There’s tonnes of action movies to check out on Netflix Australia—featuring assassins, cops, thieves and other purveyors of on screen carnage. Here’s the best, picked by critic Luke Buckmaster.
See also
* Best new movies & series on Netflix
* All new streaming movies & series
Ad Astra (2019)
WATCH ON NETFLIXIt’s OK to have daddy issues…even while floating around in space. Director James Gray uses the vastness of the cosmos as aesthetic and psychological scaffolding for an outerplanetary therapy session in which Brad Pitt’s glum astronaunt is tasked with looking for his lost father, dropping the kind of forlorn dialogue we don’t usually hear in blockbusters—like “I’m looking forward to the day my solitude ends.”
Assassin’s Creed (2016)
WATCH ON NETFLIXJustin Kurzel’s under-rated adaptation of the blockbuster video game franchise is an intensely sombre work that never condescends, in a genre that almost always infantilises audiences. A rich painterly look brings visual flair to an admittedly challenging script—with too much rather than too little plot—that follows Michael Fassbender as he inhabits the body of an assassin circa 15th century Spain.
Baby Driver (2017)
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Edgar Wright’s sassy crime caper follows a getaway driver (Ansel Elgort) who is on the autism spectrum, putting his foot to the floor only if listening to killer tracks on his headphones. Fair enough. The story of a decent kid embroiled in a life of crime becomes a quasi-musical and a possessed jukebox of an action movie; by matching visual and audio in such a way, Wright made a genuine original.
The Crow (1994)
WATCH ON NETFLIThe apotheosis of music video-cum-feature filmmaker Alex Proyas’ coolness came with the arrival of his second feature: a goth-punk revenge fantasy set in a Gotham City-on-acid metropolis. A makeup-caked and trench coat wearing Brandon Lee (who tragically died during an on-set accident) returns from the dead to avenge his killers. Style trumps substance, turning what could have been a cut-rate B movie into a nightmarishly beautiful headtrip.
The Dark Knight (2008)
WATCH ON NETFLIXWhen you remember Christopher Nolan’s second Batman movie your mind goes straight to Heath Ledger and his amazingly theatrical interpretation of the Joker. Ledger really gets the film smoking: every appearance is high voltage, every scene electrifies. Like other middle-trilogy classics such as The Empire Strikes Back, The Dark Knight has no real beginning or end. But as a collection of scenes, it’s one hell of a showcase.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
WATCH ON NETFLIXThe Dark Knight contains the joker card of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies—Heath Ledger in his diabolically good Oscar-winning performance. But The Dark Knight Rises has the best atmosphere, of suffocating dread and tension; the air in this movie is completely terrorised. Tom Hardy’s monstrously nihilistic villain breaks Batman’s back, literally, bringing a menace to Gotham City that gives one the collywobbles.
Death Proof (2007)
WATCH ON NETFLIXThis splashily retro, grindhouse-homaging curio is a minor work in Quentin Tarantino’s oeuvre, but it packs real grunt and it’s peppered with knowingly trashy showmanship. Three jive-talking women (Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd and Sydney Tamiia Poitier) are accosted by Kurt Russell’s “Stuntman Mike,” leading to vehicular carnage and revenge-a-rama.
Deepwater Horizon (2016)
WATCH ON NETFLIXPeter Berg’s riveting, pressure-packed dramatisation of America’s worst oil spill is The Towering Inferno for a new generation, with a politically salient message against oil companies and a strong leading performance from Mark Wahlberg as a technician fighting to save himself and his colleagues. What could be more American than a disaster movie about workers scrambling to save their lives because of multinational corporations making cost-cutting decisions?
Dredd (2012)
WATCH ON NETFLIXThe elements are familiar: a crime-filed dystopia; a blunt law-enforcing hero; showdowns on busy streets and in grimy warehouses. Nevertheless this is a rock sold genre film, with some fun embellishments, including scenes depicting the effects of a time-slowing narcotic. The titular hero (Karl Urban) is a Robocop-like stickler for due process, taking on a crime lord and skyscraper-ruling tyrant (Lena Headey).
Dune: Part Two (2023)
WATCH ON NETFLIXDenis Villeneuve’s first Dune movie did a lot of the heavy lifting, plot and context wise, which of course the second capitalises on—resolving long plot threads and delivering a mighty roar of screen-buckling spectacle. It’s a blockbuster as big as they come, but Villeneuve maintains the ability to surprise, for instance staging a key battle scene in silky black and white.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
WATCH ON NETFLIXTom Cruise plays an alien-fighting US solider who cannot die and experiences the same day over and over, Groundhog Day style, in Doug Liman’s rootin’-tootin’ video game-esque sci-fi . The fight/die/repeat format keeps a ferocious pace and doubles as a comment on the infallibility of the Hollywood hero.
