Amazon is ubiquitous. But for years--despite making billions of dollars--the company did not turn a profit and lost millions each quarter. Incredibly, this was by design. Jeffrey Bezos borrowed billions and continually expanded his empire, believing that growth and customer satisfaction was preferable to short-term profit.
Many companies have since tried and failed to emulate this success. And it's no wonder; few companies have the means to bankroll a losing proposition for more than a decade or convince shareholders to invest in a theory rather than a solid path to success. But Amazon managed it, and today, it is an empire, with Amazon Prime Video as one of its biggest vassal states.
Amazon Prime Video's movie line-up has always been formidable. And earlier in its history, it needed to be. Amazon had neither the original programming of Netflix nor the establishment prestige of HBO Max/Go. But what they did have was a sheer volume of mainstream, accessible content that it could cycle in and out every month.
And action movies, in particular, are a great way to draw eyes to a platform. They have mainstream appeal; they get at our base, common instincts for violence, retribution, and survival. And although they may not have the critical acclaim of, say, period dramas or indie comedies, action movies are inherently cinematic, in a way that those films are not. A proper action scene prioritizes angles and shots. It demands panning, tracking, and tilting--all the kinetic stuff that can only exist in film and cannot be reproduced in any other medium. A great action movie exists in a class of its own.
Here are 20 of the best action movies currently streaming on Amazon Prime--an eclectic mix of established classics and modern classics alike.
1. Patriot Games
Starring: Harrison Ford, Anne Archer
Director(s): Phillip Noyce
You can't go wrong with a Harrison Ford classic, especially one where Ford plays Tom Clancy hero Jack Ryan. When an IRA terrorist named Sean Miller escapes custody, he seeks revenge on Ryan's family. Ryan must track Miller down and put him away, this time for good. Ford emotes in every frame; he's a father on a mission to protect those he loves at any cost.
2. Train to Busan
Starring: Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi
Director(s): It is a zombie action movie, at its base level. But on a deeper level, it's a story of a man who takes responsibility for his life and becomes a good father to his daughter. Fast zombies are terrifying in a more urgent, immediate way than their slow, plodding predecessors, and the sprinters in Train to Busan exist in a class of their own.
3. Fist of Fury
Starring: Bruce Lee
Director(s): Lo Wei
Also known to audiences as The Chinese Connection, this is Bruce's second lead film. He plays a kung fu student who seeks revenge against the Japanese karate school he suspects of murdering his master. Come for Bruce's undeniable magnetism; stay for the incredible nunchuck fight sequence.
4. Road House
Starring: Patrick Swayze
Director(s): Rowdy Herrington
It's an '80s classic starring Patrick Swayze as a handsome bouncer with an epic mullet who protects a small town from big business corruption. Road House falls into the 'so bad it's good' category and knows not to take itself too seriously. And the action is great; the punches and kicks are nothing fancy, but they always look like they hurt.
5. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen
Director(s): Peter Jackson
The middle chapter of Peter Jackson's original Middle-earth trilogy is the strongest of the three, and the Battle of Helm's Deep is one of the finest battles ever committed to film. It took 120 days and 20000 extras to film, and it lasted 40 minutes of screentime.
6. Once Upon A Time in China
Starring: Jet Li, Yuen Biao, Rosamund Kwan
Director(s): Hark Tsui
Director Hark Tsui viewed Guangdong, near the fall of the Qing Dynasty, as a Wild West of sorts, and he framed Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-Hung as its Sergio Leone-inspired protector—standing up for the common man in the face of foreign threats. This movie brought Jet Li to mainstream audiences, and two more Hark-Tsui-directed sequels followed in its wake.
7. Star Trek: Into Darkness
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch
Director(s): J.J. Abrams
The highest grossing Star Trek film is also widely disliked by the core fanbase. But although it may not be the best Star Trek film, it is an exceptional sci-fi action film. Director J.J. Abrams knows how to create a crowd pleasing set piece, and the climactic sequence, where the Enterprise crew saves the ship from crashing into Earth, is edited beautifully, and showcases how everyone did their part to prevent total disaster.
8. No Time to Die
Starring: Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch
Director(s): Cary Joji Fukunaga
Daniel Craig's lasting outing as Bond pits him against terrorists who have manufactured a DNA-targeting nanobot. This is an older Bond who comes out of retirement for one last mission. He's putting it all on the line; there are only so many times that one can risk life and limb before the odds catch up.
