The 35 greatest 2000s action movies

What are the greatest 2000s action movies of all time? It's a tricky question to answer, as, in the new millennium, action cinema was undergoing serious evolution. Across a long and tumultuous decade, a select few have stood the test of time. However, we can name about 35 of the best action movies that truly defined the 2000s.

At the dawn of the 21st century, the era of muscle-bound beefcakes like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone was long over. The 1990s saw seismic releases like The Matrix, Speed, and Mission: Impossible that introduced a new kind of action hero, one more refined in the art of killing. With more influences from Hong Kong and Japan and increasingly sophisticated VFX technologies, action movies have never looked better than they did in the new millennium.

Spies, soldiers, and superheroes – such were the cinematic heroes of the time. So get ready and buckle up, these are the 35 greatest 2000s action movies of all time.

35. Charlie's Angels

Year: 2000
Director: McG

Good morning, Angels! Somewhere between camp and corny is McG's cinematic sequel to the classic 1970s TV series Charlie's Angels, with a new generation of femme fatales kicking things into high gear. Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu team up as freelance spies who work for their unseen millionaire boss, Charlie (voiced by John Forsythe, who reprises his role from the TV show). Their latest assignment: tracking down a kidnapped software engineer. Charlie's Angels is intentionally silly and bombastic, but it gets the job done as popcorn fun that never fails to entertain.

34. Hot Fuzz

Year: 2007
Director: Edgar Wright

A few years after putting his comedic stamp on zombie apocalypses with his indie hit Shaun of the Dead, British movie maverick Edgar Wright riffed on the action genre with his comically cranked-up Hot Fuzz. Simon Pegg stars as a top-rate London police officer who is transferred to a small village, where he unearths a dark and murderous conspiracy. A high-volume love letter to Michael Bay and Jackie Chan, Wright's Hot Fuzz brings the heat with Hollywood-sized mayhem juxtaposed against idyllic rural England.

33. Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior

Year: 2003
Director: Prachya Pinkaew

Tony Jaa's breakout movie Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior launched the Thai film industry to mainstream attention, as well as the brutal martial art of Muay Thai kickboxing. The high-flying Tony Jaa stars as Ting, a fierce fighter from a small, impoverished village who travels to bustling Bangkok and defeats a ruthless crime boss in order to retrieve his village's stolen Buddha statue. A pure exhibition of Tony Jaa's gravity-defying talents, Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior hits as hard and fast as its leading man.

32. Mission: Impossible 2

Year: 2000
Director: John Woo

Though it may be the most unpopular installment of the smash hit spy franchise, it's a heck of a standard when a John Woo-directed Mission: Impossible is the bottom rung. The Hong Kong auteur cranks up the style dial for the Mission: Impossible series as the 2000 sequel follows Ethan Hunt (again played by Tom Cruise), who teams up with a gorgeous thief (Thandiwe Newton) to secure a modified virus kept by an ex-lover and rogue IMF agent (Dougray Scott). What Mission: Impossible 2 sacrifices in realism, it makes up for in pure cinematic ecstasy as motorcycle stunts and endless ammunition bring Hollywood within the league of Bollywood.

31. Man on Fire

Year: 2004
Director: Tony Scott

Tony Scott's 2004 actioner Man on Fire wasn't the first movie based on A.J. Quinneell's 1980 novel, but the other adaptation didn't have Denzel Washington. In Scott's version, Washington plays an ex-CIA agent turned bodyguard who wreaks havoc all over Mexico to rescue a nine-year-old girl (Dakota Fanning). While Man on Fire is dizzying enough to leave your ears ringing, its masculine aura and old-school heroics – and an utterly hypnotic Denzel Washington – make it feel like the last survivor of a dying breed.

30. Rush Hour 2

Year: 2001
Director: Brett Ratner

Do you understand the words coming out of their mouths? A few short years after 1998's Rush Hour blew up the box office, Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker reunite for the explosive sequel that takes them across the Pacific Ocean. After a bombing at the U.S. embassy in Hong Kong, Chan and Tucker's mismatched cops put themselves on the case when the suspect is a Triad ringleader with deeply personal ties. From hand-to-hand melee fights in massage parlors to casinos raining with cash, Rush Hour 2 is arguably one of the best Hollywood movies Jackie Chan has ever made.

29. Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Year: 2005
Director: Doug Liman

For couples in therapy, consider rekindling your romance with a movie night featuring the 2000s action movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Doug Liman's 2005 hit is a sexy satire on modern-day marriages with a deadly twist, with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie playing a husband and wife who unknowingly work for rival assassination agencies. The duo soon wind up in each other's crosshairs – literally – when they are tasked with eliminating the competition. A top-notch action flick with weapons-grade appeal, Mr. and Mrs. Smith puts all other romantic comedies in a zip-tie cuff.

28. Sin City

Year: 2005
Director: Robert Rodriguez

Turn the right corner in Sin City, and you'll find almost anything – including a stylish banger from Robert Rodriguez. Based on Frank Miller's hit graphic novels, the star-studded Sin City follows several different stories of different people living in a rain-drenched urban nightmare where nothing is black and white. Rodriguez's hyper-stylish adaptation is a moving mosaic of love and violence that pays striking homage to the noir films of yesteryear while steeped in unspeakably harsh themes. Dying has never looked so good.

27. Shoot 'Em Up

Year: 2005
Director: Michael Davis

Shoot 'Em Up tore down the house at the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, and all these years later, it still feels like a shotgun blast for every action movie fan. In Michael Davis' Shoot 'Em Up, Clive Owen plays a carrot-eating drifter and former black ops soldier who takes it upon himself to protect a newborn baby from a bloodthirsty gang on the payroll of a superstar politician. A lunkheaded actioner that puts a premium on putting on a good show, Shoot 'Em Up raises the bar almost every five minutes, intentionally going for broke when most action movies lack the guts to throw everything they can at the audience.

26. Bad Boys 2

Year: 2003
Director: Michael Bay

Whatcha gonna do when Will Smith and Martin Lawrence come for you? Picking up where the original 1995 hit left off, Michael Bay's Bad Boys 2 reunites Smith and Lawrence to play hotshot Miami cops Mike (Smith) and Marcus (Lawrence). This time, the two are investigating a crime ring who are flooding the streets with a dangerous new and very illegal product. Garish and shameless while still improbably gorgeous, Bad Boys 2 is a balls-to-the-wall spectacle where shootouts and car chases explode like Fourth of July fireworks. (The soundtrack album, too, is a monster jam that begs for permanent rotation.)

25. The Matrix Reloaded

Year: 2003
Directors: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski

While the sequels to The Matrix spent years being compared unfavorably to their 1999 originator, The Matrix Reloaded surprises when one considers its existence as meta-commentary by its writers and directors, the Wachowskis. In The Matrix Reloaded, Neo (Keanu Reeves) returns to continue humanity's war against their machine oppressors, only to make a startling discovery about the war's very beginnings. All the while, the rogue Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) reveals himself to be a much bigger problem. Beyond the spectacle of its wire-fu action – a synthesis of John Woo-esque bombast with the elegance of Chinese wuxia – The Matrix Reloaded is genius in its revelation that Neo's "Chosen One" narrative is not, as it turns out, original, nor is it a breakthrough of freedom but preprogrammed fate.

24. Minority Report

Year: 2002
Director: Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg brings life and motion to Philip K. Dick's 1956 novella, with who else but Tom Cruise on the run. Set in the year 2054, a special breed of police officers are dispatched to arrest criminals before they commit a crime. But Tom Cruise's John Anderton, an ace officer of the "Precrime" police department, suddenly finds himself on the other side of the law when he is accused of a crime yet to occur and races to prove his innocence. A complex blockbuster that blends together crime noir, mystery thrillers, and speculative science fiction, Minority Report is one of the rare crowd-pleasers that fully engages the brain instead of turning it off.

23. Wanted

Year: 2009
Director: Timur Bekmambetov

When James McAvoy bent his gun's bullet, he blew all of us away. In 2009, Mark Millar's comic book miniseries, Wanted, was adapted to the screen in a truly ostentatious and outrageous style courtesy of director Timur Bekmambetov. McAvoy stars as a dead-end desk jockey who resumes his late father's work as an assassin for a top-secret organization, learning the tricks of the trade from a veteran member (Angelina Jolie) and the Fraternity's enigmatic leader (Morgan Freeman). An R-rated Hollywood tentpole of the highest order, Wanted hits the bullseye.

