You’ve got your big home speakers all set up and your big TV attached to them, and you wanna hear things go boom, right? Well, Peacock has anticipated just such a situation. They’ve got all of the cold-blooded assassins and CIA operatives and peach princesses that will shake, rattle, and roll the walls of your home just the way you like it. These stunt-packed movies will have you on the edge of your seat roaring for more.
We’ve scoured the streaming library. Here are the 15 best action movies now on Peacock.
1. The Northman
Credit: Aidan Monaghan / Focus Features
When lists of the greatest movies about the Vikings often include Marvel’s Thor, you know we have had a Viking Movie Shortage. So send a gigantic tankard of mead to writer-director Robert Eggers for giving the northern marauders a proper cinematic showcase with this fantastical 2022 epic.
Eggers has never shied away from historical accuracy. From The Witch to The Lighthouse, he’s strenuously strived to bring old-timey stories to vivid life using all the modern movie-making tools on hand. The Northman gave him his biggest canvas to date — not to mention his biggest star to date. All six-foot-four-inches of leading man Alexander Skarsgård is devouring the screen here as Amleth, the accursed princeling whose grim story inspired Shakespeare to write Hamlet. Watch him go berserker on a small village! Watch him lie with Anya Taylor-Joy in a moonlit field! Watch him having a naked sword fight on the top of an erupting volcano with Claes Bang! Subtle it ain’t, but transfixing it surely be.
How to watch: The Northman is now streaming on Peacock.
What the hell did ‘The Lighthouse’ even mean?
2. Bronson
Tom Hardy had a decade of work under his belt before starring as career criminal Michael Peterson (who nicknamed himself “Charles Bronson”) in Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2008 biopic. Mad props to anybody who took note of Hardy as the evil Romulan clone in Star Trek: Nemesis six years earlier. But for most of us, it was here with his operatic turn in Refn’s prison film where we first bothered learning the young actor’s name. And with good reason. It still stands as one of his greatest performances to date.
Playing Bronson at a register somewhere between The Hamburglar and Zeus, Hardy explodes right off the screen in a story that amounts to, “Mustachioed British dude wants to stay locked up and so he keeps being ultra-violent to do so.” What could’ve been a rote story of common thuggery we’ve seen dozens of times before becomes instead an arch inversion of the idea of “the self-made man.” Bronson becomes a legend through sheer theatrical will of personality. And so went Hardy himself. You can see his future amped-to-11 turns in Capone and The Dark Knight Rises all bottled up in here, rioting for their own chances to jazz hands.
How to watch: Bronson is now streaming on Peacock.
3. The Man from Nowhere
Credit: Cinema Service / Kobal / Shutterstock
A retired assassin pulled back into the game to get revenge is not exactly the freshest of action movie plots. But writer-director Lee Jeong-beom’s smash-hit 2010 thriller (it was the biggest film at the box office in South Korea that year) instills the old tale with fresh life, even when it adds the “cute kid in danger” aspect to the mix. That’s some verve!
Won Bin stars as the reserved owner of a pawnshop, who taps into his assassin past when a young neighbor is tormented by gangsters. Jeong-beom somehow manages to invest every familiar beat with a relentless tension that will have your heart in your throat. And just a year after starring in Bong Joon-ho’s Mother, this film also inexplicably marks Won Bin’s final film performance (to date) – watch it, wonder at his natural charisma, and try to figure out why the hell he quit acting.
How to watch: The Man from Nowhere is now streaming on Peacock.
4. Point Break
Credit: Richard Foreman / 20th Century Fox / Kobal / Shutterstock
Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 film stars Keanu Reeves as an FBI agent named Johnny Utah, who goes undercover in a community of surfers to uncover a brash band of serial bank robbers. The surfer-robbers are led by Patrick Swayze, playing a far-out dude named Bodhi. Together Bodhi and Johnny Utah embark on a whole, like, spiritual bonding thing that’s wildly homoerotic.
And if just straightforwardly telling you all of those plot details about Point Break aren’t enough to sell you, and to sell you giddily on it, then you’re probably a lost cause. Keanu and Swayze are a match made in brahhh-heaven. Both know exactly the movie they’re in, all while Bigelow shoots the shit out of it. They unfortunately do not make movies like this anymore (though remakes may try!). So grab your board and hang ten for dear life while you still can.
How to watch: Point Break is now streaming on Peacock.
5. Out of Sight
Credit: Universal / Kobal / Shutterstock
Previously known for moody indies like Sex, Lies, and Videotape, director Steven Soderbergh took a big swing into genre with this star-studded romp. This now classic crime caper features George Clooney (at the height of his ER fame) as a bank robber named Jack, and Jennifer Lopez (fresh off the biopic Selena) as a U.S. Marshal named Karen who’s hot on his tail in more ways than one. Freshly escaped from prison, Jack is trying to get one over on the guy who put him there by stealing some diamonds. The only thing standing in his way? The nonstop flirt fest with Karen that neither of them can seem to quit.
