Every new month results in some titles leaving streamers and just as many coming in to make it their new (likely temporary) home. And, in September, the major streamers, including Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, HBO Max and the like, are getting a fresh crop of fantastic action movie catalogue classics. Now, we’re going to show you the best of the best of September action-packed newcomers, at least one for each of the aforementioned services. So, if you’re already a subscriber, get ready to press play. If you’re not and want to check out one of the following classics or minor classics, we’ve included which streamer they’re coming to.
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All of these movies hit their respective new streamer on September 1st. And, without further ado, let’s get started.
7) Edge of Tomorrow — Netflix
A month after finding new fans on Peacock, Edge of Tomorrow is making the move over the Netflix. This is one of the better Tom Cruise movies, and one that shows just how well he can play against type (he also did that in Tropic Thunder but suffice to say Les Grossman is a very different character from cowardly public affairs officer turned frontline soldier Major William Cage).
Edge of Tomorrow is basically The Tomorrow War if The Tomorrow War had better pacing and a far superior script. But, as great as the story (based on the Japanese light novel All You Need Is Kill), Cruise, and the action sequences are, this is Emily Blunt’s movie, and she shows she can excel in combat sequences just as well as she can nail comedy and heartfelt dramatic monologues (or, as seen in Oppenheimer, looks of disappointment that make you blood ice up). Edge of Tomorrow slightly underperformed at the box office back in 2014, but anyone who saw it in theaters at the time knew they were watching something that would find a second life at some point in time.
6) The Running Man — Netflix
While Glen Powell fans wait for the remake (hitting theaters on November 14th) why not check out the original The Running Man? Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Ben Richards, a police officer who does the right thing in the far, far distant dystopic future of 2017 (wait…) and is incarcerated for it. He breaks out and learns that, after doing so, the news is labeling him a murderous, bloodthirsty criminal. This is something believed by Amber Mendez, who Richards discovers living in his brother’s apartment. She turns him in, but he’s given a chance to achieve glory. Specifically, he and his brawn can compete in Damon Killian’s combat-focused show The Running Man.
While The Running Man strays from its Stephen King source material, it’s undeniably a fun Schwarzenegger movie. He’s fully in his element here, playing a good man who has to fight his way out of a bad situation and shine a light on who society’s true criminal is. Speaking of that contemptable individual, game-show host Richard Dawson is fantastic as Killian, a man who screws people over as often as he draws breath.
5) 3:10 to Yuma (2007) — Peacock
Before he was giving Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine a Western of his own in Logan, James Mangold was directing this more straightforward Western remake. When it comes to aughts Westerns, there are few as solid, visually stunning, and well-acted as 3:10 to Yuma. It’s one of those rare remakes that outshines the original (which, like this film, was based on the short story by Get Shorty and Out of Sight‘s Elmore Leonard).
Christian Bale plays poor rancher Dan Evans, who is having a hard time paying back a banker considering his time in the service cost him his leg. He gets an opportunity in joining a railroad-hired party to escort outlaw leader Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to the, well, 3:10 to Yuma. It’s not going to be easy, though, as Wade’s crew are (mostly) a fiercely loyal bunch who will stop at nothing to get their boss back. However, as things are in the wild West, loyalties have a way of shifting.
4) Bad Boys — Peacock
Kicking off a franchise that continues to this day (including a long gap between the second and third installments), Michael Bay’s Bad Boys made for a directorial debut that shows off his strengths without displaying too many of his oft-criticized weaknesses. The narrative is tight, the action is exciting, and the chemistry between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is the stuff of which film series are born.
The narrative follows Lawrence’s Marcus Burnett and Smith’s Mike Lowrey, two Miami PD narcotics detectives whose recent bust of $100 million worth of Mafia heroin is stolen from their station’s vault. Lowrey asks a former girlfriend to find out who has recently become very rich. In doing so, she and her friend, Julie Mott, get hired as escorts for a crooked former cop. But the evening takes a murderous turn, and only Julie is left alive. Now, Burnett and Lowrey have a lead, but they have someone to protect, as well.
3) Sicario — Peacock
Even if the sequel wasn’t as solid, it was still the first major display of Isabela Merced’s massive talent. She has expressed interest in returning for a third film in the past, and should be taken up on that. But, again, even with Merced’s acting, Day of the Soldado is no Sicario.
While Sicario does have some intense action sequences with pulsating music fueling them, it is first and foremost a thinker of a movie. We follow Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer, an FBI special agent with a surplus of passion for her project and both eyes firmly set on upward mobility. However, in time, she learns just what it takes to move up the ladder when it comes to the FBI’s war on drugs. Like her, we come to wonder whether the two sides of the fight are all that different after all. This question is posed in multiple ways, but none more emphatically than via the character of Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro). The great del Toro has turned in almost exclusively phenomenal performances throughout his career, but there’s an argument to be made that this is his strongest work, with a mountain of pain often conveyed without a single uttered syllable. Then, once we arrive at the tensest dinner scene in the history of 2010s cinema, we start to wonder if he’s more compelling than the film’s protagonist.
2) A Walk Among the Tombstones — Peacock
If any post-Taken Liam Neeson action movie needs a sequel, it’s A Walk Among the Tombstones. It’s a little more subdued than stuff like Non-Stop, but it’s equally exciting, nonetheless.
Based on the Lawrence Block novel of the same name (which was the tenth installment of a series), we follow Neeson’s former NYPD Detective Matt Scudder, who has recently sobered up after being at the bottom of a bottle. Now, he’s a PI, and he takes on a new case: track down and rescue the kidnapped wife of a wealthy drug trafficker. This case may take a larger toll on Scudder than the entirety of his time in the NYPD, but that’s only if he survives it. Neeson turns in an excellent performance here, clearly recognizing this as better material than the typical Blacklights of this phase of his career (which, in the wake of The Naked Gun‘s success, may now be over).
1) Face/Off — Paramount+
One of three iconic Nicolas Cage action movies to be released within a two-year span—the other two being The Rock and Con Air—Face/Off is the apex of what John Woo meets Hollywood can be. The plot is goofy, the performances are even goofier (when Cage then John Travolta are playing Castor Troy, that is), doves are flying, golden guns are being used, it’s all fantastic in both quality and content.
Watching Cage and Travolta each get to play two distinctly different roles is a ton of fun. And, while it’s hard to say which of the two is better in the film, the edge goes to Cage, because while the first 20 minutes or so really allow him to let loose, the majority of the film has him be the one who has to sell the struggle of a cop who looks in the mirror and sees the man who killed his son. But the two leads aren’t the only thing about the movie that makes it such a ’90s classic. It took what was inherently a ridiculous concept and made it something that was enthralling, believable to an extent, and the type of project that makes you really feel for (some of) the characters. And, while this movie covers a ton of genre bases, it is first and foremost a slam-bang action flick, with fantastic gunfight choreography that only Woo can do.
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