The 10 best action movies on Amazon Prime Video
If you have an Amazon Prime account, you can stream thousands of classic and recent movies on your smartphone, tablet, PC or smart TV via the Prime video service. If you are an action movie fan, you have lots of choices to choose from on Amazon Prime Video.
The selection of action movies on Amazon Prime Video is constantly changing, but we have picked our top 10 films that you can watch right now on the service. In our selection, we made sure that the action movies on our Amazon Prime list will not leave the service for at least a month.
Best action movies on Amazon Prime Video
- Iron Man 2
- The Punisher
- Kick-Ass
- Cloverfield
- Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
- G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
- District 9
- Universal Soldier
- Next
- Law Abiding Citizen
Editor’s note – We will update this post as more action movies on Amazon Prime Video leave and others are introduced.
1. Iron Man 2
Before Disney Plus launches and takes a lot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies with it, you can watch Iron Man 2 right now on Amazon Prime Video. The 2010 movie is the third in the MCU series, and it brings back Robert Downey Jr. in his second outing as Tony Stark and the Armored Avenger Iron Man. This movie, while not as good as the original, is still very fun to watch, mostly to check out Downey Jr and his performance as the witty billionaire industrialist. This is also the first movie that features Scarlett Johansson playing the role of superspy Natasha Romanoff,a.k.a.The Black Widow, who has appeared in a ton of MCU movies since Iron Man 2. Also, we see the first appearance of Don Cheadle, taking over the role of James “Rhodey” Rhodes and also putting on the War Machine armor for the first time.
2. The Punisher
One of the most grounded characters in Marvel Comics, The Punisher has been adapted into movies three times, but the best was this 2004 release. Thomas Jane is perfect as Frank Castle, who sees his entire family executed by a mob family, led by John Travolta’s Howard Saint, who blames Castle for the death of his own son. There are no superpowers on display here. The Punisher is a gritty crime action movie, as Castle goes on a one-man war against everyone in organized crime. It’s certainly one of the best action movies on Amazon Prime Video.
3. Kick-Ass
If you want a comic book based movie that’s more than a little different, then check out Kick-Ass on Amazon Prime. Based on the comic from writer Mark Millar (Wanted, Kingman) and artist John Romita Jr, the 2010 film is mostly a straight adaptation of the first Kick-Ass mini-series, as high-school student Dave Lizewski decides the city needs a superhero. He becomes Kick-Ass to help others, but as it turns out, becoming a superhero is harder than it seems. There are some great action sequences in this film, thanks largely to another character, a 12-year-old girl who becomes the ultra-violent Hit-Girl, played perfectly by Chloë Grace Moretz.
4. Cloverfield
J.J. Abrams, hot off his hit TV show Lost, produced this 2008 action movie that was notable for the high degree of secrecy before it was released. As it turned out, Cloverfield was a found-footage film that followed a group of young professionals in New York City, which happens to be under siege by a Godzilla-style giant monster. The movie itself, directed by Matt Reeves, is still a fun action movie to watch, as we see how ordinary citizens deal with an extraordinary event.
5. Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
Yes, we know; the general consensus among Trek fans is that the odd-numbered movies are no good. That’s not really the case for the third movie to feature the cast of the original Star Trek TV series. This 1984 film follows up direction from Star Trek II, where Mr. Spock died to save the rest of the U.S.S. Enterprise crew. However, it turns out that Spock may only be “mostly” dead, and Captain Kirk and the rest of the crew have to go against both Starfleet and a renegade Klingon ship to save Spock. There are lots of big action moments here, including some major canon events for Trek fans, and with Leonard Nimoy himself directing, it turns out that Star Trek III is actually one of the better films in this franchise.
6. G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra
After the success of the first Transformers movies, Hasbro naturally wanted to make a movie based on its G.I Joe toy revival of the 1980s. The result was this 2009 movie, which has its flaws but is still a fast-moving action film with lots of cool set pieces. Fans of the original toys and the cartoon series might nitpick over The Rise of Cobra’s faithfulness to the source material, but it still has the spirit of those creations. The G.I Joe team, a multi-national secret ops group, goes up against its opposite number in Cobra, who are out to destroy the world with its new nano-virus warheads. This movie blends the war movie genre with James Bond-style massive action sequences, which conclude with a huge battle under the Arctic. Just watch this movie and have some fun.
7. District 9
This 2009 film is one of the few sci-fi films that doesn’t treat its audience with kid gloves. It takes place in an alternate Earth where a mysterious alien space ship shows up and starts hovering over Johannesburg, South Africa in the early 1980s. It has a massive group of aliens who, on the surface, cannot seem to assimilate with humans. In the present day, these aliens have been placed in an area outside the city called District 9, but are about to be moved to a new location. A man who is part of the team trying to move the alien population accidentally gets infected with a substance that starts to mutate him into one of these “prawns”. Co-writer and director Neill Blomkamp takes on issues like immigration, racism and more, but puts it into a sci-fi action story that’s very entertaining. It’s certainly one of the best action movies on Amazon Prime Video that’s currently available.
8. Universal Soldier
After making a number of low-budget action films in the late 80s and early 90s’, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s biggest film to date was this sci-fi movie from 1992. He plays a Vietnam vet who gets killed in action, but his body is later revived to be used as a zombie-like solider for a secret government project. Unfortunately, another dead Vietnam soldier, played by Dolph Lundgren, is also a part of this program and he wasn’t exactly a nice guy. When JCVD and Lundgren’s characters start to remember who they were in their past lives, they go to war against each other once again. This movie, directed by Stargate and Independence Day’s Roland Emmerich, is a lot of fun to watch. It also spawns a number of spin-offs and sequels, most of which went direct-to-video.
9. Next
What if you could see just a few minutes into the future to find out if a decision you are about to make will work out? That happens to be the superpower that Nicolas Cage’s character has in this 2007 movie, which allows him to make a living as a Las Vegas psychic act. However, his abilities have attracted the attention of the U.S. government, who want to use his powers to try and foil a nuclear terrorist threat. The main idea of a man who can look just ahead into the future is a cool one, and Next explores just how that could be used by Cage’s character.
10. Law Abiding Citizen
Our last movie in our best Amazon Prime action movie list is from 2009. It stars Gerald Butler as a man who deals with the murder of his wife and daughter in a rather interesting way. The killer of his family is set free from prison after just a few years, so Butler’s character kills him and goes to jail. However, Bulter feels that the entire judicial system is also to blame for allowing the killer to go free, so he decides to kill members of the law enforcement and court system, while still in jail. It’s the way Butler goes about attacking his victims while also still in prison that’s the main attraction in this action movie, which also stars Jamie Foxx as the district attorney who is one of Butler’s targets.
These are our picks for the best action movies on Amazon Prime Video. Which ones do you plan to watch in the near future?
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