Action movies don’t always guarantee box office success, as it turns out. Tom Cruise’s latest Mission: Impossible installment did well in its opening weekend, but now there are doubts about the franchise’s future at large. Looking back on the action film genre, there are plenty of acclaimed films that didn’t even see opening-weekend success. In celebration of this summer’s blockbuster bonanza — in an ironic sort of way — here’s a closer look at flops that deserve another viewing.

10 Repo Man (1984)

Fun fact: Martin Sheen’s real name is Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez. He’s got two famous-actor sons. The one who isn’t Charlie Sheen — Emilio Estevez (The Mighty Ducks) — has a long-lost action flick from the ’80s called Repo Man. It’s actually a variety of genres blended together and was perhaps ahead of its time. Estevez plays an LA slacker and punk rocker named Otto, who starts working for an eccentric repossession agent named Bud (Harry Dean Stanton). He sets out to claim a Chevy Malibu worth $20,000 price tag — and otherworldly contents. Don’t miss this one, despite its box-office bombing.

9 Fight Club (1999)

20th Century Fox

The Brad Pitt-Edward Norton starrer, Fight Club is filled with violent fight scenes and a killer third act with edge-of-your-seat action sequences that earned the film a spot on our list here. It’s too bad audiences weren’t interested in the late-90s. One could say Fight Club was also — like Repo Man — ahead of its time, with those high-concept editing sequences across the film’s gripping first act. It’s Fincher at his finest, and we can’t wait for his next movie, The Killer.
Related: The Killer Is Oscar Worthy & ‘Very Violent’ Says Venice Chief, New Image Released

8 Sunshine (2007)

Fox Searchlight Pictures

This is Danny Boyle in his prime with head-spinning action sequences and dazzling post-production effects. Sunshine is one of his forgotten, underrated works that takes place in the future, as Earth’s sun is simply on its way out. What to do? Led by Cillian Murphy and other A-listers, a crew of men and women ventures into space with technology that could revive our source of light. Of course, things go wrong. The thrilling interstellar sequences and reliably solid performances make Sunshine worth a tune-in.

7 Grindhouse (2007)

Dimension Films

The faux trailers that played before this pair of films were so good that a couple of spinoffs were ultimately greenlit, including Eli Roth’s upcoming Thanksgiving. Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof and Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror feature relentless action sequences that are perhaps best consumed with pizza and beer. Grindhouse is B-movie glory at its finest, to say the least.

6 Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

Universal Pictures

Anyone else super stoked for the Netflix anime series? In the meantime, the cult-classic O.G. film is worth a revisit — along with the source-material graphic novels, while you’re at it. With a plethora of scene-stealing villains across its duration, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is nonstop action-movie fun that’s laced with relentless humor and heartfelt performances.

5 Warrior (2011)

Lionsgate

Tom Hardy can play just about anyone, it seems. That includes an emotionally unstable MMA fighter. Warrior finds him battling Joel Edgerton in the ring, as their alcoholic father (played by Nick Nolte) watches on. It’s an estranged family, to say the least, but a convenient turn of events in the fighting biz reunites them for an epic prize fight that will leave you wincing and perhaps tearing up. Warrior didn’t perform well at the box office, but anyone who’s a fan of the Rocky movies and anything else in the fighting subgenre should check this one out on one of the streamers offering it these days.

4 Dredd (2012)

 Lionsgate

As we await Season 4 of Prime Video’s The Boys, Karl Urban fans should revisit Dredd, a gritty retelling of the 1996 film that starred Sylvester Stallone and Rob Schneider. Urban dons the helmet and faces off against a bad-a** villain played by Lena Headey (Game of Thrones), a resident drug lord in a 200-storey high-rise smack in the middle of a vast, dystopian metropolis. Dredd is hardcore and successfully ditches the cheeky nature of the 90s film. Fortunately, a Dredd sequel is in the works — finally!
Related: Dredd: A Forgotten Remake That Deserves More Love

3 The Nice Guys (2016)

Warner Bros.

“Look who decided to show up to the party” is just one of the zingers by Ryan Gosling in Shane Black’s 2016 dark comedy. Critics raved, but no one came, sadly enough. Gosling could very well get Oscar love for Barbie, but before all that, he teamed up with Russell Crowe for The Nice Guys, set in 1970s Los Angeles. Fate turns the pair into unlikely partners after a young woman (Margaret Qualley) mysteriously disappears. Their investigation takes them to dark places, as other folks who get involved in the case keeping turning up dead. It’s a unique blend of humor of violence, calling back to Black’s Lethal Weapon days.

2 Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Warner Bros. Pictures

While we’re talking about Gosling, here’s another critically acclaimed box-office disappointment that ended up winning an Oscar for Roger Deakins (cinematography) thanks to those visually arresting action sequences. Sure, Denis Villaneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 was a slow burn overall, but Gosling and Harrison Ford kick some serious butt in the 2017 sequel, which was so good — and featuring terrific supporting turns by A-listers like Robin Wright and Jared Leto — that it now has a 2099 spinoff series in the works.

1 Mulan (2020)

Disney

Full disclosure: The 2020 live-action remake isn’t a sequel! Mulan was such a timeless classic as an animated film, with countless musical numbers that most of us Millennials still know by heart. Unfortunately, the release of Mulan (2020) coincided with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic; otherwise, who knows how well it would have performed at the box office? The premise is the same: The fearless young titular character disguises herself as a man to battle invaders of China, in a last-ditch effort to save her ailing father from having to serve in the Imperial Army himself. Featuring thrilling action sequences, Mulan is worth checking out on Disney+ if you’re looking to watch something from the comfort of your couch.