2025 has been a pretty solid year for action movies, with Heads of State, Nobody 2, Novocaine, Ballerina, Sinners, Superman, One Battle After Another, Predator: Killer of Killers, and Predator: Badlands all making a critical or commercial dent. Some were pretty big whiffs, e.g. Love Hurts, Fountain of Youth, and M3GAN 2.0, but the good outweighed the bad. This week alone gave us The Running Man on the big screen and Playdate, starring Kevin James and Alan Ritchson, on the small. Neither is a critical darling, but audience reception seems to be skewing positive. But what about the solid and enjoyable action movies that have flown under the radar? Those are the ones that follow.

Just missing the cut were Flight Risk, Ice Road: Vengeance, and Shadow Force. They either didn’t fall under the umbrella of greatness (or even very goodness) or were just popular enough to not qualify.

4) Red Sonja

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MJ Bassett’s Red Sonja, featuring excellent work by Matilda Lutz in the title role, escaped the audience’s attention even more than Conan the Barbarian, starring Jason Momoa, did back in 2011. But, like that movie, it’s good dumb sword and sorcery fun.

There’s nothing here you haven’t seen in similar films, and it can occasionally come across as cheesy as the movies that Your Highness (which, like Conan the Barbarian, came out in 2011) was parodying, but at the very least the 2025 rendition is infinitely better than the 1985 adaptation of the Marvel Comics character. It’s also further proof that Lutz, who was phenomenal in 2017’s Revenge, has what it takes to be a star.

3) Bad Man

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Starring American Pie‘s Seann William Scott (one of the best It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia guest stars), Bad Man is a comedy caper that pairs a quippy undercover agent with the local police to dismantle a meth-peddling crew with possible ties to white supremacy in a small Tennessee town. Unfortunately for the undercover agent, the bumbling local cops get in his way more often than not.

Scott continues to prove that he’s an underappreciated leading man, with a quick wit and likability that tends to be enough to carry a movie. But the real star of the show is Scott Pilgrim vs. the World‘s Johnny Simmons, whose performance as the cop who stumbles upon the meth operation is the winner of the film.

2) Guns Up

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While some might say Monster House is the one great movie Kevin Smith ever made, he’s recently excelled in smaller genre-blenders that have served to show off his range better than his Happy Madison vehicles. Most notably there’s 2020’s Becky, which had him play fully unlikable as a neo-Nazi willing to kill a kid to get a key.

But 2025 seems to be the year in which he’s selling himself as someone who can capably balance comedy and action. Playdate has its moments, and in that film he has some chemistry with Alan Ritchson, but it’s actually this John Wick-ian movie about a family man trying to get out of his life as a mob enforcer that’s the winner. He sells the film’s action sequences quite well just as he sells his character’s love for his family. However, while James is solid in the movie, it’s Christina Ricci who steals the show as his wife (who is just as capable of going violent as he is).

1) G20

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2025 was the year for “President as Action Hero” movies just as 2013 was the year of “Action Hero Saves the President” movies. On the former end we got both Heads of State and G20 while, on the latter, there was Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down.

And, just as White House Down was mostly forgotten while Olympus Has Fallen was remembered, G20 seems to have been forgotten more swiftly than Heads of State. It’s a shame, too, because while it’s not the best Die Hard-esque movie out there, Viola Davis is terrific as Army veteran turned US President Danielle Sutton and Antony Starr has a good time as the villainous Edward Rutledge.

Stream G20 on Prime Video.

What is your favorite underrated action movie of 2025? Was it here on this list? Let us know in the comments.