Gladiator (2000)
WATCH ON NETFLIXThe roar of the crowd in Ridley Scott’s hell-unleashing swords and sandals epic isn’t just the sound of people clamouring for spectacle, but a through line to the film’s core political message: about wielding power by winning over over the masses. A mustily styled worn-in look gives the clanging steel and spurting blood a credible veneer, and a pacey momentum compensates for a very chunky running time.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
WATCH ON NETFLIXThe second Hunger Games movie evokes a thoroughly menaced tone: the world is broken; people are pushing back; revolution is in the air. Despair and cynicism infuse everything—even the relationship between Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss and Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta, who are used as propaganda tools by the state. They’re sent back into the death tournament arena, where Katniss rises from celebrity contestant to mythical saviour.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
WATCH ON NETFLIXSpeaking of Nazis…Quentin Tarantino’s seventh film begins with vintage monologues from Christoph Waltz and culminates with an explode-a-palooza of historical revisionism, the cinema itself the very venue for the demise of Adolf Hitler. Tarantino’s penchant for pop-art cinephilia is on full delirious display, sprucing up a stop-start narrative about—as Brad Pitt so eloquently puts it—”killin’ Nazis.”
Jumanji (1995)
WATCH ON NETFLIXRobin Williams plays a character who got lost in an alternate universe as a child, and is returned to reality when new players (Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce) of the titular board game roll the dice. Joe Johnston’s 1995 hit is to some extent a coathanger for special effects—but it’s unusual to see a family film so alive with paranoia, so dripping with dread. Jumanji was under-appreciated back in the day but time has been kind to it; even the special effects still look pretty good.
Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004)
WATCH ON NETFLIXThe story is a simple revenge arc: Uma Thurman’s Beatrix Kiddo will find and kill Bill. What makes this film so rewatchable—and superior to volume 1—is that irresistible, Tarantino-flavoured dialogue, the characters stopping everything to chew the fat. The scenes with David Carradine are particularly irresistible.
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
WATCH ON NETFLIXI am far from the first critic to liken Stephen Chow’s zany chopsocky period movie to a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon, but sometimes the collective wisdom gets it right. Chow (also the writer and director) plays a blunderous small-time con artist who, in a rural slum in China in the 1940s, becomes embroiled in an epic brouhaha between the murderous “Axe Gang” and a trio of genuine kung fu masters. The story is OK; the execution is delightful.
Mad Max Fury Road (2015)
Watch on NetflixThere was every indication that George Miller’s fourth Mad Max movie would turn into a fizzer, enduring a famously difficult shoot and arriving three decades after the previous installment. But when Fury Road roared into cinemas, depicting cinema’s most elaborate U turn, it became clear the director had delivered a face-melting modern classic. And that the titular character (Tom Hardy) had finally met his match with Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
WATCH ON NETFLIXMy favourite Coen brothers film is a singular experience: a delightfully funny and witty musical celebration of American folklore, by way of ancient Greek literature (loosely adapting Homer’s The Odyssey). George Clooney leads a trio of nitwit escaped convicts across rural Mississippi circa the Great Depression, tricking them into helping him locate his estrange wife. Farce, folly, and thigh slappin’ tunes abound.
Okja (2017)
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Tilda Swinton plays the Willy Wonka-esque CEO of a company that produces a not-so-sweet product: giant genetically engineered pigs to carve up and sell worldwide. Chaos ensues when a young girl (Seo-Hyun Ahn) puts up a fight to save the titular character’s bacon. There’s Spielbergian largesse in Bong Joon Ho’s brisk direction, but he goes places Spielberg wouldn’t—with pointy messages about anti-meat consumption and corporate malfeasance.
RRR (2022)
Watch on NetflixSS Rajamouli’s sensationally loud Telugu-language spectacle pivots around two Indian citiziens rebelling against the British Raj circa the 1920s. The plot moves in long and large chunks, and just when you start to get antsy come the thunderclaps of overblown action. There’s no edge to it, stylistically, but it reeks of sheer decadence, even by the standards of Bollywood epics.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Not an origins film, but a film about the myth of origins. This restlessly inventive visual cocktail depicts a multiverse of realities, each harbouring a different version of the titular superhero—and each painted with a distinct aesthetic. The adhesive binding these universes together is the eponymous web-slinger, who saves the world from a super-gangster with a little help from his friends (who are actually different versions of himself).
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1992)
WATCH ON NETFLIXFear of a robotic uprising has long stimulated the public imagination—rarely as memorably as in James Cameron’s 1992 masterpiece. Larded with gripping chase scenes, which have aged not one iota, the villain from its predecessor—a cyborg played by Arnold Schwarzenegger—returns as a reprogrammed good guy, initially butt naked but soon to kick ass in an iconic leather jacket and black sunnies.
Titles are added and removed from his page to reflect changes to the Netflix catalogue. Reviews no longer available on this page can be found here.
