Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for action movies like Never Surrender:
Logan
Logan is a superhero movie that plays like a spaghetti western about aging and obligation. Hugh Jackman gives his best performance as a worn-down Wolverine forced to protect Laura, a young mutant on the run, alongside an ailing Professor X. Like Never Surrender’s grandfather, he is an old fighter who has to become a guardian, and James Mangold makes every bloody confrontation hurt.
A History of Violence
David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence starts with a quiet small-town diner owner and slowly peels his life apart. Viggo Mortensen plays Tom Stall, whose instinctive heroics during a robbery bring dangerous strangers to his family’s door, insisting he is someone else entirely. It is a lean, unsettling thriller about the violence a man carries with him, and how fast a home can stop feeling safe.
Train to Busan
Train to Busan is one of the great modern siege movies, it just happens to have zombies. Gong Yoo plays a distracted workaholic father who boards a high-speed train with his young daughter as an outbreak tears through South Korea. Yeon Sang-ho keeps the claustrophobic action relentless, but it is the desperate need to protect a child that gives the film its heart.
The Killer
John Woo’s The Killer is arguably his magnum opus, a heroic bloodshed classic that turns gunfights into operatic ballets. Chow Yun-fat stars as a hitman who accidentally blinds a singer during a job and takes one last contract to pay for her surgery, drawing the attention of a dogged cop. It is stylish, sentimental and endlessly influential on the Asian action cinema that followed.
A Better Tomorrow
A Better Tomorrow is where John Woo and Chow Yun-fat first found each other, and the result is exhilarating. Ti Lung plays a counterfeiter trying to go straight after prison while his younger brother, played by Leslie Cheung, has become a cop. It is a story of family, loyalty and redemption wrapped in some of the most influential gun battles ever filmed.
Ballerina
Ballerina is exactly what you would expect from a John Wick spin-off, and that is mostly a compliment. Ana de Armas plays Eve, an assassin trained by the Ruska Roma who goes looking for the cult that murdered her father. Len Wiseman’s film saves its best for the back half, when a snowy mountain village turns into a gauntlet of flamethrowers, grenades and close-quarters brawls.
The Amateur
The Amateur asks what happens when someone with no fighting skills is pushed into a revenge mission. Rami Malek plays a CIA cryptographer who blackmails his bosses into training him after his wife is killed in a terrorist attack, then sets out to hunt down the people responsible. It is a tolerable riff on the John Wick formula, powered by its underdog hook.
Is God Is
Is God Is is a thrilling revenge film from playwright Aleshea Harris, who adapts her own stage work for her directorial debut. Kara Young and Mallori Johnson play twin sisters who set off on a road trip to settle a violent family score at their mother’s request. It is darkly funny, mythic in scope and unafraid to get bloody.
Carry-On
Carry-On is a slick, contained Netflix thriller set during the Christmas rush at LAX. Taron Egerton plays a TSA agent blackmailed by a mysterious traveler, played by Jason Bateman, into letting a dangerous package through security, with the life of his pregnant girlfriend on the line. Jaume Collet-Serra keeps the cat-and-mouse game tight and the stakes deeply personal.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning may be Tom Cruise’s swan song as Ethan Hunt, and it plays like a victory lap. The story gets bogged down in exposition, but when Christopher McQuarrie lets the set pieces breathe, including a submarine sequence and a breathtaking biplane finale, it is a reminder of why this franchise set the bar for modern action.
Read our full review of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
READ MORE: Action Movies Like John Wick, Action Movies Like Nobody
