20 Action Movies From The 21st Century That Didn't Actually Suck

13. The Rundown (2003)

Ong Bak
Universal Pictures

Before he was plain old Dwayne Johnson, before he was even Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, the man that was still officially billed as The Rock headlined The Rundown, a massively underrated Brazilian-set buddy comedy that failed to even recoup its $85m budget at the box office, despite the fact that its actually a great genre flick.

A decade before he became one of Hollywood's highest-paid actors, Rock 'The John' Dwayneson's blend of physicality and comic timing proved him more than capable of becoming the industry's biggest action star. Director Peter Berg crafts a great rip-roaring old-school adventure that features plenty of humour and excitement, not to mention Christopher Walken on scene-stealing form as the villain.

An early passing of the torch cameo from none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger that leads into a bruising nightclub brawl only served to enhance John 'The Dwayne' Rockson's action hero credentials. Unusually for an action movie, his retrieval expert character Beck spends the entire movie actively avoiding firearms until the climactic showdown, where he reluctantly tools up and lays the smack down on the candy asses of numerous generic foreign henchman in superb style.

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