22. Miami Vice

Year: 2006
Director: Michael Mann

Some twenty years after Michael Mann produced the neon-lit '80 cop hit Miami Vice for NBC, the filmmaker reimagined the show into a far grittier crime thriller for the big screen. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx co-star as Miami cops whose undercover mission ends up in jeopardy when one of them – Farrell's Crockett – gets romantically involved with a kingpin's lover (Gong Li). While the initial critical response to Miami Vice was mild in 2006, the action movie has grown into a cult classic, a film appreciated for its tragic atmosphere and darker retelling of what used to be a more colorful episodic. When your head is spinning for mojitos, get in a go-fast boat.

21. Versus

Year: 2000
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura

Guns, swords, and zombie hordes galore in the debut film from B-horror master Ryuhei Kitamura. In Versus, escaped convicts, yakuza gang members, and a kidnapped woman all find themselves surrounded by a flesh-hungry undead in a haunted forest that is secretly a gateway to hell itself. A fusion of grindhouse splatter horror with kung fu and gun fu, Versus is a midnight movie delight that launched Kitamura's filmmaking career and reputation as an underground artiste. Not only is it a great 2000s action movie, but it's also one of the best horror movies of the time.

20. Speed Racer

Year: 2008
Directors: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski

After the dust settled on The Matrix, the idea of the Wachowskis adapting an anime might have conjured up something close to Akira or Ghost in the Shell. What nobody expected was their psychedelic masterpiece Speed Racer. Based on the iconic anime known to audiences on both sides of the Pacific, Speed Racer follows a rising star racer (Emile Hirsch) who swerves around challenges thrown his way after rejecting a lucrative corporate contract and remaining loyal to his family-run garage. A coming-of-age Technicolor triumph, Speed Racer zooms past the competition.

19. Transformers

Year: 2007
Director: Michael Bay

Linkin Park memes aside, the magic of Michael Bay's 2007 tentpole Transformers is how much craftsmanship is on full blast in what could have been – and was widely believed to be – a numbing nostalgic cash grab. In this live-action reboot of the classic '80s cartoon (itself an elaborate commercial made to sell toys), a high school teenager (played by ex-Disney star Shia LaBeouf) learns his first car is a metamorphic robot who is part of an ancient war waged by alien machines. Though critics saw a clunker, Transformers has endured as a winner with aged-like-wine VFX, timeless appeal to adolescent males, and Bay's vision that blurs the line between gaudy commercialism and golden hour escapism.

18. Iron Man

Year: 2008
Director: Jon Favreau

"I am Iron Man." With just four words, Robert Downey Jr. resurrected his career and single-handedly birthed a whole cinematic universe. In Iron Man, RDJ inhabits the tailored suits of billionaire genius and weapons manufacturer Tony Stark, whose betrayal by a close confidant (Jeff Bridges) leaves him for dead in the Middle East. Engineering his way out of a cave, Stark uses his new titanium-alloy suit to seek revenge and reclaim his place in his late father's corporate empire. An exciting summer action flick and simultaneously a ghastly Ayn Raynd-esque power fantasy, Iron Man soars. It is also the film that kickstarted the Marvel Cinematic timeline, so it's worthy of being considered one of the greats.

17. Unleashed

Year: 2005
Director: Louis Letterier

Woefully overlooked and overshadowed in its theatrical release by Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Unleashed is a hard-hitting action drama with Jet Li in what is arguably the finest performance of his English-speaking roles. Jet Li stars as Danny, a feral bodyguard kept by a ruthless gangster (Bob Hoskins) who is taken in by a kindly blind man (Morgan Freeman) and his stepdaughter (Kerry Condon). The two give Jet Li's Danny the love and care he's been neglected his entire life, until Danny must fight again when his old master returns. An impressive mix of high-wire action and genuine human drama, Unleashed hits hard in more ways than one.

16. Black Hawk Down

Year: 2001
Director: Ridley Scott

The burning desert heat. The simmering smoke of a hot rifle. Bent metal and burnt bodies. The carnage of modern warfare is captured in Ridley Scott's blistering 2001 war blockbuster Black Hawk Down, based on Mark Bowden's 1999 nonfiction book that chronicles the Battle of Mogadishu from October 1993. A large ensemble cast portrays the US soldiers whose mission in Somalia ends in destruction after two Black Hawk helicopters are grounded. Stranded behind enemy lines, the soldiers fight to survive. Though the plot is dizzying, few movies replicate the intensity of warfare like Black Hawk Down.