Effortlessly sexy and twisting with style, we’ve seen Soderbergh do this sort of thing so many times in the years since (hello, Danny Ocean movies) that it’s hard to remember what a surprise this was coming from him then. Well-worn movie archetypes jazzed up with his relentless cinematic playfulness (the constantly in-flux editing here is well remembered for a reason), Out of Sight still thrums with cool.
How to watch: Out of Sight is now streaming on Peacock.
6. Timecrimes
Way ahead of its time, Nacho Vigalondo’s 2007 film offers one of the greatest self-contained time-loop movies ever made. It begins with an average man named Héctor (Karra Elejalde), who spies a naked lady in the bushes behind his house. With his wife away, he sneaks out to investigate. And before you know it, a bloodied, masked man is stalking Héctor through the woods.
What sounds like a slasher film set-up quickly goes sideways when a scientist (Vigalondo himself) tells Héctor to hide inside a bizarre mechanical contraption, which suddenly transports Héctor to an hour backward in time. And it all unravels from there. Vigalondo mines so much surprise out of finding answers to the conundrums he’s built for himself here that this propulsive movie will have you positively gaga by its end. Simply put, it’s fantastic fun.
How to watch: Timecrimes is now streaming on Peacock.
7. Haywire
This 2011 Steven Soderbergh joint threw the MMA fighter Gina Carano straight into the lead role of an action movie — and made a solid case for her as this generation’s Steven Seagal. Little did we know how true that would turn out to be! But at least Soderbergh recognized her acting limits well enough to refrain from pushing Carano too far here. This movie keeps to a series of thrillingly staged fight scenes, featuring a series of famous faces, including Channing Tatum.
Carano plays a black ops agent entangled in a conspiracy where the higher-ups want her dead. It’s actually incredibly similar to the plot of David Fincher’s The Killer, starring Michael Fassbender, which is funny because Fassbender plays one of the men that Carano must beat the shit out of here in Haywire, in the film’s most memorable — and weirdly hot — scene.
How to watch: Haywire is now streaming on Peacock.
8. John Wick, Chapter 3 – Parabellum
Credit: Niko Tavernise / Lionsgate / Kobal / Shutterstock
Peacock has the first three John Wick movies streaming to aid your binge of their spin-off series The Continental. So why are we picking the third film specifically? After all, it would probably make more sense to go with the simplest, most straightforward one — the 2014 original that was just about a dude named John (Keanu Reeves) getting a whole lotta vengeance over his dead dog. By the third film, subtitled Parabellum because who can remember, the plots become both more labyrinthine (with John on the run from several strata of villains and with all of the double and triple crosses) and more beside-the-point. We can all agree that we’re really just here for the action spectacles, right?
And that’s why we’re picking the third chapter. It has the best action scene in the entire series. By which we mean the knife fight. And it’s not just the best action scene in the series because it’s one of the few that doesn’t glorify guns (although that doesn’t hurt). It’s by far the most creative. John and his immediate enemies find themselves fighting inside an antique weapons shop where the walls are lined with glass cases, full of killer cutlery. And we’re finally given a respite from people’s heads exploding in poofs of red mist. John and his combatants can just simply stab the shit out of each other, the way god intended.
How to watch: John Wick 3 is now streaming on Peacock.
‘The Continental: From the World of John Wick’s trailer is everything you’d hoped it would be
9. King Kong
Credit: Universal / Wing Nut Films / Kobal / Shutterstock
Coming off of the Lord of the Rings trilogy with a dragon’s hoard of gold statues, director Peter Jackson had the clout to do whatever the heck he wanted. And that was remake King Kong. In 2005, he did, with Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody and Jack Black all playing opposite the world’s most famous gigantic ape. And it was good. Very good. Far more good than it had any right being, actually.
Jackson changed almost nothing in the story from the 1933 original: Adventure filmmakers go to Skull Island, encounter lots of monsters but most especially that massive gorilla, which then falls for a pretty blonde lady, and then the dum-dums bring the beast back to New York City, where he wreaks all sorts of destruction before his sightseeing tour to the top of the Empire State Building goes way awry. But Jackson made it all bigger and CG fancier, while Watts gave a shockingly touching performance opposite a green screen. So, yes, beauty might have killed the beast yet again, but it worked out to the benefit of us viewers, at least.
How to watch: King Kong is now streaming on Peacock.
10. Assault on Precinct 13
When people rattle off John Carpenter classics, it’s always Halloween this or The Thing that, and not nearly enough love is heaped on his 1976 actioner about a ragtag group of Angelenos trapped inside a shuttered police precinct as a vicious street gang tries to bust in and murder everybody. Inspired by Howard Hawks’ Western Rio Bravo — as well as George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead — the love for Assault on Precinct 13 took some time. Upon its release in 1976, it wasn’t a box office or a critical hit. Indeed its status as a cult classic was probably best aided along by Carpenter’s subsequent hits, i.e. Halloween and The Thing and the rest. But (like most of Carpenter’s best work) it’s a master class in building tension, from the early scene of a little girl being murdered in broad daylight as she gets ice cream up through its claustrophobic and explosive final act where all hell breaks loose.
How to watch: Assault on Precinct 13 is now streaming on Peacock.
