The 15 Best Action Comedies Of All Time, Ranked

When we think of the quintessential movie action hero, we might normally imagine a muscular hero offing the bad guy with a quip, then walking away from an explosion in slow motion. There’s a healthy dose of over-the-top absurdity in many big studio action films, but a great action-comedy is a different beast: Equal parts action and consistent humor. The humor should never devalue the action either, which is why every movie we’ve collected here has real danger and stakes. All-out spoofs and animated features belong on different lists; the best action-comedies make you believe as well as laugh.

Sometimes, the humor comes from two unlikely partners forced to work together. The hero(es) might master astonishing physical feats that make their foes look like fools. Characters who appear serious in their world may make comedic points about ours. All have contributed to many great evenings of escapist thrills and yuks.

These are the best action-comedies of all time, ranked.

“Spy” was initially — and horribly — mis-marketed as a movie that appeared to subject Melissa McCarthy to fat jokes and physical shtick, portraying her as an inappropriate action heroine. In fact, her character, CIA analyst Susan Cooper, is good at what she does, but is consistently underestimated. That’s a significant substantive and tonal difference, and has led to the movie gaining appreciation in subsequent years. Director Paul Feig doesn’t do female protagonists dirty like that.

Susan volunteers to serve in the field after her partner is seemingly killed; a vexed colleague, Ford (Jason Statham), indignantly quits in protest, but proceeds to follow her around anyway, to argue her out of the mission. It’s an outstanding bit of self-mockery from Statham, playing a guy so sure he’s the hero that he’s super-obnoxious about it, only to gradually realize this isn’t his story after all. For McCarthy, it’s a knowing subversion of what people think her movies are, and a demonstration that she’s a more versatile lead than many assume. It’s about time someone let her do that again.

To modern eyes, classic cult horror movies like “The Wicker Man” can feel quite dated in the way that police response is depicted. A middle-aged virgin cop is that easily outwitted, and unable to fight his way out against mostly unarmed pagans? We’re not used to that in our onscreen men of action! What if a pair of cops raised on Michael Bay movies were to take on an English small-town murder cult instead?

That’s the genius of “Hot Fuzz,” and why Edgar Wright has had an easier time crossing over to American audiences than some of his peers and influences — the director was raised on U.S. media, and much of his work, particularly the “Cornetto Trilogy” starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, involves the comedic mixing of American and British takes on genre. Wright even got “The Wicker Man” star Edward Woodward to play one of the main villains. 

“Hot Fuzz” is the most successful of the Cornetto trio, probably because it’s the happiest — its heroes make jokes, they kick butt, and there’s no apocalypse of any sort involved.

Stephen Chow is his own unique brand of action-comedian, writing, directing, and starring in films that employ cartoon physics and logic in combination with epic martial arts battles. Perhaps the best-known of these, “Kung Fu Hustle,” has a premise that couldn’t be simpler: Hapless crook Sing (Chow) wants to join the notorious, murderous Axe Gang, and hopes that by shaking down a local slum, he’ll prove his worth. Unfortunately for him, the slum is full of martial arts masters with video-game level skills. As the stakes escalate, the world’s most badass disgruntled landlady and a monstrous master criminal join the fight, and Sing discovers his actual inner hero.

Master choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping handled the choreography, and many of the film’s cast were retired ’70s martial arts stars, including Qiu Yuen and Leung Siu Lung. Speaking of the CG effects he uses to enhance his battle scenes, Chow once said, “If I could fight like Bruce Lee, I’d really prefer to show this power, instead of any wires or CGI. Unfortunately, I’m not as good as him.” By making himself a human digital cartoon instead, he created a whole new niche.

Michael Bay’s action spectaculars tend to include a lot of comedy, but for the most part, they still fall slightly on the side of seriousness. His two “Bad Boys” films, however, which star Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, include not just witty banter and over-the-top absurd action, but also moments of pure sitcom shtick: in the first film, they switch identities for extremely contrived reasons. In the second, Mike Lowery (Smith) has to try to wait for just the right moment to reveal he’s dating the younger sister of Marcus Burnett (Lawrence).

