Top 10 Best Movies Like John Wick

Call it 'John Wick in Berlin', and that's no coincidence: director David Leitch was involved in both films. Charlize Theron is frighteningly good as Lorraine Broughton, a spy who literally fights her way through the Cold War. The highlight is the famous stairwell fight, filmed in one (seemingly) continuous shot. You feel every punch, every bruise and the sheer exhaustion of the character.

If you thought John Wick was intense, you haven't seen this Indonesian wrecking ball. A SWAT team gets trapped in an apartment building full of criminals and must fight its way up, and back down. The story fits on a napkin, but the action is unmatched. The pencak silat fighting style is fast, brutal and lethally efficient. Ninety minutes of pure adrenaline without a breather.

Though set in a post-apocalyptic desert rather than a neon-lit city, it shares the same philosophy: the action is the story. George Miller essentially serves up a two-hour chase that looks like a moving painting. The practical effects are stunning; real cars fly through the air here, not pixels. Tom Hardy is the perfect silent hero, but Charlize Theron steals the show as Furiosa.

Written by the creator of John Wick, but with a brilliant twist: the hero is Bob Odenkirk, best known as slick lawyer Saul Goodman. He plays a boring family man who snaps after a break-in and picks up his old life as an 'auditor'. The genius is in the messiness: where John Wick is a ballet dancer, this character is rusty. He takes hits, bleeds and stumbles, making the action painfully realistic and funny. The bus fight is already a classic.

Forget the gadgets and invisible cars; this was the reboot that made Bond human. Daniel Craig plays a 007 who is still rough around the edges, makes mistakes and has split knuckles after a fight. The opening parkour chase set the tone immediately: physical, sweaty and dangerous. Like Wick, you feel the hero is vulnerable, which makes the tension far greater than in the old films.

Before John Wick, Jason Bourne changed the action landscape. Matt Damon plays a man without memory who discovers he's a lethal weapon. The film introduced a raw, fast editing style that was copied for years, and its focus on realism and improvisation (taking someone out with a ballpoint pen) was groundbreaking. Like Wick, Bourne just wants to be left alone but is too good at his job to escape it.

Where John Wick is a ballet of bullets, this is a musical of car chases. Edgar Wright edited the entire film to the rhythm of the soundtrack: every punch, shot and screeching tire lands exactly on the beat. The action may be less bloody, but the precision and style are undeniable, proving action choreography can be as artistic as a dance performance.

Viggo Mortensen plays a mild-mannered diner owner who performs an act of heroism, after which his dark past catches up with him. It's slower than Wick, but the bursts of violence are all the more shocking. David Cronenberg focuses on the impact of violence on a family, filming the action not as 'cool' but short, hard and ugly.

Denzel Washington is Robert McCall, a man who spends his days at a hardware store and his nights restoring balance for the helpless. Like Wick, he's a retired specialist you really shouldn't disturb. The fun is in his methodical approach: he times his fights, analyzes his surroundings and uses anything at hand, including garden tools. Denzel brings a delicious, calm menace.

Perhaps the darkest film on this list. Although Emily Blunt plays the lead, it's Benicio del Toro's Alejandro who will appeal to John Wick fans: the silent, ruthless force in the background of the drug war. The tension is unbearable, especially during the border crossing scene. It's less 'non-stop action' and more 'non-stop dread', but when the violence erupts, it's terrifyingly efficient.