The Greatest Action Movies of 2022

Explosions, drama, hand combat, love — the action movie has it all. In fact, nothing draws audiences to the theaters like a good old fashion blockbuster, does it?

2022 felt like it honestly ushered back movie theater excitement with Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Bullet Train.

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30 Jurassic World: Dominion

From Jurassic World architect and director Colin Trevorrow, Dominion takes place four years after Isla Nublar has been destroyed. Dinosaurs now live and hunt alongside humans all over the world. This fragile balance will reshape the future and determine, once and for all, whether human beings are to remain the apex predators on a planet they now share with history’s most fearsome creatures.

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29 Ambulance

Over one day across the streets of L.A., three lives will change forever. In this breakneck thriller from director-producer Michael Bay, decorated veteran Will Sharp, desperate for money to cover his wife’s medical bills, asks for help from the one person he knows he shouldn’t — his adoptive brother Danny. A charismatic career criminal, Danny instead offers him a score: the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history: $32 million. With his wife’s survival on the line, Will can’t say no. But when their getaway goes spectacularly wrong, the desperate brothers hijack an ambulance with a wounded cop clinging to life and ace EMT Cam Thompson onboard. In a high-speed pursuit that never stops, Will and Danny must evade a massive, city-wide law enforcement response, keep their hostages alive, and somehow try not to kill each other, all while executing the most insane escape L.A. has ever seen.

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28 The Lost City

Reclusive author Loretta Sage writes about exotic places in her popular adventure novels that feature a handsome cover model named Alan. While on tour promoting her new book with Alan, Loretta gets kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire who hopes she can lead him to an ancient city’s lost treasure from her latest story. Determined to prove he can be a hero in real life and not just on the pages of her books, Alan sets off to rescue her.

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27 Day Shift

Jamie Foxx stars as a hard working blue collar dad who just wants to provide a good life for his quick-witted daughter, but his mundane San Fernando Valley pool cleaning job is a front for his real source of income, hunting and killing vampires as part of an international Union of vampire hunters.

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26 The Contractor

Chris Pine stars in the action-packed thriller as Special Forces Sergeant James Harper, who is involuntarily discharged from the Army and cut-off from his pension. In debt, out of options and desperate to provide for his family, Harper contracts with a private underground military force. When the very first assignment goes awry, the elite soldier finds himself hunted and on the run, caught in a dangerous conspiracy and fighting to stay alive long enough to get home and uncover the true motives of those who betrayed him.

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25 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

In Marvel Studios «Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,» the MCU unlocks the Multiverse and pushes its boundaries further than ever before. Journey into the unknown with Doctor Strange, who, with the help of mystical allies both old and new, traverses the mind-bending and dangerous alternate realities of the Multiverse to confront a mysterious new adversary.

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24 X

In 1979, a group of young filmmakers set out to make an adult film in rural Texas, but when their reclusive, elderly hosts catch them in the act, the cast find themselves fighting for their lives.

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23 Emancipation

«Emancipation» tells the triumphant story of Peter, a man who escapes from slavery, relying on his wits, unwavering faith and deep love for his family to evade cold-blooded hunters and the unforgiving swamps of Louisiana on his quest for freedom. The film is inspired by the 1863 photos of «Whipped Peter,» taken during a Union Army medical examination, that first appeared in Harper’s Weekly. One image, known as «The Scourged Back,» which shows Peter’s bare back mutilated by a whipping delivered by his enslavers, ultimately contributed to growing public opposition to slavery.

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22 Last Seen Alive

After Will Spann’s wife suddenly vanishes at a gas station, his desperate search to find her leads him down a dark path that forces him to run from authorities and take the law into his own hands.

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21 Memory

Alex Lewis is a hired assassin at a turning point. Living in El Paso, Texas, and coming to grips with a faltering memory just as he plans to retire, Alex is ready to conclude a long career of violence and secrecy when an old contact gives him a final assignment. However, the job isn’t what Alex bargained for, and leads him into an FBI sting operation led by agent Vincent Serra. When Alex finds a trail of abuse leading from a child prostitution ring south of the border to a wealth influential El Paso real estate magnate and her son, Alex secretly guides Serra’s FBI team in the right direction. Though his inability to remember details is putting him in ever greater danger, Alex uses the skills he’s honed from a lifetime in the shadows to force ugliness into the light—but he has to do it before powerful forces destroy Alex and erase Serra’s mission to get at the truth.