“Bad Boys II” features our heroes infiltrating the Klan, getting into a crazy car chase involving cadavers, and basically invading and trashing Cuba by themselves. It’s no wonder Bay quit the series while he was ahead; even he would have trouble topping the sheer excess on display herein. It’s no wonder the heroes of “Hot Fuzz” quote and imitate the movie constantly.

You know the drill: Slashfilm came here today to chew bubblegum and provide you with epic movie lists … and we’re all out of bubblegum. Nobody who watches “They Live” forgets Roddy Piper’s epic taunt (which he wrote) or his seemingly endless brawl with Keith David. What director John Carpenter would have you remember, though, is the movie’s message, in which aliens have taken over Earth’s entire free market and loaded it with subliminal messages to keep the masses consuming and quiet. 

It takes a homeless drifter with special sunglasses to see what’s really going on, and learning the truth proves to be a literal headache. Nevertheless, Carpenter’s social satire is on point, albeit perhaps dated today — if the aliens wanted to take us over now, they probably wouldn’t have to hide in subliminal messaging. Instead, their arguments would be presented as part of a media bending over backwards to include both sides of the hot-button, outer-space invasion issue.

Both Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans became famous for their roles on TV comedy shows, but for “The Last Boy Scout,” made by the action-cinema royalty trifecta of writer Shane Black, director Tony Scott, and producer Joel Silver, they added a healthy dose of testosterone to the wisecracks. They’re still screamingly funny, as is Danielle Harris as Willis’ foul-mouthed young daughter, but they also put the hurt on a lot of bloodthirsty bad guys. Willis is former Secret Service agent Joe Hallenbeck; Wayans is disgraced former quarterback Jimmy Dix, who used to be Hallenbeck’s hero. Together, the two must bust an absurdly high-stakes sports gambling ring, which involves an unusually large amount of bombs and murders.

Individually, Black, Scott, and Silver all made major contributions to the action-comedy cinema of the ’80s and ’90s. When they all came together, it was magical … and extremely profane. It’s also the movie that asks the most important question, to anyone about to get their butt kicked: Head or gut?

The experience served Wayans well years later when he ended up starring in the TV adaptation of “Lethal Weapon.”

A second-generation actor and a sketch comedy veteran, Ben Stiller skewered everything he found pretentious about the business in “Tropic Thunder,” in which a cast of seriously flawed actors wind up in gang territory in a far-east jungle, believing they’re still shooting a movie but actually in very real danger. Star Tugg Speedman (Stiller) longs to be taken seriously; overly method Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.) is so determined to stay in character that he has surgically altered himself to look Black; rapper-turned-actor Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) is closeted, and comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) is a drug addict. If they fail to finish the movie, they risk the rage of terrifying studio executive Les Grossman, a character who wasn’t in the script until Tom Cruise suggested there should be a studio executive character that he could have fun playing.

The star-studded cast, which also includes Nick Nolte, Danny McBride, Jay Baruchel, Matthew McConaughey, Martin Lawrence, Tobey Maguire, Alicia Silverstone, Tyra Banks, and many more, appears to have been compiled by Stiller, calling in every favor he could to roast the Hollywood system with love. He also seems uniquely able to induce the ever-serious Cruise to do self-parody, having previously appeared with him in a series of MTV sketches about his stuntman.

Somehow, Warner Bros. let Daniel Waters, the darkly comedic scribe behind “Heathers” and “Batman Returns,” write an action movie for Sylvester Stallone. The result, “Demolition Man,” is the actor’s best action movie, but also an unexpectedly funny social satire, despite Waters’ favorite joke being cut. Stallone is John Spartan, a violent cop attempting to apprehend arch-criminal Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), in the then-dystopian future of 1996. When their battle kills innocent hostages, both men are sentenced to cryo-freeze prison, only to be unexpectedly awakened in the year 2032, when California has been remade into an absurdly politically correct utopia. Every restaurant is Taco Bell but vegetarian, every restroom comes equipped with three seashells instead of toilet paper, and all sexual intercourse is done via virtual reality.

