I have been trying to find good action movies made after the turn of the millennium but I am not having a lot of success. It is true that there are still some pretty entertaining and somewhat recently made movies out there. However, they are all quite one-dimensional. I will contrast some pre- and post-2000s movies. If you think I just have not found the right post-2000 movies, then please let me know in the comments below.

First, let us have a look at some classics from the 1980s and 1990s, briefly pointing out why they went beyond car chases, violence, and firefights:

– The Terminator (1984): The movie touches upon transhumanism, the downsides of technological progress for society, and also provides an introduction to time-travelling paradoxes. Also, how do you defeat a seemingly invulnerable robot?
– Robocop (1987): If we put your brain into a robot, what do we do if you retain your memories instead of becoming a perfect and ruthless killing machine? Also, how do we deal with all-powerful mega-corporations in a dystopian future that finance their own private army?
– Total Recall (1990): Could it be that all your memories are fake and that you are actually someone else? What if the hot slut you are banging every day is only there to kill you if your old memories come back? This movie probably introduced a mainstream audience to schizo thinking.
– Fight Club (1999): How will society deal with disenfranchised men? What if men see through consumerism and start to reject fake modernity?
– The Matrix (1999): What if you live within a computer simulation? How would you tell? Could you tell?

Obviously, there are also a lot of action movies of that era that were a lot simpler. I am not aware of any complex themes in Bloodsport (1988), for instance. Yet, even in supposedly dumb popcorn movies like Die Hard (1988) or Escape from New York (1981) there is a layer beyond the action and violence on screen. In the former, there is the obvious question of modernity (empowered woman in corporate America) versus tradition (Christmas, family), and the motivation of the protagonist is to attempt to reconcile with his separated wife as well as the children she kept. Of course, the movie does not answer how she is able to be a high-powered executive that is raising two kids on her own. In contrast, in the latter movie all the violence can be seen as merely a means to an end, i.e. it illustrates what may happen if we no longer uphold law and order. Obviously, contemporary reality is far worse than the dystopia envisioned by that movie over 40 years ago.

What did we get from the 2000s onward? I do not recall a single action movie of that era that can be considered a classic. One of the most highly regarded franchises in the action genre is John Wick. The first movie did not have much of a story. The second is basically a remake of the first, except that it adds a bizarre mythology to it, according to which there is some kind of occult Mafia-like global deep state that runs everything, yet still uses manual switchboards. For all the effort these movies make in detailing their world, they care very little about it in the end, with plot holes so big you could drive a truck through. These movies also do not know what they are. Sometimes, there are slapstick scenes in fights, but normally John Wick is a ruthless and highly efficient killer.

The fourth John Wick movie is almost three hours long. Three fucking hours! There is not a lot happening and surely a bunch of the repetitive fighting scenes could have been cut, or perhaps it would have been enough if John Wick only rolled down the stairs at the end once. The John Wick franchise, from the second movie onward, insults your intelligence, and it gets worse with each movie. You are supposed to believe that there are countless killers out there, waiting to wipe the eponymous protagonist out, as long as the bounty is big enough. When it is just 18 million, there are few takers, but once the bounty increases, suddenly a lot more hoodlums show up because then it is suddenly worth their time. Granted, these movies are well made but there is very little substance.

I found some pretty good foreign-made movies. Ong-Bak (2003) and Tom-Yung-Goong (2005) with Tony Jaa are phenomenal, if you like marital arts movies. It is a pity that Tony Jaa switched from stuntman to actor so late in his career. He peaked with Ong-Bak, and already two years later in Tom-Yung-Goong his physical decline was obvious. Needless to say, there is not a lot to think about while watching these movies. This is pretty mindless action but it is very well-made action.

I even gave the xXx franchise a try, which is built around Vin Diesel playing the ultimate meathead. These movies are really dumb but they have a few good set pieces. One of my favorite scenes is in the first movie, in which the protagonist xXx figures out that he is not the only one who has infiltrated some criminal network. There is also a Russian female spy. They have lunch together, and at some point she asks him what he does. Upon telling her that he is a secret agent, she starts laughing, saying something like, “You, a secret agent? I mean, look at you!”. This was excellent acting of that woman, far better than in the rest of the movie, which makes me belie that it was an ad-libbed scene. Yet, this is an outlier. This franchise would be helped if it took itself a bit less seriously. Better do not ask about any deep thoughts you may have after watching any of these movies.

The age of the action hero is over, and so is, apparently, the age of the semi-cerebral action movie. However, I have also been wondering if this change was simply due to movie studios wanting to better target their audience. In the past, movies often attempted to have something for everybody. For instance, family-friendly movies had cute animal or kids, so the kids had something to relate to, there was some romance and drama for the wife, and the husband got to see a bit of eye-candy as well. Perhaps this is why the better action movies of the past were a lot more serious than one may superficially believe as the goal was to address a potentially larger audience. In contrast, today you get pure action because of a belief that this is what the audience wants, possibly based on extensive focus-group testing.