The best action movies on Prime Video Australia

From assassins to adventurers, superheroes, spies and more—here’s a selection of the very best action movies now streaming on Prime Video, picked by critic Luke Buckmaster.

See also
* Best new movies & series on Prime Video
* All new streaming movies & series

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

I love the poster tagline: “History is about to be rewritten by two guys who can’t spell.” Stoner vibes and time travel collide in this stupidly entertaining—but smartly written—film about the titular knuckleheads (Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter), who go back in time to retrieve famous people from history for a class presentation. As, erm, Abraham Lincoln once said: “Be excellent to each other.”

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Making a sequel to one of the most influential sci-fi films of all time is a piece of piss, said nobody ever. Denis Villeneuve succeeded magnificently with his atmospherically heavy, Roger Deakins-shot sequel to Ridley Scott’s rain-clogged neo-noir. Ryan Gosling plays a replicant guiding us through a future that’s bleak, soulful and biblical, in a ghost-in-the-machine sort of way.

Civil War (2023)

Deepwater Horizon (2016)

Peter 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?

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Tom 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.

The General (1926)

Nobody who’s watched Buster Keaton balancing precariously on a cowcatcher at the front of a train could ever forget that image; it is an everlasting imprint from one of cinema’s first action-comedy masterpieces. In his magnum opus the brilliant comedian trots off to the Civil War as a train engineer, chasing enemy troops and thwarting their attempts to derail him—while of course performing virtuoso slapstick.

Gladiator (2000)

The 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 Green Knight (2021)

David Lowery’s balls to the wall fantasy film begins with Dev Patel’s face exploding into fire—and gets better from there. Patel’s mission to confront the eponymous character is cinematic in a dreamily medieval way, with mist-ensconced mountains and candle-lit castles a-plenty. Lowery is unafraid to hold the frame, deploying ravishing long takes that explore and extend the space.

Heathers (1998)

A comedy so dark the prefix “black” barely begins to cut it. Michael Lehmann’s cult movie is up there with Election and Mean Girls as one of the great high school-set comedies—but with a more potent air of irreverence. Winona Ryder joins a clique of students called the Heathers while Christian Slater plays the demon on her shoulder, encouraging her to commit dastardly deeds.

Hulk (2003)

Ang Lee’s neglected 2003 superhero movie—starring Eric Bana as the bright green and famously intemperate protagonist—is languidly paced and overlong. But visually it dares to be different, with inventive split-screens and box-like compositions that embrace the comic book aesthetic, suggesting ways this genre could have had a unique cinematic style.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

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.”

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

This audaciously long screwballian classic jumps to life when a group of strangers listen to a dying man talking about buried treasure. The race begins to get it, triggering plotlines all about motion and travelling—by plane, car, truck, foot, girls bicycle, etcetera, often leading to cartoony crash-bang spectacle. Sharp-tongued characters scramble and scheme, giving everything for money that might not exist.

Jurassic Park (1993)

Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur theme park is so vividly rendered it feels like we’ve been there for ourselves. Not that we’d want to, given how things turned out. Widely considered a turning point for computer-generated effects, Spielberg elegantly mixes real and virtual elements and suspensefully draws out his set pieces, letting indivdual moments breathe.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

The third instalment of Peter Jackson’s dizzying Lord of the Rings trilogy is where the shit really goes down, delivering moments of screen-crunching spectacle that bring to a head tonnes of plotlines and backstories. But this choice represents all three films, which are magnificent as a set but flawed in different ways: the first has a lagging setup; the second doesn’t have an ending; the finale has about a dozen.

Love Lies Bleeding (2023)

Rose Glass’ noirish revenge drama starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian as doomed lovers is spunky and sassy as all get-out, dripping with steamy, sweaty, lurid energy. Its plotline springs into gear when O’Brian committs a bloody crime and Stewart’s gym manager helps her dispose the body. Things gather roaring momentum, all the way to a spectacularly strange—and inevitably divisive—finale.

Mad Dog Morgan (1976)

Dennis Hopper’s behind-the-scenes antics during the making of this hardboiled, bush-set Australian classic are legendary; the film itself is pretty wild too. It starts slow but gathers momentum as Hopper’s outlaw protagonist is pursued by authorities, the net closing in, and the ensuing fight ballooning his folk hero status.

The Man From Hong Kong (1975)

Before there was Mad Max, there was Brian Trenchard-Smith’s chopsocky Australian action movie—which contains a tremendous eight-a-half minute car chase that must have inspired George Miller and his road warrior. Jimmy Wang Yu plays a kind of Chinese Dirty Harry, infiltrating a crime network run by George Lazenby. From the opening scene Trenchard-Smith directs with jaunty, rhythmic gusto.

Sicario (2015)

The words “Benicio del Toro” and “Mexican drug cartel movie” go together like a horse and cart. The actor’s sleepy menace is on fine display in Denis Villeneuve’s dark story about dodgy cops, moral quandaries and Emily Blunt trying to make sense of it all as an FBI agent. Blunt has a lessy showy role but is a commanding anchor.

Snowpiercer (2013)

A train whizzing around a dystopian climate change-devastated future world becomes a vehicle for class allegory in Bong Joon-ho’s English language debut. Instead of extreme inequality being represented in vertical spatial arrangements (like in Fritz Lang’s classic Metropolis) it’s horizontal, with Chris Evans—relegated to the impoverished back of the train—mounting an uprising and violently pushing forward to the front.

Turkey Shoot (1982)

Before The Hunger Games, Battle Royale and Squid Game, Australia launched its own death tournament extravaganza, shot out of the canon of the Ozploitation movement. Brian Trenchard-Smith combines Orwellian ideas with midnight movies vibes in his story of so-called “social deviants” who scramble for life and limb, chased by well-to-do elites hunting them for sport.

Titles are added and removed from his page to reflect changes Prime Video’s catalogue. Reviews no longer available on this page can be found here.

• ACTION
• PRIME VIDEO
• Featured
• Guides