Although continuously snubbed by critics and festivals, action movies still retain their popularity among mainstream audiences in particular, while a number of them frequently cross towards the cult category. The golden age of these movies, which parallels the pick of Hong Kong cinema and particularly of companies like Shaw Brothers, Golden Harvest and Milkyway Image, is long since gone. However, excellent productions continue to be released every year, with the scepters having been passed on to the Asean countries, particularly after the immense success of “The Raid”, which essentially kick-started a whole trend. At the same time, China/Hong Kong and S. Korea continue to release blockbusters of the category, while Japan always has the anime/manga adaptations, which frequently prove quite successful.

In an effort to select some of the best action/martial arts movies of the decade (2011-2020), we came up with 40 we felt were the ones that...