Terminator 2: Judgment Day is playing in theatres right now. StudioCanal, Fathom Entertainment and Rialto Pictures put it back on screens in 4K and RealD 3D for its 35th anniversary, timed to August 29 the in-universe date Skynet becomes self-aware. It opened in the US on August 28, reached Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands on September 3, and arrives in the UK on September 4.
best 90s action movies
James Cameron’s pitch for the reissue was simple: the film was built for theatres, and the 3D version is the best way to see it.
It’s a good moment to argue about the decade that produced it. The 1990s were when action filmmaking peaked and then changed permanently practical stunts giving way to digital effects, Hong Kong choreography crossing into Hollywood, and a handful of films that every action movie since has borrowed from. Here are the twenty that hold up best.
1. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
James Cameron‘s sequel cost $94–102 million, making it the most expensive film ever made at the time, and grossed roughly $518 million worldwide. It won four Academy Awards and holds a critics score above 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The reason it still tops lists is that the innovation served the story. The T-1000 was the first fully computer-generated main character in a blockbuster, but the film’s actual engine is Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor and a machine learning what it means to protect someone. Cameron built a chase movie with a mother, a son, and a father figure who cannot survive the ending.
2. Hard Boiled (1992)
John Woo’s last Hong Kong film before Hollywood, and the one that rewrote what a gunfight could look like. Chow Yun-fat plays a cop whose investigation converges with an undercover officer inside a triad. The hospital sequence in the final act runs for the better part of half an hour and includes a continuous take moving through multiple floors.
Every gun-fu sequence in Western cinema since The Matrix, John Wick, Equilibrium traces back here. If you only know Woo from his American films, this is the version without studio notes.
3. The Matrix (1999)
The Wachowskis closed the decade by absorbing everything it had learned. Hong Kong wire work, choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping. Cyberpunk philosophy. And bullet time, which was copied so relentlessly it became a parody of itself within two years.
It grossed over $460 million on a $63 million budget and made Keanu Reeves an icon for the second time in five years. The sequels complicated its reputation. The original hasn’t aged.
4. Speed (1994)
Jan de Bont’s directorial debut turned $35 million into $350 million and won two Oscars for sound work. A bus rigged to explode below 50 mph, a cop who has to board it, and a passenger who ends up driving.
Neither Keanu Reeves nor Sandra Bullock was an action star when it was made. The premise is so clean the title explains it, and de Bont keeps finding complications for two hours without the tension slackening. It holds a 95% Certified Fresh rating and landed on HBO Max on September 1, 2026.
5. Heat (1995)
Michael Mann’s crime epic is three hours long and contains maybe twenty minutes of action, but the downtown Los Angeles shootout is the most influential set piece of the decade. The sound design real weapons recorded in real streets, no sweetening — is why it still hits harder than films with ten times the ordnance.
Pacino and De Niro share one scene, in a diner, and it works because Mann spent two and a half hours earning it.
6. Point Break (1991)
Kathryn Bigelow made a film about an FBI agent infiltrating a gang of surfing bank robbers, and somehow made it about masculinity, obsession, and the appeal of a life without a safety net. Patrick Swayze’s Bodhi is a genuinely persuasive antagonist, which most action films never manage.
The foot chase through backyards and the skydiving sequences were shot practically. The 2015 remake demonstrated exactly how much of this depended on Bigelow.
7. Face/Off (1997)
John Woo’s best American film, and the one where the premise is so absurd that committing to it fully was the only option. John Travolta and Nicolas Cage swap faces, then spend two hours doing impressions of each other’s performances.
Both actors are operating at maximum. Woo brought his Hong Kong instincts largely intact. The result is opera.
8. Léon: The Professional (1994)
Luc Besson’s hitman drama gave Jean Reno his defining role and introduced a twelve-year-old Natalie Portman. Gary Oldman plays a corrupt DEA agent with no restraint whatsoever, and the film is better for it.
The action is precise and small-scale rather than enormous. The film’s central relationship has drawn legitimate criticism over the years, particularly in its longer international cut, and that debate is worth reading alongside it.
9. The Fugitive (1993)
Andrew Davis adapted a 1960s TV series into a chase thriller that earned Tommy Lee Jones an Academy Award. Harrison Ford plays a surgeon convicted of his wife’s murder; Jones plays the marshal pursuing him.
The train crash was done for real. What elevates it is that neither man is wrong Ford is innocent, and Jones is doing his job well. Thrillers rarely respect both sides that much.
10. Drunken Master II (1994)
Released internationally as The Legend of Drunken Master, this is the strongest showcase of Jackie Chan’s physical filmmaking. The final fight, against Ken Lo, runs long and escalates continuously, and Chan performed it without the digital assistance every subsequent generation has relied on.
Chan’s approach — comedy, timing, and genuine injury risk is a completely different discipline from Woo’s. Both belong on this list.
11. GoldenEye (1995)
Bond had been off screen for six years, the Cold War had ended, and the character’s relevance was in genuine doubt. Martin Campbell’s film addressed that head-on by making Pierce Brosnan’s Bond confront a former colleague, and by having Judi Dench’s M call him a relic to his face.
The tank chase through St Petersburg is the standout. The tie-in game became more culturally significant than most films on this list.
12. The Rock (1996)
Michael Bay’s second film, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and the moment his style crystallised. Sean Connery as a former SAS operative who escaped Alcatraz, Nicolas Cage as a chemical weapons specialist, Ed Harris as a general with an actual grievance.
Critics were split. It’s held up better than its reviews suggested, largely because Harris plays a villain with a case.
13. Total Recall (1990)
Paul Verhoeven’s Philip K. Dick adaptation is violent, satirical, and considerably stranger than its marketing suggested. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a construction worker who may be a secret agent, or may be experiencing an implanted memory — and the film never fully resolves which.