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20 Nope

A man and his sister discover something sinister in the skies above their California horse ranch, while the owner of a nearby theme park tries to profit from the mysterious, otherworldly phenomenon.

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19 Fall

For best friends Becky and Hunter, life is all about conquering fears and pushing limits. But after they climb 2,000 feet to the top of a remote, abandoned radio tower, they find themselves stranded with no way down. Now Becky and Hunter’s expert climbing skills will be put to the ultimate test as they desperately fight to survive the elements, a lack of supplies, and vertigo-inducing heights in this adrenaline-fueled thriller.

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18 The Gray Man

When the CIA’s most skilled mercenary whose true identity is known to none accidentally uncovers dark agency secrets, a psychopathic former colleague puts a bounty on his head, setting off a global manhunt by international assassins.

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17 The Adam Project

In a dystopian 2050, fighter pilot Adam Reed steals a time jet to escape to 2018 to save his wife, Laura. In the process, he gets injured and crash-lands in 2022. The story then shifts to 12-year-old Adam in 2022, whose father Louis died a year previously. He is bullied at school, gets suspended for fighting in school, and is distant from his mother Ellie. When he is home alone one night, he finds the injured future Adam. The younger Adam refuses to trust the stranger, but future Adam inadvertently mentions the names of both the younger Adam and his dog, Hawking. The younger Adam soon realizes that the stranger in front of him is his future self.

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16 The Black Phone

Finney, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy, is abducted by a sadistic killer and trapped in a soundproof basement where screaming is of little use. When a disconnected phone on the wall begins to ring, Finney discovers that he can hear the voices of the killer’s previous victims. And they are dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to Finney.

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15 The Northman

In AD 895, King Aurvandill returns to the island of Hrafnsey, reuniting with his wife, Queen Gudrún, and his heir, Prince Amleth. To prepare Amleth for his eventual ascension, the father and son participate in a ceremony overseen by Aurvandill’s jester, Heimir. Heimir tells Amleth that his destiny is fixed and cannot be escaped, and Amleth vows to avenge his father if Aurvandill is ever slain, rather than live his life in shame. The next morning, Amleth’s bastard uncle Fjölnir stages a palace coup, personally beheads Aurvandill, sacks the hillfort and carries away Gudrún. Amleth narrowly escapes Fjölnir’s assassins and flees by boat, swearing vengeance.

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14 The Witch: Part 2 — The Other One (Manyeo 2 | 마녀 Part2. The Other One)

After a mysterious girl emerges as the sole survivor of a bloody raid on the research facility behind the top-secret Witch Program, she is rescued by a pair of civilians who soon realize the girl is both very powerful and in very grave danger. However, as the assassins tasked with locating and silencing the girl move ever closer, the lives of everyone around her fall under increasingly great peril.

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13 Uncharted

Street-smart thief Nathan Drake is recruited by seasoned treasure hunter Victor «Sully» Sullivan to recover a fortune lost by Ferdinand Magellan 500 years ago. What starts as a heist job for the duo becomes a globe-trotting, white-knuckle race to reach the prize before the ruthless Moncada, who believes he and his family are the rightful heirs. If Nate and Sully can decipher the clues and solve one of the world’s oldest mysteries, they stand to find $5 billion in treasure and perhaps even Nate’s long-lost brother…but only if they can learn to work together.

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12 The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Nicolas Cage stars as… Nick Cage in the action-comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Creatively unfulfilled and facing financial ruin, the fictionalized version of Cage must accept a $1 million offer to attend the birthday of a dangerous superfan. Things take a wildly unexpected turn when Cage is recruited by a CIA operative and forced to live up to his own legend, channeling his most iconic and beloved on-screen characters in order to save himself and his loved ones. With a career built for this very moment, the seminal award-winning actor must take on the role of a lifetime: Nick Cage.

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11 Bandit

In 1985, Gilbert Galvan Jr, a charming career criminal, escapes from a US prison in Michigan and crosses the border into Canada where he assumes the identity Robert Whiteman. After falling in love with Andrea, a caring social worker he can’t provide for, he turns to robbing banks and discovers that he’s exceptionally good at it. Under the guise of a security analyst, Robert begins flying around the country robbing multiple cities in a day, eventually catching the attention of national news outlets that dub him The Flying Bandit. Addicted to the rush and money that provides his double life, Robert eventually turns to loanshark and reputed gangster Tommy Kay or bigger opportunities. But with Robert’s notoriety growing in record time, he is put into the direct sights of a ruthless detective who will stop at nothing to bring him down.

