15 Best Action Movies on Prime Video Right Now (September 2026): ‘Masters of the Universe’ and More

Some heroes are born, while others become one when the time calls for one. In He-Man’s (Nicholas Galitzine) case, it’s both. After hiding out on Earth for 15 years, a depowered Prince Adam is ready to reclaim his destiny when he finds his Sword of Power at an Oklahoma comic store. But once he touches it, he sets off a chain of events that causes him to return to his homeworld of Eternia to face off against his archenemy, Skeletor (Jared Leto). Yet even with a buff bod and superpowered friends like Teela (Camila Mendes), is He-Man ready to fight the forces of evil and save the kingdom that was once his to rule?

A box office dud when it was released in theaters this past summer, Masters of the Universe later found a more appreciative audience on streaming. It’s deserved, as the action-adventure is delightfully silly and fully embraces its leather-harness-clad hero. Director Travis Knight fills the screen with colorful characters and evocative fantasy landscapes that really transport you into another world. Hollywood’s forgotten how to make fun action films like Masters of the Universe, but like Bonnie Tyler once sang, we all need a hero, and He-Man fits the bill perfectly.

Before Alan Ritchson became a streaming star by playing him, Jack Reacher was played by Tom Cruise, who doesn’t exactly fit the “bulked-up greyhound” description that author Lee Child sketched in his 30 Reacher novels. While miscast, Cruise is at his action-hero best as the titular investigator in Jack Reacher. Summoned to Pittsburgh by an old friend, James Barr (Joseph Sikora), Jack quickly realizes this isn’t any ordinary reunion. Barr has been accused of orchestrating a series of sniper killings that have left five people dead. Barr swears he’s innocent, but only Reacher believes him. 

Audiences are used to seeing Cruise performing death-defying stunts in the Mission: Impossible franchise, so it’s refreshing to see him in a relatively grounded action flick that relies more on story and one-on-one fistfights than elaborate set pieces. Reacher’s story involves the usual shadowy conspiracies and corrupt authorities, but it springs a few surprises, like casting idiosyncratic film director Werner Herzog as a Soviet crime kingpin. 

Charlie Heller (Rami Malek) is a regular guy with an extraordinary job – he’s a cryptologist for the CIA. He’s not a man of action, but when his beloved wife, Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), is killed in a terrorist attack, he wants revenge. He’s intent on finding each of her four killers and eliminating them one by one, but first, he’ll have to train himself to become a professional assassin. Charlie is an expert at everything he does, but does he have what it takes to become a cold-blooded killer?

The Amateur’s aims are modest – it wants to be a more realistic John Wick, and it more or less succeeds. Malek is more known for his dramatic work in Bohemian Rhapsody and Oppenheimer, so it’s believable that he plays a brainiac who wants to acquire the skills of a hitman to get through his grief. Costars Laurence Fishburne and Jon Bernthal provide the traditional testosterone that’s associated with the genre, which adds to The Amateur‘s legitimacy as an action film worth checking out.

The Running Man is a new take on the Stephen King story that was previously adapted in 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead. For the reboot, director Edgar Wright cast Glen Powell as Ben Richards, a desperate father who finds himself unwillingly drawn into The Running Man, a lethal reality competition show hosted by Bobby T. (Colman Domingo).

This is Ben’s only hope of providing for his daughter, but it paints a target on his back. To win the billion-dollar prize, Ben has to survive a month on the run from the show’s elite hunters as well as the general public. And he has to keep filming himself, or else he’ll lose all chance of collecting his reward. As the killers close in, Ben has to wonder who he can trust and if he’ll ever see his child again.

The Running Man will stream on Prime Video on April 17.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is the grand finale of the films that Tom Cruise has headlined since 1996. For the sake of the world, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) knows he has to destroy the AI being known as The Entity. This quest has already cost the life of someone close to Ethan, and they won’t be The Entity’s last victim.

To bring down The Entity, Ethan and his old friend, Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), put together a new IMF team featuring Grace (Hayley Atwell), Theo Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) and Paris (Pom Klementieff). The odds are stacked against them, but that’s never stopped the Impossible Mission Force before.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is streaming on Prime Video.

John Carpenter‘s Escape From New York was set in the then-future year of 1997, when New York was converted into a prison colony for all of America’s undesirables and criminals. Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) was already on his way to New York as an inmate when word came that President John Harker (Donald Pleasence) was captured and held hostage in the city.

In exchange for a pardon, Snake agrees to enter the city on behalf of the government and return with the President. And if Snake can’t pull off this impossible rescue in under a day, then there’s an implant in his body that will make sure he doesn’t see another sunrise.

Escape From New York is streaming on Prime Video.

Video game adaptations are box office gold now, and one of the movies that helped establish the commercial viability of the genre was 2022’s Uncharted. Based on the wildly popular PlayStation franchise of the same name, Uncharted stars Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s Tom Holland as Nathan Drake, an orphan who is recruited by treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) with the promise of a potential fortune and a lead in tracking down Nate’s missing brother, Sam (Rudy Pankow).

They have competition, though. Ruthless millionaire Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas) wants to locate the buried treasure first, and he has the resources, not to mention a team of mercenaries, to do it. Outmatched and with precious few resources, Nate and Sully will need a lot of luck to find the loot first and somehow stay alive to enjoy it.

The Wrecking Crew brings together two modern action icons, Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa, and puts them through the wringer. The story revolves around half-brothers James Hale (Bautista) and Jonny Hale (Momoa), neither of whom has spoken to the other for years.