15. SPL: Sha Po Lang (released in the U.S. as Kill Zone)

Year: 2005
Director: Wilson Yip

Hong Kong action legends Sammo Hung and Donnie Yen throw it down in the all-star smackdown SPL: Sha Po Lang, released in the US under the title Kill Zone. Donnie Yen plays a mysterious Hong Kong police officer who is transferred to a new precinct that's in the middle of finally capturing a prominent Triad boss (Hung). The plot escalates to the point that Yen and Hung – the latter ditching the comedy antics that defined his early career – square off in one of the single-greatest hand-to-hand fight scenes in action movie history.

14. The Rundown

Year: 2003
Director: Peter Berg

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was an unlikely movie star after The Scorpion King, but in The Rundown, he truly became the People's Champion. In this shoot 'em up buddy comedy, Johnson stars as a bounty hunter tasked with locating errant Travis (Seann William Scott), a wannabe Indiana Jones who is searching for a lost artifact in Brazil. Together, they wind up lost in the South American jungles and must work together to make it back home. Funny, thrilling, and loaded with machismo, The Rundown ages like wine and goes down smooth like whiskey.

13. Spider-Man

Year: 2002
Director: Sam Raimi

Blade and X-Men brought superheroes to Hollywood, but Sam Raimi's Spider-Man made them an institution. The famed director of Evil Dead brings his splatter sensibilities to the comic book genre as high school genius Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) experiences a chance encounter with a genetically modified spider, giving him incredible powers. Spider-Man takes moviegoers for the ultimate spin in a mixture of coming-of-age storytelling and superhero origins, along with an immortal performance by Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn, a.k.a. Green Goblin. The rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe a few years later is owed in large part to the success of Spider-Man.

12. Hero

Year: 2002
Director: Zhang Yimou

Jet Li is in his finest hour in Zhang Yimou's graceful action epic Hero. Li stars as a nameless swordsman who is granted an audience with the King of Qin (Chen Dao Ming) after he defeats the would-be assassins of the king. Little does the king know what the swordsman actually has in mind. A wuxia epic about how stories create legends, Hero dazzles with incredible scale, eye-popping color, and balletic kung fu that feels like you are watching a Chinese watercolor painting come to life. Topping things off is an all-star cast that includes Donnie Yen, Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi, and Maggie Cheung in one of her final theatrical performances before her retirement.

11. 300

Year: 2006
Director: Zack Snyder

This is Sparta! And this… is 300. Shortly after the success of Sin City in 2005, another Frank Miller comic book classic was given motion in 300. Directed by Zack Snyder, 300 tells a deeply fictionalized account of the Battle of Thermopylae from 480 BC, where only a few hundred Spartans stood their ground against an overwhelming Persian army. 300 doesn't strive for historical realism in the slightest; instead, with drenched shadows and bold hues of auburn and ashen gold, 300 imagines history as a sandbox for adrenaline-filled fantasy. The chiseled abs of Sparta might also inspire some gym motivation, too.

10. Battle Royale

Year: 2000
Director: Kinji Fukasaku

When you think of action movies, you typically think of grown-up characters with years of experience. But what about children? Based on Koushun Takami's 1999 novel, the acclaimed Japanese hit Battle Royale from Kinji Fukasaku drops an ensemble cast of high school teenagers who are forced to fight to the death on a remote island in a near-future fascist Japan. Controversial for its graphic violence but universally renowned as a smart socio-political commentary about the corruption of youth as well as the imposing will of totalitarian governments, Battle Royale birthed a whole new genre of stories and redefined the parameters for "teen movies." Even video games like PUBG and Fortnite owe a debt to Battle Royale.

9. Hellboy

Year: 2004
Director: Guillermo del Toro

After helming a banger of a comic book movie in Blade 2, Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro outdid himself with his 2004 gothic action classic Hellboy. Based on Mike Mignola's comic series, Hellboy follows the title character (Ron Perlman), a demon from Hell who is raised by a gentle scientist and grows up into a secret paranormal investigation agent for the US government. A masterful blend of comic book heroics, supernatural horror, and a little bit of romance, del Toro's Hellboy is sinfully superb.

8. Taken

Year: 2008
Director: Pierre Morel

You never mess with Liam Neeson. After training Obi-Wan and Batman, the Irish movie star planted his feet back on Earth to play a father whose teenage daughter is kidnapped and sold into human trafficking while on vacation in Europe. Resorting to his considerable set of skills, Neeson unleashes hell all throughout France to save his little girl and bring her home. Taken is a non-stop ride from start to finish that re-established Liam Neeson as a generational action hero. After Taken, Neeson proved that age really is just a number.