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10 Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Benoit Blanc returns to peel back the layers in a new Rian Johnson whodunit. This fresh adventure finds the intrepid detective at a lavish private estate on a Greek island, but how and why he comes to be there is only the first of many puzzles. Blanc soon meets a distinctly disparate group of friends gathering at the invitation of billionaire Miles Bron for their yearly reunion. Among those on the guest list are Miles’ former business partner Andi Brand, current Connecticut governor Claire Debella, cutting-edge scientist Lionel Toussaint, fashion designer and former model Birdie Jay and her conscientious assistant Peg, and influencer Duke Cody and his sidekick girlfriend Whiskey. As in all the best murder mysteries, each character harbors their own secrets, lies and motivations. When someone turns up dead, everyone is a suspect.

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9 Prey

Set in the Comanche Nation 300 years ago, «Prey» is the story of a young woman, Naru, a fierce and highly skilled warrior. She has been raised in the shadow of some of the most legendary hunters who roam the Great Plains, so when danger threatens her camp, she sets out to protect her people. The prey she stalks, and ultimately confronts, turns out to be a highly evolved alien predator with a technically advanced arsenal, resulting in a vicious and terrifying showdown between the two adversaries.

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8 The Roundup (Beomjoе dosi 2 | 범죄도시2)

“You feeling it? We have to get this guy” 4 years after the events of Garibong district round up operation, Geumcheon Police’s Major Crimes Unit is given a mission to repatriate a fugitive who fled to Vietnam. Beast cop Ma Seok-do and Capt. Jeon Il-man intuitively realize that there’s something wrong with the suspect’s willingness to turn himself in and uncover crimes committed by a terrifying killer named Kang Hae-sang. Ma and his unit begin their investigation across two countries and follow the bloody breadcrumbs left behind by Kang… No borders in catching the bad! Another exciting and tension-filled round up!

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7 Bullet Train

In Bullet Train, Brad Pitt stars as Ladybug, an unlucky assassin determined to do his job peacefully after one too many gigs gone off the rails. Fate, however, may have other plans, as Ladybug’s latest mission puts him on a collision course with lethal adversaries from around the globe all with connected, yet conflicting, objectives on the world’s fastest train.

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6 RRR

In 1920, during the British Raj, Governor Scott Buxton and his wife Catherine visit a forest in Adilabad and there abduct Malli, a young girl with a talent for artistry, from the Gond tribe. Enraged by this, the tribe’s guardian Komaram Bheem embarks for Delhi to rescue her, disguising himself as a Muslim man named Akhtar. Elsewhere, the Nizamate of Hyderabad, sympathetic to the Raj, warns Scott’s office of the impending danger. Undeterred, Catherine enlists A. Rama Raju, an ambitious officer in the Indian Imperial Police, to quell the threat. Seeking clues to Malli’s whereabouts, Raju and his uncle, Venkateswarulu, attend several pro-independence gatherings where he feigns to support independence.

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5 Everything Everywhere All at Once

Evelyn Quan Wang is a middle-aged Chinese American immigrant who runs a laundromat with her husband, Waymond; two decades earlier, they eloped to the United States and had a daughter, Joy. In the present day, the laundromat is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); Waymond is trying to serve Evelyn divorce papers in an attempt to get her attention so they can talk about their marriage; Evelyn’s stern and demanding father is visiting for her Chinese New Year party; and Joy is dealing with depression and has a strained relationship with her mother.

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4 The Batman

Batman ventures into Gotham City’s underworld when a sadistic killer leaves behind a trail of cryptic clues. As the evidence begins to lead closer to home and the scale of the perpetrator’s plans become clear, he must forge new relationships, unmask the culprit and bring justice to the abuse of power and corruption that has long plagued the metropolis.

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3 All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues)

All Quiet on the Western Front tells the gripping story of a young German soldier on the Western Front of World War I. Paul and his comrades experience first-hand how the initial euphoria of war turns into desperation and fear as they fight for their lives, and each other, in the trenches. The film from director Edward Berger is based on the world renowned bestseller of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque.

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2 Avatar: The Way of Water

Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, «Avatar: The Way of Water» begins to tell the story of the Sully family, the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.

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1 Top Gun: Maverick

After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw, call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose”. Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it.

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