15 Action Movies Like John Wick

15 Action Movies Like John Wick John Wick changed action cinema. Before 2014, Hollywood was drowning in shaky-cam close-ups where you couldn't tell who was punching whom. Then Chad Stahelski and David Leitch - both stunt coordinators - put Keanu Reeves in a suit, killed his dog, and filmed the resulting carnage with clean, wide shots that showed every hit, every reload, and every beautiful brutality. If you've burned through all four John Wick films and you need more of that sweet, choreographed violence, these fifteen films will deliver. 1. The Raid (2011) The film that John Wick owes its biggest debt to. Gareth Evans' Indonesian action masterpiece about a SWAT team fighting their way up a tower block is the purest distillation of martial arts action ever filmed. The corridor fight. Mad Dog's two-on-one finale. Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian perform pencak silat with a speed and brutality that makes Hollywood action look like a school play. If you haven't seen this, stop reading and watch it now. 2. The Raid 2 (2014) Evans took everything from The Raid and went bigger. The prison mud fight. The car chase shot from inside the vehicle. Hammer Girl and Baseball Bat Man. The kitchen fight with The Assassin. It's two and a half hours of the most inventively violent action sequences ever choreographed. The final showdown between Rama and The Assassin in the kitchen is one of cinema's all-time great fights. 3. Atomic Blonde (2017) David Leitch (John Wick co-director) gives Charlize Theron a Cold War spy thriller in Berlin. The stairwell fight - shot to look like one continuous take - is brutal, exhausting, and deliberately messy. Theron takes hits, gets winded, stumbles. It's the anti-choreographed fight scene, and it's incredible. The neon aesthetic is gorgeous. 4. Nobody (2021) Bob Odenkirk as a retired assassin who snaps when his house is burgled. Yes, it's basically John Wick in a cardigan, and it's fantastic. Odenkirk trained for two years and the effort shows - the bus fight is a highlight of 2020s action cinema. Ilya Naishuller directed with a kinetic energy that never lets up. Christopher Lloyd with a shotgun is a bonus you didn't know you needed. 5. Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) Tarantino's love letter to martial arts cinema. The Crazy 88 fight at the House of Blue Leaves is one of cinema's great action sequences - Uma Thurman against an army, filmed with the kind of gleeful excess that John Wick would later channel. The Bride versus O-Ren Ishii in the snowy garden is pure beauty. Tarantino understood that action is at its best when it's a little bit operatic. 6. The Night Comes for Us (2018) If you thought The Raid was violent, Timo Tjahjanto's Indonesian crime thriller will make your jaw drop. Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais reunite for a film where the action sequences are so brutally inventive that you'll occasionally laugh in disbelief. The hallway fight with Julie Estelle is one of the most ferocious things ever committed to film. It's on Netflix and it deserves a much bigger audience. 7. Upgrade (2018) Leigh Whannell's low-budget sci-fi action film about a man implanted with an AI chip that turns him into a fighting machine. Logan Marshall-Green's physicality - the way his body moves against his will during fight scenes - is a brilliant visual gag that never gets old. It's essentially Venom done right, for a fraction of the budget. The kitchen fight is a standout. 8. Extraction (2020) Sam Hargrave (Avengers stunt coordinator turned director) puts Chris Hemsworth in Dhaka and lets the camera follow him through a twelve-minute "single-take" action sequence through streets, buildings, and cars. The action choreography is on a John Wick level. The story is thin but Hemsworth gives it more emotional weight than it probably deserves. The bridge sequence is relentless. 9. Ip Man (2008) Donnie Yen as the Wing Chun master who trained Bruce Lee. The ten-man fight scene - where Ip Man destroys ten black belts in furious succession - is one of martial arts cinema's greatest sequences. Yen's speed is barely believable. It spawned three sequels of varying quality, but the original is a stone-cold classic. 10. Oldboy (2003) Park Chan-wook's revenge masterpiece isn't a pure action film, but the corridor fight - one continuous shot, a man with a hammer, an army of goons - is the scene that inspired John Wick's own corridor sequences. It's messier, more desperate, and more emotionally charged than anything in the Wick universe. The rest of the film is equally essential for entirely different reasons. 11. Haywire (2011) Steven Soderbergh cast real MMA fighter Gina Carano as a black ops agent and then shot her fight scenes with minimal editing and no music. The hotel room fight with Michael Fassbender is the most realistically violent hand-to-hand combat in any Hollywood film. Soderbergh understood that when someone can actually fight, you don't need to hide it in quick cuts. 12. Headshot (2016) Another Indonesian action film - sensing a theme? - starring Iko Uwais as an amnesiac waking up in a hospital with lethal skills. The fight choreography is bone-crunchingly inventive. The mud fight and the bus fight are standouts. If you've exhausted The Raid films, this is your next stop. 13. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) George Miller returned to the Wasteland with Anya Taylor-Joy and proved that Fury Road wasn't a one-off miracle. The Staircase to Heaven sequence is one of the most audacious action set pieces ever filmed. Chris Hemsworth as Dementus is gleefully unhinged. It's big, operatic action filmmaking from a master who's been doing this longer than most directors have been alive. 14. Hard Boiled (1992) John Woo's Hong Kong action masterpiece and the film that invented the gun-fu style that John Wick perfected. Chow Yun-fat dual-wielding pistols while sliding across a hospital floor is an image so iconic it defined an entire genre. The hospital sequence in the third act is a continuous escalation of absurd, beautiful violence. This is where it all started. 15. The Villainess (2017) A South Korean action film that opens with a first-person POV fight sequence through an entire building that's genuinely jaw-dropping. Kim Ok-bin stars as an assassin trying to leave her violent past behind (she can't). The sword fight on motorcycles on a highway is one of the most insane action sequences of the decade. It's messy, maximalist, and utterly committed to being as visually inventive as possible. If you work through this entire list and still need more, congratulations: you're officially addicted to well-choreographed violence. There are worse vices. 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