There’s tonnes of action movies to check out on Netflix Australia—featuring assassins, cops, thieves and other purveyors of on screen carnage. Here’s the best, picked by critic Luke Buckmaster.
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Deepwater Horizon (2016)
WATCH ON NETFLIXPeter 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?
The Great Wall (2016)
Watch on NetflixThe look and feel of Chinese director Yimou Zhang’s fantastical battle epic couldn’t be further from the rapid-fire freneticism de rigueur in Hollywood. The director is unafraid to hold the frame, savouring the beauty of his compositions, many of which evoke jaw-dropping vertical depth. Loads of battles are staged atop the titular wall, which is attacked by vicious beasts, Matt Damon’s warrior joining Chinese forces to fend them off.
Jumanji (1995)
WATCH ON NETFLIXRobin Williams plays a character who got lost in an alternate universe as a child, and is returned to reality when new players (Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce) of the titular board game roll the dice. Joe Johnston’s 1995 hit is to some extent a coathanger for special effects—but it’s unusual to see a family film so alive with paranoia, so dripping with dread. Jumanji was under-appreciated back in the day but time has been kind to it; even the special effects still look pretty good.
Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004)
WATCH ON NETFLIXThe story is a simple revenge arc: Uma Thurman’s Beatrix Kiddo will find and kill Bill. What makes this film so rewatchable—and superior to volume 1—is that irresistible, Tarantino-flavoured dialogue, the characters stopping everything to chew the fat. The scenes with David Carradine are particularly irresistible.
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
WATCH ON NETFLIXI am far from the first critic to liken Stephen Chow’s zany chopsocky period movie to a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon, but sometimes the collective wisdom gets it right. Chow (also the writer and director) plays a blunderous small-time con artist who, in a rural slum in China in the 1940s, becomes embroiled in an epic brouhaha between the murderous “Axe Gang” and a trio of genuine kung fu masters. The story is OK; the execution is delightful.
Mad Max Fury Road (2015)
Watch on NetflixThere was every indication that George Miller’s fourth Mad Max movie would turn into a fizzer, enduring a famously difficult shoot and arriving three decades after the previous installment. But when Fury Road roared into cinemas, depicting cinema’s most elaborate U turn, it became clear the director had delivered a face-melting modern classic. And that the titular character (Tom Hardy) had finally met his match with Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa.
The Mask (1994)
WATCH ON NETFLIXProduced in the giddy era of 90s Jim Carrey comedies, the star’s rubber-faced antics inform the tone and even the aesthetic of this stupidly enjoyable film about a mild-mannered bank clerk who dons a magical mask and becomes a kind of live action cartoon—as Carrey always was. It’s a Jekyll and Hyde story and, in today’s context, a kind of anti-superhero movie, the protagonist transforming into a human pogo stick wreaking Looney Tunes style carnage.
Okja (2017)
Watch on Netflix
Tilda Swinton plays the Willy Wonka-esque CEO of a company that produces a not-so-sweet product: giant genetically engineered pigs to carve up and sell worldwide. Chaos ensues when a young girl (Seo-Hyun Ahn) puts up a fight to save the titular character’s bacon. There’s Spielbergian largesse in Bong Joon Ho’s brisk direction, but he goes places Spielberg wouldn’t—with pointy messages about anti-meat consumption and corporate malfeasance.
RRR (2022)
Watch on NetflixSS Rajamouli’s sensationally loud Telugu-language spectacle pivots around two Indian citiziens rebelling against the British Raj circa the 1920s. The plot moves in long and large chunks, and just when you start to get antsy come the thunderclaps of overblown action. There’s no edge to it, stylistically, but it reeks of sheer decadence, even by the standards of Bollywood epics.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Not an origins film, but a film about the myth of origins. This restlessly inventive visual cocktail depicts a multiverse of realities, each harbouring a different version of the titular superhero—and each painted with a distinct aesthetic. The adhesive binding these universes together is the eponymous web-slinger, who saves the world from a super-gangster with a little help from his friends (who are actually different versions of himself).
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Where to watchPart of the appeal of Tom Cruise’s hotshot pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell aligns with the appeal of Cruise himself: he’s a titan from another era, still standing in a rapidly changing world. An air of pathos lingers throughout this belated and unexpectedly excellent sequel to Tony Scott’s 80s classic.
Titles are added and removed from his page to reflect changes to the Netflix catalogue. Reviews no longer available on this page can be found here.