9. The Tomorrow War
Starring: Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, J. K. Simmons
Director(s): Chris McKay
A big budget Amazon Original, this movie envisions a future where present-day citizens are drafted to fight a future war against hostile aliens. It's got a great message, and our heroes shift their focus from winning the war in the future to preventing the future war in the present.
10. World War Z
Starring: Brad Pitt
Director(s): Marc Forster
This zombie movie swaps out creepy, atmospheric horror for high-budget, high-octane action thrills. The zombies have a bizarre hive-mind psychology, climbing, trampling and scaling each other with utter lack of humanity. The destruction of Israel is a particularly nasty highlight; it only takes a single breach for civilization to go to hell.
11. The Commuter
Starring: Liam Neeson
Director(s): Jaume Serra
Liam Neeson, who had one of the most unexpected, late-career resurgences as an action hero, stars as a former NYPD officer, who gets unwittingly sucked into a criminal conspiracy while riding the train home. The movie wrings every bit of suspense out of its premise, and the train slowly descends into chaos and outright violence.
12. The Protege
Starring: Michael Keaton, Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson
Director(s): Martin Campbell
It's a revenge tale, starring Maggie Q as a contract hitwoman who sets out to kill the people who killed her mentor (Samuel L. Jackson). Largely relegated to supporting roles in the past, Maggie Q makes a wonderful action lead in this movie. The more we see of her moving forward, the better.
13. Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie
Starring: Skip Stellrecht, Eddie Frierson, Lia Sargent
Director(s): Gisaburo Sugii
If you've only seen the Jean-Claude Van Damme version of Street Fighter, then you owe it to yourself to see the superior animated movie. The action centerpiece is the Chun-Li versus Vega fight, which begins when the Spanish Ninja infiltrates Chun's apartment and attempts to kill her.
14. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Starring: Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi
Director(s): Ang Lee
This movie was the West's first exposure to the wuxia genre. It's a dramatic epic and a love story, where the plot stands on equal footing to the balletic action. Its popularity was groundbreaking at the time; never before had a foreign language film performed so well in the United States.
15. Man on Fire
Starring: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Christopher Walken
Director(s): Tony Scott
In the early 2000's, Denzel Washington began taking on gritty anti-hero roles—most notably, in Training Day, where he played a corrupt LAPD detective, and in this movie, where he played an embittered CIA agent on a quest for brutal, sadistic revenge. It's liberating for Denzel to play, and it's uncomfortable for us to watch.
16. Wrath of Man
Starring: Jason Statham
Director(s): Guy Ritchie
Action director Guy Ritchie made his name by directing lean, darkly funny action thrillers. But in Wrath of Man, he dialed down the laughs and made something grimmer and more tense, with a heist subplot and a couple of perfect twists.
17. Drunken Master
Starring: Jackie Chan
Director(s): Woo-Ping Yuen
An archetypal Jackie Chan action comedy, the original Drunken Master casts Chan as Wong Fei-Hung, the real life martial artist and physician who became a folk hero after the fall of the Qing Dynasty. It popularized the obscure martial arts discipline of Drunken Boxing, which Chan turned into his signature style.
18. Robocop
Starring: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson
Director(s): Jose Padilha
A remake of the original 1987 film, Robocop is about a Detroit police detective who, after being injured in the line of duty, is rebuilt with a cyborg body to fight crime. What was once a sci-fi 'what-if' is slowly gaining real-life relevance, as police and military begin incorporating drones and cybernetic dogs into their departments.
19. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson
Director(s): Francis Lawrence
The second Hunger Games book/movie ups the stakes by having prior Hunger Games winners fight other prior Hunger Games winners. The paranoia and fear in the first film are replaced with something more strategic and twisted; which of these 24 experienced killers can rise to the top? And how can Katniss possibly survive this time?
20. Samaritan
Starring: Sylvester Stallone
Director(s): Julius Avery
Samaritan is the latest in a series of postmodern superhero films, starting with M. Night Shymalan's Unbreakable in 2000. A troubled kid suspects that his neighbor is a superhero—long thought to be dead—and tries to recruit him to defeat a dangerous criminal gang.
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