Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for action movies like Matchbox the Movie:
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
I’m glad Gore Verbinski is making original, strange studio-adjacent swings again, and Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die has a premise I can easily imagine pitching to friends. I just wish the film trusted that premise enough to stay lean, mean, and specific. As-is, it plays like a decade of ideas crammed into one night at a diner, which is admirable in ambition and frustrating in execution.
Mayday
In one of the more stunning turn of events in 2026, I had a great time with Mayday. A Ryan Reynolds-led straight-to-streaming action movie on Apple TV+ is basically the opposite of a sales pitch for me, with every element of that sentence somehow getting worse the more I think about it. The only thing less noteworthy than Reynolds’ output this side of Mississippi Grind (absent Deadpool) has been the track record of straight-to-streaming action movies, and Apple TV+’s action slate in particular.
Carry-On
Jaume Collet-Serra wouldn’t seem like the next director to add to that list, given his recent track record with disappointing Dwayne Johnson vehicles like Jungle Cruise and Black Adam. However, his holiday thriller Carry-On defies expectations, moving quickly and building enough tension to make it a surprisingly worthwhile entry in the Netflix action canon.
The Naked Gun
The Naked Gun is the kind of spoof that lives or dies on joke density, and on that metric Akiva Schaffer mostly delivers. The film fires off multiple gags a minute, often piling one topper on another until you miss a punchline because you are still laughing at the last. Schaffer has done this before with Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers, and here he teams with writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, with Seth MacFarlane producing. You can feel that lineage in the barrage of cutaway bits and Family Guy style throwaway one liners. In pure joke-per-minute terms, the movie works.
Heads of State
There’s no shortage of international action movies each year, and Heads of State barely meets the bar to even be called one. It’s the kind of movie you might click on out of curiosity, watch for 20 minutes, and then forget existed by the next morning. For a film trying to make world leaders into action stars, it can’t even lead itself.
How to Train Your Dragon
How to Train Your Dragon is the latest in a long line of live-action remakes that feel more like box office insurance policies than artistic endeavors. Directed by Dean DeBlois, who also helmed the original animated trilogy, this version revisits the well-loved 2010 DreamWorks film, but with real actors, heavier visual effects, and—unfortunately—the same core issue plaguing nearly all these remakes: a lack of purpose beyond profit.
Novocaine
Novocaine works best as an entertaining genre exercise. It’s competently made, sometimes clever, and visually sharp. But it never quite reaches the heights it’s aiming for. It doesn’t reimagine the action-comedy or elevate its characters beyond the surface. Still, it’s a watchable 90 minutes, and for fans of Jack Quaid or high-concept thrillers with a soft edge, it’s worth a casual look.
A Working Man
Jason Statham continues his relentless streak of mid-tier action vehicles with A Working Man, a film that feels as workmanlike as its title suggests. Following his roles in Meg 2: The Trench and The Beekeeper, Statham trades giant sea monsters and bee-themed vengeance for a more grounded but also more generic revenge setup. He plays Levon Cade, an ex-Royal Marine Commando turned construction foreman in Chicago, in a film that’s essentially a stripped-down Taken clone without much flavor or personality to distinguish itself.
The Gorge
The Gorge, Scott Derrickson’s latest film for Apple TV+, is a frustratingly uneven blend of action, sci-fi, and romance that starts with promise but ultimately succumbs to convention. Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy do their best to elevate the material, and their on-screen chemistry carries the movie’s far more compelling first half, but by the time the action-heavy second half kicks in, The Gorge loses much of what made it intriguing to begin with.
Back in Action
Back in Action is another addition to the increasingly crowded realm of streaming-exclusive action-comedies, but unfortunately, it does little to distinguish itself from its predecessors like Ghosted, Lift, The Gray Man, and Wolfs. Falling squarely into the Netflix tradition of star-studded, formulaic blockbusters, this film feels more like an obligation to content quotas than a labor of creative passion. Despite the charm of its leads, Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx, the movie struggles under the weight of a generic plot, uninspired action sequences, and a script that rarely rises above mediocrity.
READ MORE: Movies Like Heads of State, Movies Like Back in Action
