Action Movies On Netflix You Need To Watch At Least Once

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Sometimes, you open up Netflix and you're not quite sure what movie you want to watch, but you do know what type of movie you want to watch. You crave action, the kind of movie laden with gunfights and martial arts and car chases and explosions, with maybe a few laughs along the way. You want to see a hero go after the bad guys, or a villain come up with a massive scheme, or an action set piece play out in exactly the right way. You might even want a little sci-fi and fantasy thrown into the mix.

Netflix is, of course, packed with options that fit those descriptions, but sometimes minute after minute of scrolling can be a little frustrating if you're eager to watch something right now. So, we're here to help. Whether you're after an action-comedy, a set piece-laden period adventure, a monster-hunting extravaganza, or an '80s classic, these are action movies on Netflix everyone should watch at least once.

Sometimes you want to watch an action movie that throws as much supernatural stuff at the screen as possible, and other times you want an action movie that gives you just a hint that something fantastical is going on beneath the surface. The Old Guard, from director Gina Prince-Bythewood, is an example of the latter category going very, very well.

Charlize Theron stars as Andy, the leader of an elite mercenary group who all have one thing in common: They can't seem to die, or at least it takes them a really, really long time to get there. Andy's walked the world for millennia, fighting countless battles in the hope of helping people. After centuries of the same routine, her long life is about to change in two big ways, as Andy and her crew face both a new immortal arriving in the world and the threat of someone who's learned what they really are.

Based on the acclaimed comic book series by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez, The Old Guard packs a lot of action and some surprising heart into its two-hour runtime. Plus, it's yet another example of Theron's amazing action hero prowess.

Jean-Claude Van Damme rose to prominence as an action movie superstar in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and at this point you've got dozens of films to choose from if you're a fan of the Van Damme myth as we now know it. If you want to see where that myth started, though, you need to go to Bloodsport.

Van Damme's breakout film tells the allegedly true story of Frank Dux, a martial artist turned U.S. Army officer who goes AWOL in order to attend a secretive, illegal martial arts tournament known as the Kumite in Hong Kong. Once there, Frank makes friends with some of the other fighters and makes enemies of others, as he gets deeper and deeper into a web of violence that can only end with a total victory.

Bloodsport is the kind of film to watch when you're looking for a pure, earnest 1980s action movie experience packed with big fight moments and over-the-top drama. It's also the perfect film to watch if you want to understand how Van Damme became a star. Everything we love about him, including his trademark splits, is here.

Longtime action movie fans know the legend behind the beginning of the Indiana Jones franchise. Steven Spielberg told his friend George Lucas that he'd always been interested in making a Bond film, Lucas said he had something better, and the result was a collaboration that produced one of the most acclaimed and compulsively rewatchable action/adventure films of all time.

In case you somehow still haven't seen it, let's get one thing straight right from the beginning: Yes, Raiders of the Lost Ark really is as good as you've heard. Harrison Ford is completely in his element as Indiana Jones, an in-over-his-head hero who somehow manages to look cool even when he's running for his life. Karen Allen is gloriously game for everything as Marion Ravenwood, the stunt work is so detailed and beautifully choreographed that it still holds up decades later, and that ending is still capable of stunning audiences. It's an action movie masterpiece by which other films are still measured, and an essential piece of cinema even outside the action genre. It also doesn't hurt that, when you're done streaming it, you can go stream the sequels on Netflix, too.

Paul Bettany is one of those actors with the ability to transform himself without ever fully sacrificing his recognizable qualities, something he's proven over and over again as Vision in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Priest is a supernatural action film that demonstrates this ability yet again, this time with Bettany as an exiled warrior fighting monsters in a wild post-apocalyptic landscape.

Bettany stars as an unnamed Priest in a world devastated by wars between humans and vampires. To the Church which now rules the world, the vampire conflicts are behind them, but to Priest, a new fight is just beginning. After his niece is kidnapped by vampires, Priest asked to be reinstated as a sanctioned vampire killer, only to be denied. So he does what any self-respecting action hero does: He goes rogue.

Priest is a film packed with big ideas, from the nature of the vampires themselves to the ambitious world-building, but if that's not enough to grab you: Hey, it's Paul Bettany fighting vampires. That alone is worth taking the ride.

Over the course of his career as a director, Zack Snyder has made a lot of films, and earned a lot of fans, by riffing on stories originally told elsewhere. He's done comic book movies, remakes of horror classics, and even an animated film adapted from a beloved series of fantasy novels. Then there's Sucker Punch, the first film Snyder directed based on an original story, and one that's packed with showcases of his signature style.

The film follows Babydoll (Emily Browning), a young woman who's committed to an asylum and copes with her circumstances by coming up with new, metaphorical layers of existence. First she images she's actually in a brothel, and then she images that beyond the brothel is a vast dark fantasy world where she and her new friends can wage metaphorical war against all manner of enemies for the sake of their own survival.

It's in these sequences, which range from riffs on World War I trench warfare to battles in feudal Japan, where Snyder really shines. Sucker Punch might just be a framework that allows him to showcase his particular visual sensibility through these fantasy sequences, but even if that's all the film is, those sequences are dazzling. If you're a Snyder fan, or even if you're just interested in high-concept visual storytelling, it's worth a stream.