The 10 Best Underrated Action Movies of All Time

We’ve compiled a list of our favorite & Best Underrated Action Movies from the past few decades. If you want to watch a good action-adventure movie but have seen all the usual ones a million times. Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Marvel movies, and The Mummy are all fun to watch again. You can watch them again and again. But sometimes you want to try something different. That’s when it helps to have some suggestions.

Why do people not like these movies? Most of the time, they came out when the box office wasn’t as busy or on the same weekend as a huge hit that took all the air out of the room. Some of them were just ahead of their time, while others were popular at first but have been forgotten over time.

10 Best Underrated Action Movies of All Time

No matter why, these movies often have A-list stars and/or are made by well-known directors. They may not have become classics like some of their contemporaries, but they’re still fun to watch if you want to sit back, relax, and have a good time for two hours.

Big Trouble in Little China has a loyal cult following, but it has never been fully accepted by the general public. This needs to be different. This adventure is led by John Carpenter and stars Kurt Russell. He plays Jack Burton, a tough-guy truck driver who gets involved in the search for his best friend’s girlfriend after she is taken by a bad guy named Lo Pan. He has a plan to live forever, but first he needs the woman to break an old curse.

Big Trouble in Little China was hard to sell because it’s hard to explain what it’s about. The story is full of action and adventure, but it is told in a tongue-in-cheek way that makes it funny. Action scenes are a strange mix of the usual gunplay and martial arts moves. Even a bit of science fiction is in the movie. In short, it’s a bunch of different movie “stuff.” That makes it a lot of fun to watch for people who aren’t afraid to try new things and want their action-adventure movies to be as weird as possible.

Willow was supposed to be one of the summer’s biggest hits in 1988. That didn’t happen. Even though Ron Howard directed it and George Lucas produced it, it only made $57 million in the United States. This was partly because it got bad reviews. Since then, adventure fans have taken another look at the movie. Willow is worth seeing because it has a cult following of people who really like it.

Warwick Davis does a great job as the main character, a farmer who is chosen to keep a baby safe from an evil queen. Val Kilmer plays a warrior who helps him with this mission and is also in the movie. Willow has some nice visual effects that weren’t made with CGI, some funny creatures, and some really creative action scenes. Even though it uses sword-and-sorcery tropes that have been around for a long time, Howard and Lucas try to give them new life. If you like this kind of fantasy, you should give the movie a chance, if only to see how creative it is.

When it came out in 1984, Romancing the Stone was a huge hit. But it hasn’t become a beloved classic like Ghostbusters, Gremlins, and The Karate Kid, which were all released the same year. This movie, which was directed by Robert Zemeckis, deserves a second look.

Michael Douglas plays a wisecracking bird hunter who helps Kathleen Turner look for a rare gem in the Colombian jungle. Everyone has heard the old story about two people who fight all the time even though it’s clear they’re falling in love.

This dynamic is rarely done as well as it is here. The chemistry between Douglas and Turner is great, the script is full of sharp dialogue, and the action scenes are thrilling. You even get Danny DeVito as a wacky antiquities smuggler, a role in which he is very funny.

The Mummy Returns was a big hit, just like its predecessor. Still, because it was a sequel, people had pretty high hopes for it. The first Mummy is still well-known and respected, but this one is often overlooked or forgotten.

Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz play Rick O’Connell, an archaeologist, and Evelyn, who is now his wife. This time, they try to save the world after Imhotep’s (Arnold Vosloo) dead body comes back to life. The Mummy Returns has more of the same fast-paced, nerve-wracking chaos as the first movie.

For example, there is an escape from a cave and a chase on a double-decker bus. There’s hardly any downtime because there’s always something going on. As a bonus, Dwayne Johnson plays the Scorpion King in his first movie role. From this first show, it was clear that Johnson had what it took to become the huge star he is now.

There have been many different movies about The Three Musketeers, but the one that Disney made in 1993 is the best. The movie takes Alexandre Dumas’s famous story in a lighthearted and fun way, and the chemistry between Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, and Oliver Platt as the title characters is a big part of why it works.

It follows d’Artagnan (Chris O’Donnell), who goes to Paris to help Athos, Porthos, and Aramis stop the evil Cardinal Richelieu (Tim Curry) from taking the crown.