The practical effects and animatronics are grotesque in a way digital work rarely achieves. Verhoeven spent the decade smuggling satire into blockbusters, and this was his first.
14. True Lies (1994)
Cameron again, this time remaking a French farce as a $100 million action comedy. Schwarzenegger is a spy whose wife thinks he sells computers. Jamie Lee Curtis got the best role of her career to that point and won a Golden Globe for it.
The Harrier sequence is absurd. The tango is better. Its portrayal of its villains has aged poorly and is worth noting.
15. Bad Boys (1995)
Michael Bay’s debut, and the film that proved Will Smith could carry a feature. Smith and Martin Lawrence have chemistry the plot barely requires, which is fortunate, because the plot is thin.
Reviews were poor. It grossed well over $140 million, launched a franchise still running thirty years later, and established the visual grammar Bay would use for the next two decades.
16. Mission: Impossible (1996)
Brian De Palma directing a blockbuster is an odd combination, and the film is better for it. The Langley break-in — silent, patient, built on suspense rather than noise is the sequence everyone remembers, and it is pure De Palma.
The plot is famously hard to follow. The set pieces are impeccable, and the franchise it launched has outlived nearly everything else here.
17. Ronin (1998)
John Frankenheimer’s late-career thriller has the best car chases of the decade, full stop. Real cars, real streets in Paris and Nice, cameras mounted low, and stunt drivers doing the work. Robert De Niro leads an ensemble of mercenaries chasing a case whose contents are never revealed.
If you find modern action geography incoherent, this is the antidote.
18. Blade (1998)
The comic book movie that worked before comic book movies worked. Wesley Snipes brought actual martial arts training, the opening blood rave set the tone immediately, and the film treated its source material seriously at a time when that was unusual.
Marvel’s screen fortunes arguably start here, two years before X-Men.
19. Con Air (1997)
Simon West’s prison-transport thriller is the most purely entertaining film on this list. Nicolas Cage with a Southern accent, John Malkovich enjoying himself enormously, Steve Buscemi stealing every scene he appears in, and a supporting cast of character actors given free rein.
Nobody would claim it’s a great film. Very few films from 1997 are rewatched this often.
20. The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
Renny Harlin’s amnesiac-assassin thriller, written by Shane Black at the peak of his commercial value. Geena Davis plays a schoolteacher who recovers memories of being a government operative; Samuel L. Jackson plays the private investigator caught up in it.
It flopped. It has since become the film people cite when arguing that Davis should have had an action career, and Black’s dialogue is sharper here than in most of what he’s written since.
Honourable mentions
Once Upon a Time in China (1991) and Fist of Legend (1994) for Jet Li. Police Story 3: Supercop (1992) and Rumble in the Bronx (1995) for more Jackie Chan. La Femme Nikita (1990), Cliffhanger (1993), Hard Target (1993), Demolition Man (1993), Desperado (1995), Broken Arrow (1996), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Air Force One (1997), Starship Troopers (1997) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) all have their defenders.
The Crow (1994) belongs in the conversation on its merits, though it’s inseparable from the accident that killed Brandon Lee during production.
What the decade actually changed
Three things happened in the 1990s that action cinema never reversed.
Digital effects arrived. Terminator 2 proved a CG character could carry a blockbuster, and within a decade practical work had become the exception rather than the default.
Hong Kong crossed over. Woo, Chan, Li and the choreographers who worked with them moved into Hollywood, and The Matrix made wire-assisted martial arts the standard vocabulary for Western action.
And the mid-budget action film was still viable. Most films here cost between $35 million and $100 million. That tier has since largely disappeared, absorbed by streaming or squeezed out by tentpoles. It’s the main reason the decade produced this much variety.
90’s action movie questions answered
What is the best 90s action movie?
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) is the most widely cited. James Cameron’s sequel grossed roughly $518 million worldwide, won four Academy Awards, and introduced the first computer-generated main character in a blockbuster film. It holds a critics score above 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and returned to cinemas in August 2026 for its 35th anniversary.
Is Terminator 2 back in theaters?
Yes. Terminator 2: Judgment Day returned to theatres worldwide for its 35th anniversary in 4K and RealD 3D, presented by StudioCanal, Fathom Entertainment and Rialto Pictures. It played in US theatres from August 28 to September 2, 2026, opened in Australia, New Zealand and several European markets on September 3, and reaches the UK on September 4.
What was the highest-grossing action movie of the 1990s?
Among pure action films, Terminator 2: Judgment Day led its year with roughly $518 million worldwide and was the highest-grossing film of 1991. Independence Day (1996) and Jurassic Park (1993) earned more across the decade but are generally classified as science fiction and adventure rather than action.
Why are 90s action movies considered better?
Three factors are usually cited: practical stunts and effects were still the default, Hong Kong choreographers brought new fight vocabulary into Hollywood, and mid-budget action films costing $35–100 million were still commercially viable, producing far more variety than the current tentpole-dominated market.
What is the most influential 90s action movie?
Hard Boiled (1992) and The Matrix (1999) are the two most frequently named. John Woo’s Hard Boiled established the gunfight choreography that The Matrix, John Wick and countless others adapted, while The Matrix brought wire-assisted martial arts and bullet time into mainstream Western filmmaking.
Where can I watch 90s action movies?
Availability rotates constantly as licensing windows expire. Speed joined HBO Max on September 1, 2026, and several John Wick films and 90s catalogue titles cycle between HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+ and Prime Video throughout the year. Check current listings before assuming a title is still available.
Box office and rating figures are approximate and drawn from public tracking sources. Streaming availability is subject to change.