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Battle Royale
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Before The Hunger Games, there was the Japanese movie Battle Royale. It’s also about a future in which school-age kids are pitted against each other in deadly games, with only one emerging as the victor. Director Kinji Fukasaku stages some brutal fights between the students, keeping the focus almost entirely on the island where a high school class has been trapped and forced into combat.
Banned in some countries for years, Battle Royale is equally thrilling and nasty, a demented dystopian vision that makes the audience root for innocent children to fight and kill.
Battle Royale is streaming for free with ads on Freevee, Plex, Pluto TV, Redbox, The Roku Channel, Tubi, and Vudu, and for free via local libraries on Hoopla and Kanopy.
Becky
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Kevin James fighting a 13-year-old girl doesn’t necessarily sound like the formula for a successful action movie, but the filmmakers behind Becky pull it off remarkably well. James is surprisingly convincing as the menacing leader of a gang of neo-Nazis, who take young Becky (Lulu Wilson) and her family hostage at their vacation house.
The gang is looking for an unspecified hidden item in the house, and they’re willing to torture and kill everyone in order to get it. Becky escapes and mounts a counterattack that’s part Rambo, part Home Alone, in a creative and often gruesome battle to the death.
Becky is streaming for free via local libraries on Hoopla.
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Hero
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Chinese director Zhang Yimou combines martial arts action with lush, painterly visuals in Hero. Set in China during the third century BC, the movie follows a nameless warrior who claims to have thwarted a conspiracy to assassinate the king of one of the country’s warring states.
Zhang assembles a cast of martial arts all-stars, including Jet Li, Donnie Yen, and Zhang Ziyi, along with Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, who are better known for their dramatic work. He delivers sweeping historical drama plus elaborately staged fight sequences, the hallmarks of the wuxia genre.
Hero is streaming for free with ads on Pluto TV and for free via local libraries on Hoopla.
Highlander
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Immortal warriors battle across the centuries in director Russell Mulcahy’s bombastic action fantasy. With its soundtrack full of Queen arena-rock anthems, Highlander sometimes comes across like a two-hour music video, in only the best ways. Christopher Lambert plays one of the last of the eternal combatants, living in modern-day New York City and preparing for a final battle with his longtime enemy. As the lore goes, “there can be only one,” so the two must fight to the death—which can only be achieved via decapitation. It’s an over-the-top epic that launched a franchise full of dense mythology.
Highlander is streaming for free with ads on Dark Matter TV, Freevee, Peacock, Plex, The Roku Channel, Shout Factory TV, and Vudu.
John Wick
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Although it launched an increasingly complicated franchise, the original John Wick is about as straightforward as action movies get. Keanu Reeves plays the title character, a formidable hitman who comes out of retirement to track down the gangsters who stole his car and killed his dog.
Things spiral out of control from there, as John ends up taking on a powerful Russian mobster, but directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, both former stunt coordinators, keep the focus on the visceral action. It’s stylish and propulsive, with Reeves as the perfect taciturn anti-hero.
John Wick is streaming for free with ads on Tubi.
Kickboxer
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An early breakout role for Jean-Claude Van Damme, Kickboxer is undeniably silly, but it’s a fantastic showcase for the martial-arts skills that made Van Damme into a superstar. Van Damme co-wrote the story and choreographed the fights, creating a perfect vehicle for his talents. He plays an American kickboxer out for revenge after his brother was paralyzed in a fight. Van Damme’s Kurt Sloane participates in awesomely cheesy training montages as he prepares to take on the corrupt Thai fighter who crippled his brother.
Kickboxer is streaming for free with ads on Freevee, Plex, Pluto TV, Redbox, The Roku Channel, Tubi, and Vudu, and for free via local libraries on Hoopla.
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Live Free or Die Hard
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It’s pretty much impossible to top the original Die Hard, but the fourth movie in the franchise is a respectable follow-up. Bruce Willis’ NYPD detective John McClane has become an essentially invincible action hero, but the movie brings him down to Earth a bit by teaming him with his college-student daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).
They join forces with an affable hacker (Justin Long) to take down a cyber-terrorist (Timothy Olyphant), in a movie that delivers exciting, well-crafted action sequences that are intense enough to drown out the comparisons to the original.
Live Free or Die Hard is streaming for free with ads on Tubi.
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Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior
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Thai martial arts star Tony Jaa burst onto the scene with this kinetic showcase for his talents. The plot is rudimentary, starring Jaa as a villager who travels to Bangkok to recover a stolen statue, taking on a variety of thugs and criminals in the process. The simple story provides room for Jaa to practice his dazzling Muay Thai moves, in a form of martial arts that had rarely been highlighted onscreen before this movie. Jaa and director Prachya Pinkaew use slow motion and multiple camera angles to make sure each amazing stunt can be fully appreciated.
Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior is streaming for free with ads on Crackle, Plex, Redbox, The Roku Channel, Tubi, and Vudu, and for free via local libraries on Hoopla and Kanopy.
RoboCop
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Paul Verhoeven’s vision is part sci-fi action, part social satire, embodied in the cyborg title character, played by Peter Weller. He’s a cop in a hyper-violent future version of Detroit, where control of the local police force has been handed to the obviously sinister corporation Omni Consumer Products. OCP takes fatally injured officer Alex Murphy and resuscitates him in a cybernetic body, making him into an efficient killing machine. Murphy eventually rebels against his corporate overlords and recovers his sense of self, while mowing down criminals in scenes of brutal, visceral action.
RoboCop is streaming for free with ads on Pluto TV, Redbox, The Roku Channel, and Tubi, and for free via local libraries on Hoopla.
The Rundown
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Before Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was one of the most famous people on the planet, he was a professional wrestler trying to establish himself as an action star. The Rundown is a great early showcase for Johnson’s talents, both at beating up bad guys and at delivering goofy one-liners. It’s a buddy comedy starring Johnson as a bounty hunter sent into the Brazilian jungle to retrieve the wayward son (Seann William Scott) of a crime boss. The movie is lively and quip-heavy, setting the stage for Johnson’s future mega-hits.
The Rundown is streaming for free with ads on Tubi.
