Action movies may always be in season, but there are only a few that can rise above the rest during the summer.
Some action flicks simply can’t take the heat, but those that can have gone on to reach blockbuster status. And they’re still great to watch years later.
The Watch With Us team has selected the following four films as the must-watch action movies that are perfect to stream in the summer.
For this list, we went with two classics and two modern hits.
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‘Speed’ (1994)
Before The Matrix, Keanu Reeves had his breakout moment as an action star in Speed. The premise of Speed may sound silly, but director Jan de Bont creates great tension around the idea of a bus that can’t go any slower than 50 mph without blowing up.
Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) is the madman who placed a bomb on a city bus, and he practically dared LAPD Officer Jack Traven (Reeves) to keep it from going off. Sandra Bullock is also terrific in this flick as Annie Porter, a young woman who unexpectedly finds herself driving the bus while Jack tries to save the lives of everyone on board.
Speed is streaming on HBO Max.
‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (2022)
Truthfully, the original Top Gun could have easily been slotted into this list. But since the sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, was so wildly successful, it more than earned its place as one of the all-time great summer action movies.
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Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is pretty spry for an older guy, but time is catching up to him, and his career as a Navy pilot is hanging on by a thread. In what may be the last stop of his military journey, Maverick has to train a new generation of Top Gun pilots ahead of a dangerous mission. He also has to face his past when one of the pilot candidates is Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s late friend, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw.
Top Gun: Maverick is streaming on Paramount+.
‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’ (2024)
The title characters of Bad Boys: Ride or Die are no strangers to trouble. Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) earned their rep as two of Miami’s top cops over three decades. Their beloved captain, Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano), perished in the previous film, Bad Boys For Life. This time, Mike and Marcus are out to posthumously clear Captain Howard of charges that he was corrupt.
In doing so, Mike and Marcus kicked a proverbial hornet’s nest, and it isn’t long before they’re also framed for bogus charges. Now that they’re the most-wanted fugitives in Miami, it’s time for Mike and Marcus to find out who their friends really are. Because most of their Miami PD colleagues are hunting them down.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die is streaming on Netflix.
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‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ (1991)
There have been countless action movies before and after Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but few have come close to matching James Cameron‘s masterpiece. This was the summer blockbuster of 1991, and it’s the prototype for every summer action movie that came afterwards.
In retrospect, it was brilliant to recast Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s T-800 model as a heroic character in the sequel. Schwarzenegger has some legitimately hilarious lines as a machine who slowly becomes more human while protecting John Connor (Edward Furlong) from the menacing T-1000 (Robert Patrick). Linda Hamilton ups her action cred as well, thanks to a powerful turn as Sarah Connor. Sarah’s not sure she can trust the T-800, but she recognizes that he may be the best hope that she and John have of stopping the machines from destroying humanity.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is streaming on Paramount+.
