# What is the best action movie of the 2000s?

> From arena-filling epics to sleek spy reboots and bone-crunching martial arts, the 2000s redefined what action cinema could look like. Which film tops the decade?

*By YPB Team · Published June 1, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-action-movie-of-the-2000s*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Gladiator**
   Ridley Scott's 2000 Oscar-winning Roman epic about a betrayed general who becomes a gladiator to avenge his family's murder.
2. **The Dark Knight**
   Christopher Nolan's 2008 operatic crime thriller in which Batman faces the anarchic menace of the Joker in a gripping moral battle for Gotham.
3. **Kill Bill: Volume 1**
   Quentin Tarantino's 2003 high-octane revenge saga following an assassin who wakes from a coma and hunts down her former colleagues.
4. **The Bourne Identity**
   Doug Liman's 2002 sleek and influential spy thriller about an amnesiac assassin piecing together his identity while evading his own agency.
5. **Casino Royale**
   Martin Campbell's 2006 gritty Bond reboot introducing Daniel Craig as a raw and emotionally vulnerable 007 on his first mission.
6. **Batman Begins**
   Christopher Nolan's 2005 grounded origin story that reinvented Batman as a psychologically complex hero driven by fear and vengeance.
7. **Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon**
   Ang Lee's 2000 visually breathtaking wuxia masterpiece weaving a stolen sword's secrets with a forbidden love story across ancient China.
8. **Collateral**
   Michael Mann's 2004 tense nocturnal thriller starring Tom Cruise as a silver-haired contract killer forcing a taxi driver to be his accomplice.
9. **The Departed**
   Martin Scorsese's 2006 Oscar-winning cat-and-mouse crime thriller about moles embedded in both the Boston mob and the state police.
10. **Iron Man**
   Jon Favreau's 2008 crowd-pleasing origin story that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Robert Downey Jr.'s magnetic Tony Stark.
11. **Kung Fu Hustle**
   Stephen Chow's 2004 wildly inventive Hong Kong action-comedy set in 1940s Shanghai, blending martial arts with slapstick and surrealism.
12. **Man on Fire**
   Tony Scott's 2004 visceral revenge thriller about a burned-out ex-CIA operative who wages a one-man war after his young charge is kidnapped.
13. **Taken**
   Pierre Morel's 2008 stripped-down thriller that turned Liam Neeson into an action icon as a former spy hunting his daughter's kidnappers.

Tags: movies, 2000s, action, classics