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Best Action Movies Of The Decade
With the advancement in technology and the scope of blockbuster productions, the 2010s led to some truly amazing action movies. As one of the highest grossing movie genres in Hollywood, it seems like fans can’t get enough action, vicariously living through and fighting alongside favorite action superstars.
10 years is an entire lifetime in the Hollywood movie cycle, and that has allowed several action movies to make it onto the big screen. Whether the story is set in the past, present, or future, a good action movie always has intense fight sequences and nail-biting tension. Not to mention, the only limit is the depth of imagination.
An action film can take place is just about any setting, focused on any topic, and portrayed by any actor. It's safe to say these movies do not disappoint. In this list, there are action movies with female leads, stories set in an apocalyptic future, and special effects that could make James Cameron sigh.
15. Elysium (2013)
Elysium is an interesting blend of a clean utopic society mixed with a gritty post-apocalyptic one, and the tension between its people is palpable. In the year 2154, society is divided into two classes: the poor who live on Earth in squalor and the rich who live in paradise on a space station. Max da Costa (Matt Damon), who is on parole for stealing cars, works in a factory that creates soldier androids. In a catastrophic accident, Max is bombarded with lethal radiation and only has days to live. In a bid to save his life, he devises a plan to break into the space station, use one of the med-pods to fix his body, and upend the two-party class system. The audience empathizes with each of the characters' struggles, making us question how far away we are from falling into the same political traps in real life.
14. Hanna (2011)
Young protagonists leading action movies are always hit or miss, but Hanna passes with flying colors. Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is an innocent-looking teenager who, in reality, was trained to be a deadly assassin. Her father (Eric Bana), an ex-CIA agent with a compromising secret, has trained her all her life to complete one mission. When she tells him she is ready, she turns on a tracker that alerts the CIA to her whereabouts. This begins a cat-and-mouse game across the world, where Hanna hunts a corrupt CIA agent (Cate Blanchett) while the agents hunts them. Not only is the audience captivated by Ronan's otherworldly look, we see that she can also hold her own against the other actors with poise and remarkable ease.
13. Jack Reacher (2012)
It seems like Tom Cruise can't really make a bad action movie. When five people are shot and killed, all evidence points to a former army sniper with a history of shooting people in the street during the war. Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise), a former Army Criminal Investigator, is called in to help clear the sniper’s name. Reacher initially refuses, thinking that he was indeed guilty, but slowly realizes the man was framed for the murders. He must then partner with the former sniper’s lawyer to figure out who the real culprit is. Jack Reacher is full of tension and intrigue that keeps you guessing. Not to mention, Cruise is also known for doing his own stunts. It's a win all the way around.
12. Inception (2010)
Even though this movie was released a decade ago, we are still trying to figure what actually happened at the end. The mark of a good movie is one that gets people talking and Inception does that and more. Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is able to dive into people’s subconscious and steal valuable secrets for corporate entities. His espionage and thievery lands him on the international list of fugitives, and in an effort to get his life back, Cobb decides to take on one last job. Except this job entails planting information into a man’s subconscious instead of extracting it. Along with his team, Cobb travels through different levels of the subconscious, bending the laws of reality. At the time, this movie was groundbreaking in terms of special effects and it's not hard to see why.