The powers that be have secretly revived Phoenix so he can assassinate terrorist Edgar Friendly (Denis Leary), a man who wants a more libertarian world where he can eat meat, touch his partner, and make unhealthy or offensive choices if he wants to. Snipes and Stallone don’t skimp on the violence, but thanks to Stallone putting her at ease with goofball humor, Sandra Bullock delivers an impressive pre-“Speed” breakthrough performance as Spartan’s love interest Huxley, a retro-obsessed future cop who takes everything at face value.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” arguably nailed the multiverse concept so well that it made Marvel’s “Multiverse Saga” feel sadly secondary by comparison. 

There was a time when it might have seemed highly implausible that a sci-fi martial arts comedy about doing taxes while dimension hopping, featuring a cast of mostly Asian actors, would win the Best Picture Oscar. That was another time, and another reality. A generation raised on MTV, multimedia, and the cross-cultural pollination of the World Wide Web was finally ready for the kind of mega-pastiche brought to us by the directing duo known as Daniels.

Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, both of whom have ample action cinema and stunt experience, play a dysfunctional couple whose relationship reinvigorates when, during a tax session at the IRS building, their universe fragments and an alternate-reality variant of their daughter (Stephanie Hsu) threatens to bring about oblivion because her omnipotent universe-hopping has made her a nihilist. It’s up to her father to prove that even in the face of cosmic senselessness, kindness and love still matter, even if that just means something as simple as doing your taxes together.

Somehow, “Ghostbusters” is a movie that culminates in two people possessed by demon dogs making out, so that an evil god who looks like a giant cartoon marshmallow can get toasted by four misfit pseudo-scientists wearing unlicensed nuclear reactors. And in the moment, we believe it completely. Credit the comedic timing of Bill Murray, the deadpan humor of Harold Ramis, and Dan Aykroyd’s legitimate beliefs in the supernatural, along with the character-based humor of Rick Moranis and straight foils Sigourney Weaver and Ernie Hudson. Throw in impressive special effects and a dash of director Ivan Reitman’s libertarianism, and you get a supernatural action-comedy classic that Sony has spent years trying to follow with agreeable but subpar “Ghostbusters” sequels.

Right leads, right time, right director … “Ghostbusters” remains something of a genre-rewriting miracle, and an unlikely franchise-starter. It’s a family comedy with jokes about blowjobs and sexual harassment; a monster-adventure movie full of adult satire that the kids eventually grow up to notice. Most importantly, perhaps, it taught us all how to respond when someone asks if you’re a god.

Bounty hunter Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) accepts what seems to be a simple bail bondsman assignment to escort former mob accountant Jonathan Mardukas (Charles Grodin) from Chicago to Los Angeles. When Mardukas turns out to be an extreme neurotic whose panic attack gets them kicked off a commercial airline flight, however, Walsh is forced to make it a cross-country road trip with his ever-complaining charge, with the mob and the FBI both on their tails.

Then known primarily as a serious actor, De Niro deftly made the move into comedy as the straight man to Grodin, with both playing characters loosely based on the bickering of screenwriter George Gallo’s parents. Director Martin Brest, despite ending up in hospital after production wrapped, would continue to use plots about mismatched partners forced together, to even greater success in “Scent of a Woman,” which earned him Oscar nominations and won one for star Al Pacino as a blind veteran paired with Chris O’Donnell’s troubled preppie. Alas, a similar formula ended with career-killing ignominy in “Gigli,” which cast Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez as mismatched low-level criminals kidnapping an prosecutor’s horny, mentally handicapped son (Justin Bartha).

Paramount initially greeted Eddie Murphy’s big-screen debut with about as much anti-enthusiasm as audiences would greet Chris Kattan’s “Corky Romano” years later, but “48 Hrs.” wound up becoming a huge hit and setting the tone for almost every mismatched cop buddy action comedy to follow. Murphy plays Reggie, a criminal on a 48-hour furlough to assist hardass cop Jack (Nick Nolte) in busting one of Reggie’s old associates.