11. The Villainess
Credit: Jake Jung / Apeitda / Kobal / Shutterstock
Keeping the elaborate series of double crosses and even triple crosses straight in this 2017 assassins-be-assassinating thriller from South Korea (which director Jung Byung-gil based on Le Femme Nikita) would require an entire spool of red string. Everybody’s a secret spy or somebody’s secret father, to the point where you just sort of have to throw your hands up and go for the ride. But what a ride!
The Villainess stars Kim Ok-bin, who first wowed us as a young woman absolutely thrilled to be turned into a vampire in Park Chan-wook’s Thirst. Here she plays as an unstoppable killing machine trapped in a bunch of diabolical men’s machinations across two different timelines. The Villainess is exactly the kind of movie that critics like to call “a thrill ride.” And then “a thrill ride” ends up on the poster. And then you see it and you’re all like, “Wow, that really actually was a thrill ride.” Because it is! Thrills will be ridden.
How to watch: The Villainess is now streaming on Peacock.
12. Jason Bourne
Credit: Universal / Kobal / Shutterstock
The fifth and final (to date) film in the Bourne franchise brought Matt Damon’s amnesiac CIA agent back after he’d spent the previous film — The Bourne Legacy, which starred Jeremy Renner as some other dude not named Bourne at all — in hiding. (That is studio talk for “Matt Damon didn’t want to do it.”) But Damon did want to do the fifth film, as they brought back Paul Greengrass to direct.
The story this time sees Bourne getting dragged back into the action thanks to his old contact (Julia Stiles), who shows up with new information implicating Bourne’s own father in the conspiracy. Plus there’s a dark plot about a scary new surveillance program that boasts Riz Ahmed looking steely and sexy. Jason Bourne was widely considered “more of the same” from critics and audiences alike. But that’s not so bad when “the same” is such well-acted and executed action as this franchise is known for. And since this is the only Bourne movie now streaming on Peacock, it wins by process of elimination!
How to watch: Jason Bourne is now streaming on Peacock.
13. Prospect
Credit: SXSW / MPRM PR
If the wait for The Last Of Us Season 2 or more of The Mandalorian has you craving more Pedro Pascal, check out this underseen but excellent sci-fi thriller with a Western twist.
The film stars Yellowjackets and The Book of Boba Fett actress Sophie Thatcher as Cee, who rides around outer space in a junky cruiser with her prospector father (Jay Duplass), looking for rare gems to mine on far-flung planets. On one such expedition, they encounter a couple of thieves, led by Pascal’s Ezra. The resulting fight for survival is full of suspense and an awkward alliance that glitters with drama. Stuffed with stunning CG surroundings that belie the film’s minuscule budget and with twists and turns you won’t see coming, Prospect is a hidden gem itself.
How to watch: Prospect is now streaming on Peacock.
14. Ichi the Killer
Based on a twisted manga series, Ichi the Killer stars Japanese legend Tadanobu Asano as the titular chap with a penchant for killin’, killin’, and killin’ some more. Audition director Takashi Miike takes the comic’s violence to an outrageous new level in live-action. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
Ichi, a scarred and pierced psychopath who finds his own rage sexually arousing, is unpredictable, to put it mildly. But he is also useful to the rivaling yakuza gangs at war in Tokyo’s seedy underground. So, they implant memories in him in order to steer him to do their bidding, which goes about as well as these things ever do in these movies. A deeply fucked-up film in the way only an adaptation of a manga series directed by Takashi Miike could be, Ichi the Killer has been banned in several countries thanks to its graphic, well, everything. But here it is, now available on a family-friendly streaming platform beaming into millions of American homes, and for that we find ourselves positively giddy.
How to watch: Ichi the Killer is now streaming on Peacock.
15. The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Credit: Universal Pictures
Critics may have thought this Super Mario Bros. Movie wasn’t a winner, but it was one of the biggest box office successes in 2023. Plus, it’s the first movie based on a video game to gross over one billion dollars. Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic’s animated take on the classic Nintendo game about the lowly plumber Mario (Chris Pratt) and his brother Luigi (Charlie Day) is surely about to usher in a new big-budget age of video-game adaptations — just look at the news of a Legend of Zelda movie coming soon to a theater near you!
Whether it was sheer nostalgia or pent-up pandemic madness or just the fact that the movie is genuinely a lot of fun when it taps into the game’s classic vibe, The Super Mario Bros. Movie clearly struck a nerve with a moviegoing public looking for something bright and entertaining, all of which is offers up in spades.
The plot’s familiar to anyone who’s ever played any iteration of the game or possibly just lived in the world simultaneously alongside the games’ inescapable existence. Mario and Luigi get sucked through a pipe from their home in Brooklyn to the fantastical Mushroom Kingdom, where they have to work alongside Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Toad (Keegan Michael-Key) in order to stop the terrifying Bowser (Jack Black, hamming it up to outrageous heights) from destroying everything good and bright and decent. It’s purest, simplest escapism pitched straight at the 8-year-olds and the 8-year-olds inside of those of us a little older. And Mamma mia, does it stick the landing.
How to watch: The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now streaming on Peacock.