You can see that the stars are having a lot of fun putting on costumes and acting like pirates. The fun they’re having makes you want to join in. As the bad guy, Curry does a great job of chewing the scenery, which is another plus for the movie. It’s true that this is a “light” version of The Three Musketeers, but that just means it’s good for younger viewers or anyone who just wants some easy-going fun.

In 1998, Martin Campbell, the director of GoldenEye, got together with a group of great actors for a bit of fun that took place in the past. The Mask of Zorro brought back to the big screen the legendary bandit Zorro. Anthony Hopkins plays Zorro, who is also known as Don Diego de la Vega.

He is teaching his young apprentice Alejandro Murrieta (Antonio Banderas) how to be his successor. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Don Diego’s beautiful daughter, who naturally catches Alejandro’s eye. The three of them work together to stop an old enemy from stealing a lot of gold.

The first time we heard about Zorro was in 1919. The basic idea of The Mask of Zorro is kept, and there are exciting sword fights and action scenes. Campbell also uses modern ways of making movies to make them more exciting. It’s also fun to see Hopkins, Banderas, and Zeta-Jones in an old-fashioned adventure. They show that the kind of characters that people loved in the past still have a lot to offer.

In Hidalgo, Viggo Mortensen plays Frank Hopkins, a pony express rider who also does tricks in a travelling sideshow. He has been asked to take part in the Ocean of Fire, a dangerous horse race through the Saudi desert that is 3,000 miles long. It would be too easy to say that the race is hard. It is too much for both Frank and his horse.

Scenes like the one where they are trying to find their way through a sandstorm are very exciting. Hidalgo gives you a good idea of how hard the journey is. On top of that, a rival has set traps for them, like pushing them into a pit where they have to fight tigers.

The fact that Omar Sharif is in the movie as the sheikh who invites Frank to take part makes it more fun to watch. Since he was in the classic movie Lawrence of Arabia, it’s clear that the veteran actor knows a thing or two about acting in the desert. When he comes into the picture, it all gets better.

The Epic adventure Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is based on the popular books by Patrick O’Brian. Russell Crowe plays Jack Aubrey, the captain of a British navy ship. As both a master and a commander, Crowe does a good job.

He and his partner, Dr. Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), are searching for a French ship along the coast of Brazil. Stopping it from getting where it’s going could help stop war from getting worse.

The movie is good on more than one level. It’s interesting to read about how people live on a huge ship. It is certainly not an easy way to live. Director Peter Weir also gives us some very tense scenes where the ships are fighting each other and cannonballs are flying, wood is breaking, crewmen are trying to stay alive, and so on.

Finally, there’s a compelling theme of leadership in the story, as Aubrey repeatedly has to make tough decisions that will gravely impact the lives of his crew. Master and Commander has both physical and mental thrills, thanks to Crowe’s good performance in the middle.

Mel Gibson took a big chance with Apocalypto. Using unknown Native American and Indigenous Mexican actors and having all of the dialogue spoken in an old language wasn’t exactly a recipe for success at the box office. Still, it made an impressive $50 million in the U.S., thanks to its interesting setting and lots of exciting action.

The story is pretty easy to follow. A Mayan kingdom is about to fall apart. Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a young hunter, is taken prisoner by the elite, who think they can stop a disaster by sacrificing people to the gods. He escapes, then undergoes a peril-filled journey to reunite with his family.

Apocalypto is very different from most adventure movies because both the setting and the characters are unusual. It also has a lot of violent and well-staged action scenes that happen almost nonstop. This is one of those movies where the hero faces one dangerous situation after another and you pretty much hold your breath the whole time.

Sahara is based on a popular book by Clive Cussler. Matthew McConaughey plays an adventurer with a cool name, Dirk Pitt, who is looking for a Civil War ship he thinks is buried somewhere in the African desert. Eva, who is played by Penelope Cruz, is a doctor for the World Health Organization who is trying to find the source of a disease that is spreading across Mali.

Since they’re going in the same direction, she hops a ride with Dirk. If you guessed that they fall in love, you’d be right. How could two beautiful people not fall in love on a trip like this?

The plot of Sahara is made to seem a little bit crazy on purpose. In one scene, Dirk windsurfs across the desert on an old airplane’s shell that he finds. People who like movies like National Treasure will enjoy this one because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The goal here isn’t realism, but fantasy. Dirk takes viewers on a wild adventure for two hours, and along the way there are laughs and a little romance.

I hope you like our favorite list of Best Underrated Action Movies of All Time. If you find this interesting, Kindly share your thoughts in the comments.