingenuity to get home. One of the many reasons this movie rules is how much it values intelligence and knowledge, two things that more blockbusters could stand to elevate.

The Revenant

Year: 2015
Runtime: 2h 37m
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

The Oscar winner for Best Director and Best Actor has kind of disappeared in recent movie memory, hasn’t it? It’s hard to believe it’s almost been a decade since Leonardo DiCaprio fought a bear in this telling of the story of Hugh Glass, a movie that became a legitimate phenomenon, making over half a billion dollars worldwide. It’s one of the most memorable survivor stories of the 2010s. And overdue for a reappraisal.

Robocop

Year: 1987
Runtime: 1h 43m
Director: Paul Verhoeven

People like to point at ‘80s movies and say they were ahead of their time, but this may be most true about Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 masterpiece, a film that foretold how technology would impact law enforcement in ways that took decades to come true. A brilliant action satire, this is the story of a Detroit cop who is murdered and revived as the title character, a superhuman cyborg enforcer. It’s even more riveting and relevant almost four decades later. Note: Both original era sequels and the 2010s reboot are also on Max.

San Andreas

Year: 2015
Runtime: 1h 55m
Director: Brad Peyton

Some action movies are about heroism; some are about spectacle. This falls into the latter category, an ode to the ‘70s disaster movies with the CGI of the 2010s. Dwayne Johnson stars as an L.A. Fire Department helicopter pilot who becomes our eyes into the “big one” hitting California. As earthquakes ravage the landscape and send buildings tumbling, the film never lets up. Is it highbrow genre fare? Nah. But it’s undeniably fun.

Seven Samurai

Year: 1956
Runtime: 3h 26m
Director: Akira Kurosawa

They don’t get more classic than Akira Kurosawa’s classic that inspired generations of action filmmakers. Co-written, directed, and edited by one of the best filmmakers of all time, it’s the story of seven ronin who are hired by farmers to fight the bandits who are ruining their village. It’s a formative text for the action genre, and quite simply one of the best movies ever made.

*Speed

Year: 1994
Runtime: 1h 56m
Director: Jan de Bont

Jan de Bont directed one of the best movies of the ‘90s and gave dozens of imitators a template when he released this simple-but-fantastic flick. In fact, its simplicity is one of its charms. A bus is equipped with a bomb that will explode if it drops below 50 miles per hour, and Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock are the only people that can stop it.

Unstoppable

Year: 2010
Runtime: 1h 39m
Director: Tony Scott

Every year seems to build the reputation of Tony Scott, one of the most vital American action directors of his generation. His last film is on Hulu and it’s evidence of his skill at making tight, no-nonsense pieces of escapist entertainment. Unstoppable stars Denzel Washington and Chris Pine as ordinary guys who have to stop an unmanned train before it derails and potentially kills hundreds.

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