As is often the case in Walter Hill’s action movies, the “good” guys aren’t especially good — they’re just vastly preferable to the unrestrained chaos brought by the brutal villains, played by James Remar, Sonny Landham and David Patrick Kelly. Reggie and Jack end the movie on cordial terms, but they’re never quite friends, as the sequel would make clear. Murphy, however, was a breakout star waiting to happen, and Hill, understanding that the lead characters’ interplay was what would make the movie work, let him do his thing. The scene in which Reggie shakes down the racist patrons of a country-western bar is one of those classic comedy moments that cannot be quoted today, but broke new ground in its audacity at the time.

If any actor can be said to be the master of action comedy, it’s Jackie Chan. Ask most fans what his best film is, and the answer is often “Drunken Master II,” a sequel so different from its predecessor that it was released theatrically in the U.S. as a dub entitled “The Legend of Drunken Master.” Chan plays Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung, a character depicted in various forms in a whopping 123 movies, notably including Jet Li’s “Once Upon a Time in China” series. 

Chan’s take is more comedic, leaning into more apocryphal stories of Wong’s drunken boxing style, and literalizing them to make him a man with a boozing problem who becomes a master fighter when he gets drunk, using alcohol’s increased physical looseness and numbing of pain to his advantage. Still, it has to be just the right amount — if he over-indulges, the hangovers can be brutal. The epic final fight in a steel factory, probably Chan’s greatest fight scene ever, sees Chan chugging industrial, machine-cleaning strength alcohol to enhance his Daoist-style drunken boxing against Ken Lo, as British consul John, showing off his black-belt Taekwondo skills. Do not try this at home, or anywhere else.

The first “Lethal Weapon” was a mostly serious affair, with mature, retiring Sgt. Murtaugh (Danny Glover) reluctantly paired with PTSD-stricken military veteran Sgt. Riggs (Mel Gibson) as they try to take down a paramilitary drug-dealing ring. The sequel, from its bomb-rigged toilet to the constant, hilarious yammering of Joe Pesci as motormouthed witness Leo Getz, went for the laugh as often as the kill shot. Riggs’ suicidal tendencies morphed into a more comedic recklessness, enhanced by Gibson’s love of Three Stooges shtick, while Murtaugh’s quips about being too old became a running joke.

The action stakes remain high, with Joss Ackland as a brutal South African gold smuggler protected by diplomatic immunity, but the laughs flew as fast as the bullets, and in subsequent “Lethal Weapon” sequels (which added the likes of Chris Rock), they began to overwhelm them. Original part 1 screenwriter Shane Black gets most of the credit for being an iconic action-comedy guy, but Jeffrey Boam, who wrote this first sequel, deserves his due for creating a perfect balance of all the R-rated elements, including some pretty hot intimate moments with Patsy Kensit’s Rika.

Virtually every actor who has dabbled in action, comedy, or any combination thereof owes a debt to Buster Keaton, the stone-faced silent comedian who risked life and limb to become a human cartoon, in an era long before visual effects and stunt harnesses could guarantee his safety. “Sherlock Jr.” may be his masterpiece, a postmodern short in which he literally enters a movie screen and must deal with a barrage of early genre tropes, but when it comes to his features, you can’t beat “The General,” with Keaton playing an engineer who pursues and then drives a captured locomotive during the Civil War. Considered an overreach in its day, it’s correctly acknowledged as a classic now, and includes possibly the most expensive shot in silent movie history.

Keaton’s astonishing combination of lightning-fast reflexes with an ostensibly hapless manner informed much of Jackie Chan’s work decades later. It’s mildly problematic by today’s standards that his character ultimately fights for the Confederacy, but the time period and setting are really only a loose framework to set up train gag after train gag, and Keaton’s Johnnie only fights for love, not secession.