It takes the murder of their father, Walter Hale (Brian L. Keaulana), to get Jonny and James in the same room again. As they separately investigate Walter’s murder, his sons find a trail of corruption leading to developer Marcus Robichaux (Claes Bang) and even the Governor of Hawaii, Peter Mahoe (Temuera Morrison). Now, the brothers need to settle their differences and stay alive long enough to bring down their mutual enemies.

The Wrecking Crew is streaming on Prime Video.

Reacher‘s Alan Ritchson makes the leap to action comedy in Playdate. Kevin James also stars in the film as Brian Jennings, a recently laid-off man who struggles to connect with his son, Lucas (Benjamin Pajak). Ritchson plays Jeff Eamon, a former soldier who also has a son, CJ (Banks Pierce).

Jeff convinces Brian that their two sons could become good friends and organizes a playdate on the spot. Unfortunately for the group, Jeff’s enemies have tracked him down, and he’s not the mild-mannered father he’d like to pretend to be. If either dad wants to survive their ordeal, the Jennings family can’t leave the Eamons behind.

Playdate is streaming on Prime Video.

In Novocaine, The Boys star Jack Quaid gets his turn as a superhero — sort of. He plays Nate, a man born with a rare condition that prevents him from feeling any pain. When he meets the girl of his dreams, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), only to witness her being taken hostage in a bank robbery, he decides to use his juggernaut-esque ability to push through injuries to focus on getting her back.

Quaid is charming and funny as ever in this action comedy, which finds increasingly unhinged ways to put its protagonist in painful situations. A rocking soundtrack keeps the adrenaline pumping throughout the bloody, rollicking fun and the sweet chemistry between Sherry and Nate will make you root for the unlikely hero to get the girl.

Novicane is streaming on Prime Video.

A recent addition to Amazon, A Working Man is vintage Jason Statham butt-kicking, written by Sylvester Stallone and Training Day director David Ayer. This action thriller is based on the novel Levon’s Trade by Chuck Dixon and features Michael Peña and David Harbour alongside Statham.

Statham plays Levon Cade, a retired Royal Marines Colour Sergeant working as a construction foreman alongside his friend and boss Joe Garcia (Peña). When Joe’s daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped, Levon will take down any criminal in his path to rescue the girl who has become like a daughter to him. Full of shocking reveals and brutal fight sequences, A Working Man is exactly what you’d expect — and what you’d want — from Ayer, Stallone and Statham.

A Working Man is streaming on Prime Video.

In a way, Memory is the closest Liam Neeson has ever come to playing James Bond — director Martin Campbell is best known for 007 films like Casino Royale and GoldenEye, and he brings his spy expertise to this film. Neeson plays seasoned hitman Alex Lewis, who grapples with a moral dilemma when he’s assigned to eliminate a young girl.

As Lewis decides to spare her, he finds himself on the run not just from his employers but also from the FBI. This brings a tense interplay of cat-and-mouse dynamics, with Alex using his skills to evade capture while his own deteriorating memory adds a layer of personal conflict. 

Memory is a slick, fast-paced story that blends action, suspense and psychological storytelling.

Memory is streaming on Prime Video.

This new original movie from Prime stars Idris Elba as the UK Prime Minister and John Cena as the President of the United States. When Air Force One is attacked, the two very different politicians must work together to save themselves — and their nations. Priyanka Chopra Jonas returns to her Quantico action star roots as an MI6 agent tasked with keeping the heads of state alive, while The Boys’ Jack Quaid is adorably nerdy as a CIA officer who’s a big fan of the president from his days as an action movie star.

The movie combines high stakes and excellent performances with high-octane humor and great special effects, making it a solid entry into Amazon Prime Video’s original film collection.

Heads of State is streaming on Prime Video.

A good improv performer knows that saying “Yes, and…” is the key to a great scene. But a group of improvisers takes it a little too far when they’re recruited by police to participate in a real-life sting operation. Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard), Marlon (Orlando Bloom) and Hugh (Nick Mohammed of Ted Lasso) get in over their heads as they infiltrate a criminal syndicate and get mistaken for criminals themselves.

The concept of the movie is somehow both outrageous and believable. On the one hand, it does make a certain amount of sense for trained actors to go undercover instead of cops. On the other hand, why on earth would cops put civilians in that situation?

Our advice? Don’t overthink it. Deep Cover is a fun ride with great action sequences and surprising twists. The cast is charming and the movie lives up to the uniqueness of the premise.

Deep Cover is streaming on Prime Video.

Bruce Willis‘ 1988 action movie (which also doubles as a Christmas movie, for when that season comes around) is one of his most beloved, and with good reason. Directed by John McTiernan and based on a novel by Roderick Thorp, the film follows NYPD detective John McClane (Willis), who becomes embroiled in a terrorist takeover of Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles during a Christmas party. As the terrorists, led by the charismatic and ruthless Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), take hostages and orchestrate their plan, McClane uses his wit, tenacity, and cunning to thwart their efforts single-handedly.

It’s one (relatively) ordinary man against a powerful terrorist organization in this groundbreaking thriller, and McClane takes plenty of hits as he attempts to save the civilians. But his resilience and determination to beat the odds are what make him such an exciting protagonist. Die Hard blends suspense, comedy (“Welcome to the party, pal”) and explosive action. Willis performed many of his own stunts in this thrilling movie, so if you’re a fan of the actor, don’t miss him in the role he’s still best remembered for.

Die Hard is streaming on Prime Video.