The 7 Best Martial Arts Movies Released Since 2020, Ranked

Image via A24 Published Oct 18, 2026, 12:41 PM EDT Sign in to your Collider account I have watched perfectly choreographed fights that I cannot remember a single thing about. Beautiful kicks, elaborate camera movements, somebody getting thrown through an expensive-looking window. Five minutes later, nothing. Meanwhile, I can remember the exact expression on a character's face before a fight from a movie I watched years ago. I've started to suspect that my favorite martial arts sequences are actually acting scenes which teach you something about the character instead. That’s why Bruce Lee remains my favorite. All doors closed and enemies in the arena knocked down? Bruce Lee would sit down peacefully because there’s nothing to be done at the moment, so save your energy. And there is something wonderful about watching filmmakers who understand that distinction. These are the six best martial arts movies released since 2020. 7 'Kill' (2023) Image via AA Films There is something wonderfully audacious about setting practically an entire action movie on a moving train and then making that train feel increasingly smaller. Kill follows Indian Army commando Amrit (Lakshya), who boards a train with his fellow soldier Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan) to reunite with Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), the woman he loves. When a large gang of armed thieves attacks the passengers, Amrit intervenes, bringing himself into direct conflict with the vicious Fani (Raghav Juyal). What begins as a desperate attempt to protect innocent people eventually becomes something far more personal. The moment the film's title finally appears is when you realize director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat has been holding back. Amrit's fighting undergoes a terrifying transformation, with the narrow corridors and cramped compartments becoming instruments of destruction. Lakshya is astonishingly convincing throughout, but Juyal deserves enormous credit for giving the violence an antagonist who remains frighteningly unpredictable. Their conflict develops such personal bitterness that every subsequent confrontation becomes harder to endure. I particularly admire how relentlessly the film exploits its setting. There is nowhere comfortable to retreat, and the exhaustion becomes impossible to ignore. 6 'The Paper Tigers' (2020) Image via Well Go USA Entertainment The Paper Tigers has one of my favorite premises for a martial arts comedy because its protagonists must somehow recover abilities that have been neglected for decades while confronting the people they have become. Danny (Alain Uy), Hing (Ron Yuan), and Jim (Mykel Shannon Jenkins) were once inseparable kung fu prodigies who trained under the same beloved master. Twenty-five years later, their friendship has deteriorated, their bodies have aged, and the martial arts barely feature in their everyday lives. Then their former teacher dies under suspicious circumstances, forcing the three men to reunite and investigate what happened. Watching the former champions struggle against younger fighters is hilarious, particularly when enthusiasm considerably exceeds physical capability. Eventually, however, the comedy reveals genuine regret. Danny has responsibilities as a father, Hing and Jim have their own disappointments, and their master's death has exposed how thoroughly they abandoned something they once treasured. The climactic confrontation becomes unexpectedly satisfying because Danny finally remembers that being a martial artist involves considerably more than possessing extraordinary physical abilities. 5 'Monkey Man' (2024) Image via Universal Pictures The first thing Dev Patel does in Monkey Man is get beaten up. His character, known as Kid, earns money fighting in an underground club while wearing a monkey mask, deliberately absorbing punishment as he prepares to infiltrate the criminal establishment responsible for destroying his childhood. His ultimate targets are corrupt police officer Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher) and the influential spiritual leader Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande). Kid intends to avenge his mother's murder, although his initial attempt reveals how woefully unprepared he is for the people protecting his enemies. Patel also directed the film, and I love his willingness to make his own character look genuinely desperate. That disastrous first attempt leaves Kid needing recovery and further training, eventually finding refuge among a hijra community that helps him rebuild. Their involvement gives his revenge a wider emotional purpose, and the subsequent fighting becomes considerably more controlled. Then comes that outrageous elevator encounter involving a knife and some exceptionally inventive improvisation. Patel throws himself into the action with extraordinary commitment, frequently looking physically devastated. His determination to make every confrontation hurt is precisely what separates this from a routine revenge spectacle. Collider Exclusive · Action Franchise Quiz What Action Series Would You Thrive In? Wick · Fast · Mission · Die Hard Four franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the assassin with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to die. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive. 🐕Wick 🏁Fast 🧨Mission 🎄Die Hard FIND YOUR FRANCHISE → 01 How does a room know you've walked into it? Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive. ASomeone recognises me, and the temperature in the room drops without a single word being said. BLoudly and warmly. I arrive with my people, and we're already laughing about something. CI'm the one who told everybody where to stand. I walked this room twice before anyone else arrived. DBy accident. I wasn't supposed to be here, and now I'm the only one who can do anything about it. NEXT QUESTION → 02 It turns physical. What does your fighting actually look like? Choreography is character. Yours says something about you. AEconomical and devastating. Trained technique, no wasted motion, finished before most people notice it started. BLoud, heavy and weirdly joyful. I'm not elegant, I hit like a truck, and I always have backup. CTo plan, until the plan breaks. Then I improvise at full sprint and refuse to stop moving. DBadly, honestly, and with a lot of swearing. I take more damage than I deal and I still don't go down. NEXT QUESTION → 03 Who is standing beside you when it starts? Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone. ANobody. I have contacts, favours and people who owe me, but when it begins I work alone. BEveryone. My people are the entire point, and I'd trade the whole mission for any one of them. CA small hand-picked team I trust completely, and I'd still take the worst part of the job myself. DA voice on the other end of a radio and a building full of people who don't know I exist. NEXT QUESTION → 04 It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright? Act two exists to find out what you're actually made of. AFocus, commitment and sheer will. Grief is fuel if you point it in the right direction. BThe people counting on me. I don't appear to have a limit when it's family on the line. CRefusing to accept the odds. Somebody has to do the impossible part, and it's going to be me. DSpite, mostly. And a growing sense that these people picked the wrong building. NEXT QUESTION → 05 There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how? No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours. AA black muscle car I am unreasonably attached to, and I will dismantle an entire empire over it. BSomething impossibly modified, at impossible speed, off an impossible ramp. Physics is a suggestion. CA motorbike at full throttle through a city I memorised last night. And then off a cliff. DA borrowed car, badly, while somebody in the passenger seat politely asks me to slow down. NEXT QUESTION → 06 How do you feel about the people giving the orders? There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one. AThere are rules and I respect them absolutely, right up until somebody breaks one against me. BI don't take orders. I take care of people, and everything else tends to sort itself out. CI serve the mission, not the memo. If my people are in danger, the orders come second. DThey're in a van outside telling me what I'm doing wrong while I'm the one bleeding on broken glass. NEXT QUESTION → 07 Underneath all of it, what are you actually doing this for? The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay. ASomething was taken from me that can't be replaced, and I've been settling that account ever since. BBelonging. I built a family out of people who had nowhere else, and I'll defend it with everything. CThe conviction that if I stop, people die. I don't know how to hand that to anyone else. DI just wanted to get through the holidays with my family. Everything after that was self-defence. NEXT QUESTION → 08 When the credits roll, what do people say about you? Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching. AThat I was a myth people warned each other about in whispers, and that they were right to. BThat I never left anyone behind, the door was always open, and there was always a place at the table. CThat I did the impossible part myself, every single time, and never asked anyone to risk it for me. DThat I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, who turned out to be very hard to kill. REVEAL MY FRANCHISE → Casting Has Been Completed Your Franchise Is…Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it. John WickYou are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start. The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him. You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it. Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise. People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work. Fast & FuriousYou understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them. This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to. You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason. You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics. The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot. Mission: ImpossibleYou over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk. This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left. You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error. You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door. Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person. Die HardYou are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters. Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned, bleeding, and extremely funny about it. You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable. You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway. You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 4 'The Shadow Strays' (2024) Image via Frontier Pictures Seventeen-year-old assassin 13 (Aurora Ribero) has been conditioned to kill without hesitation. When a mission goes wrong, her organization suspends her and sends her to Jakarta, where she befriends Monji (Ali Fikry), a young boy whose mother dies under suspicious circumstances. His subsequent disappearance sends 13 into a criminal underworld populated by traffickers, corrupt police officers, and powerful political figures. Rescuing him will require betraying the organization that trained her, including her formidable mentor Umbra (Hana Malasan). I would recommend The Shadow Strays to practically anybody who appreciates extraordinarily aggressive action choreography. It’s directed by Timo Tjahjanto and the film unleashes an astonishing collection of confrontations, with 13 demonstrating increasingly creative methods of dismantling entire groups of armed opponents. But the relationship with Umbra gives the eventual violence its most interesting dimension. This woman trained 13, protected her, and helped turn her into a weapon. Now her student has developed precisely the emotional independence their organization wanted to prevent. Their eventual confrontation is spectacular, although the hesitation between attacks says considerably more about their relationship than the weapons ever could. 3 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' (2022) Image via A24 Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is drowning in tax problems, family responsibilities, and the exhausting consequences of a life that looks nothing like the one she once imagined. Then she discovers that alternate universes exist and that versions of herself possess extraordinary abilities she can temporarily access. Everything Everywhere All at Once sends Evelyn across increasingly ridiculous realities while an immensely powerful threat jeopardizes existence itself. Unfortunately, the person at the center of that threat is connected to the relationship Evelyn has been neglecting most painfully. I could recommend this movie based entirely on Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) demolishing security guards with his fanny pack. Or the wonderfully ridiculous IRS fight involving an extremely unfortunate trophy. Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert clearly have tremendous affection for classic Hong Kong action choreography, and Yeoh makes their most outrageous ideas look completely natural. Yet the scene I love most is Waymond explaining that kindness is how he fights. Suddenly, all those spectacular confrontations acquire another dimension. Evelyn has spent the movie borrowing other people's abilities, desperately searching for some version of herself who made better decisions. The person who can actually help her has been standing beside her all along. 2 'Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In' (2024) Image via Media Asia Films I would happily spend another entire movie wandering around this version of Kowloon Walled City. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In follows Chan Lok-kwan (Raymond Lam), a desperate young refugee who escapes a criminal gang and seeks shelter inside the notorious settlement. There, he encounters Cyclone (Louis Koo), a powerful but surprisingly compassionate local leader. What Chan discovers is an entire community operating according to its own rules, offering him friendship and something resembling a home before a violent struggle threatens everything. The sense of place is magnificent. Director Soi Cheang fills the narrow corridors with extraordinary physical confrontations while allowing enough ordinary life to make the settlement worth defending. Cyclone's combination of quiet authority and devastating fighting ability is wonderful, and Sammo Hung brings considerable presence to the criminal conflict. Then there is King (Philip Ng), whose frightening abilities push the younger fighters toward increasingly desperate methods. The action becomes wonderfully outrageous, yet I find myself caring most about Chan and the friendships he develops. By the time the Walled City comes under attack, protecting those crowded streets feels intensely personal. You understand exactly why these people would risk their lives for a place outsiders barely understand. 1 'Rurouni Kenshin: The Final' (2021) Image via Netflix Rurouni Kenshin: The Final confronts Kenshin Himura (Takeru Satoh) with Yukishiro Enishi (Mackenyu), a man determined to avenge the death of his sister Tomoe (Kasumi Arimura), whom Kenshin once loved. Kenshin used to be an extraordinarily dangerous political assassin. He has since committed himself to protecting people without killing, carrying a reverse-blade sword as a constant reminder of that promise. Enishi, on the other hand, launches devastating attacks against Kenshin's friends and the surrounding city, intending to make the former assassin experience the suffering he has carried for years. The fighting is ridiculous in the most complimentary sense imaginable. Keishi Ōtomo returned to direct this installment, and the fluidity of Satoh's movements remains almost impossible to believe. His unexpected collaboration with former enemy Seta Sōjirō (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is a particular delight, with their synchronized movements showcasing two extraordinarily gifted swordsmen. But Kenshin's confrontation with Enishi is the scene I would show somebody who believes martial arts movies cannot deliver substantial character drama.