7. The Bourne Identity

Year: 2002
Director: Doug Liman

Until 2002, Matt Damon's Hollywood image didn't necessarily include "action star." But in The Bourne Identity, Damon locked and loaded his way to the top as Jason Bourne, the James Bond for a new generation. Based on Robert Ludlum's 1980 novel, The Bourne Identity follows Damon as an amnesiac who slowly pieces together his identity as an assassin for the CIA. More than just a hit action movie, The Bourne Identity catapulted Matt Damon to an even higher level of stardom while setting a new, grittier standard for action heroes.

6. Kill Bill Vol. 1

Year: 2003
Director: Quentin Tarantino

In 2003, Quentin Tarantino exploded our collective minds with a throwback revenge pic where there's no shortage of deep red splatters on the walls or stylishly brutal takedowns. Uma Thruman takes center stage as "The Bride," a lethal swordswoman out for revenge against the assassins who came after her on her wedding day. Evoking everything from Bruce Lee to Seijun Suzuki, Kill Bill Vol. 1 boasts some of the finest (and most violent) swordplay in movie history, all while giving mainstream audiences a crash course in the aesthetics of East Asian action cinema. The action continues in the direct sequel Kill Bill Vol. 2, released just six months later.

5. The Fast and the Furious

Year: 2001
Director: Rob Cohen

Before the nuclear missiles, computer hacking, and scientifically enhanced bad guys, there were only the streets. The first in the long-running Fast and Furious franchise begins with 2001's The Fast and the Furious, with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker starring in a high-stakes race of identity and deception. Walker stars as undercover LAPD officer Brian O'Connor, who infiltrates a skilled gang of street racers and highway robbers, led by charismatic leader Dominic Toretto (Diesel). While based on a real-life Vibe magazine article, The Fast and the Furious is better understood as an unofficial retelling of Point Break, only with blistering NOS-fueled racing over surfing.

4. The Dark Knight

Year: 2008
Director: Christopher Nolan

A crime epic masked as a superhero sequel, Christopher Nolan changed the game forever with his billion-dollar hit The Dark Knight. Picking up from his 2005 Batman reboot, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight brings Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) face to face with the enigmatic criminal mastermind, The Joker, played by a transformative Heath Ledger (who posthumously won an Oscar for his role). As The Joker ignites war among Gotham City's various crime families, Batman fights to keep his city from falling apart. Underscored by War on Terror-era paranoia and marked by Nolan’s own self-admitted mission to basically remake Michael Mann’s Heat, The Dark Knight is as expansive as Batman’s cape that chronicles one man's efforts to save the soul of the place that made him.

3. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Year: 2000
Director: Ang Lee

When Ang Lee's multi-national production Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon hit the big screen in 2000, it was impossible to deny its majesty as it gave mainstream America its first real taste of Chinese wuxia. Based on the serialized novels by Wang Dulu, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon follows two 19th-century Qing Dynasty masters – played by Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh – whose lives are changed after their prized sword, Green Destiny, is stolen by an expert thief (Zhang Ziyi). Gorgeous as a kung fu epic and a tender romance all at once, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is vast in scope and inspires nothing but awe.

2. The Bourne Ultimatum

Year: 2007
Director: Paul Greengrass

Rising above low expectations as a franchise threequel, The Bourne Ultimatum goes into overdrive as one of the finest-ever entries in the series and one of Matt Damon's own best action performances. Director Paul Greengrass returns to the director's chair for The Bourne Ultimatum, which sees Damon return as Jason Bourne, whose breathless search for his origins nears its end. But as Bourne threatens to blow the whole operation wide open, he must again survive the onslaught against his life. While its shaky cameras might induce motion sickness, it's hard to ignore The Bourne Ultimatum as a finely-tuned action thriller that's as deadly as its amnesiac protagonist.

1. Casino Royale

Year: 2006
Director: Martin Campbell

Bond is reborn in Martin Campbell's ground-up reboot of the iconic 007 franchise. In Casino Royale, Daniel Craig earns his license to kill as the new James Bond (after Pierce Brosnan), who must bankrupt a terrorist financier (Mads Mikkelsen) in a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro. Assisting Bond is the captivating Vesper (Eva Green), a fellow agent whom Bond fatally lets himself get too close to. Simmering with suspense and sex appeal, Casino Royale is a true cinematic escapism that indulges in the fantasies of James Bond's impossible lifestyle. You can make a strong case that there are better Bond movies than Casino Royale. But you might be hard-pressed to identify a better action movie of the decade.