10 best action movies of the 1990s

Every Mission: Impossible movie is worth watching (with the possible exception of the second), but Mission: Impossible gets the entire endeavor off to a rollicking start. The film follows Ethan Hunt as he’s forced to go rogue after a mission goes bad and his entire team ends up dead. Although there’s plenty of outdated technology on display here, the movie works because it understands the importance of an outstanding set piece. Ethan’s attempt to infiltrate a secure computer rigged up with various alarm systems is among the best in the entire series, and it still feels like it hasn’t aged a day.

Perhaps the movie on this list that can most realistically be described as high art, Heat is a story of cops and robbers taken to its extreme. The movie follows a criminal played by Robert De Niro and a cop played by Al Pacino as the two of them play a game of cat and mouse across Los Angeles. Although the movie features some genuinely thrilling shootouts, what has allowed Heat to endure is the way it seems to genuinely value both of its central characters. The iconic scene in which the two central figures meet and discuss the many ways they are alike is one of the greatest in the history of movies.

Another actor who had a great action decade was Nicolas Cage, and The Rock was one of his crowning achievements. Cage plays a chemical weapons expert who is forced to team up with a former British spy to stop a chemical weapons attack that is set to take place on Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. The movie is absurd, but the chemistry between Cage and Sean Connery crackles, and the action is genuinely riveting from beginning to end. Few actors can go big like Cage, and in The Rock, he and Connery go big in a movie that can accommodate the size of their performances.

The movie that redefined action filmmaking altogether, The Matrix was also a fitting conclusion to a decade filled with action movies that broke the mold. Following a young computer programmer who discovers that the world around him is not what he thought it was, The Matrix is still as mind-bending today as it was when it was released. The movie’s bullet time effect has been parodied to death, but that doesn’t make its use here feel any less effective. Thanks to that effect, and a heavy dose of influence from contemporary Hong Kong action films, The Matrix began a genuine revolution at the multiplex. 

Maybe the most modest Keanu Reeves action vehicle on this list, Speed is worthy of its spot nonetheless in part because of its utter commitment to its fantastical premise. When Reeves is stuck on a bus that is rigged to blow up if it slows down, he goes to truly extraordinary lengths to save all the passengers on board. Thanks to some sparkling chemistry with Sandra Bullock, as well as some excellent supporting work from Alan Ruck and Jeff Daniels, Speed is perhaps the most literal thrill ride on this list.