Two for the show: The 20 best big-screen action duos

The year 1994 was a big one for cinematic hitmen as the Pulp Fiction pair were joined by the intergenerational assassins in , or Leon: The Professional depending on where and when you saw the film. In one of the oddest pairs on our list, professional hitman Leon (Jean Reno) takes in the orphaned Mathilda (Natalie Portman) and teaches her how to commit murder as the duo seek revenge against the man who killed her family. The film introduced Portman to the world, setting her up to star in other action-packed films like , the prequels and three movies. Makes you wonder if she’d have been half as good with a laser gun or war hammer if she hadn’t learned it from Leon.

Next up in the grand tradition of buddy cop movies, we have the original , the first on our list to star two comedians. Not only is this an action packed adventure revolving around the mafia, a boat load of heroin, and multiple murders, but it also manages to be funny at the same time. Many of the hijinks are the result of the two leads having to impersonate one another to fool a key witness. Thus Martin Lawrence’s Marcus must pretend to be single while Will Smith’s Mike becomes a married family man. Also, it’s Michael Bay’s first film, so you know it is brimming with explosions.

Speaking of Michael Bay, the famed director returned two years later with another film featuring an action duo: , starring Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage. After a group of rogue military men seize Alcatraz and threaten to bomb San Francisco with nerve gas, a chemical weapons specialist (Cage) and the only man to ever escape the island prison (Connery) team up to sneak into Alcatraz and disable the weapon. While Connery’s whip smart and daring Mason is initially annoyed with Cage’s nerdier Goodspeed, the pair learn to work together as they weave through the labyrinthine passages of the infamous fortress.

By my count, Will Smith has appeared in no less than 10 films featuring action duos (and I’m not even counting the dog in ). The man knows how to deliver perfect banter while performing intense stunts, whether it be in the wild west or in outer space. In the franchise, a young and spry Smith teams up with an old, curmudgeonly Tommy Lee Jones to protect the world from sinister aliens (and wipe the memories of those who see them). The visual effects and sci-fi setting of the franchise pushed the buddy cop motif past the traditional police thriller/Western genre and paved the way for plenty of extra-terrestrial/superhuman pairings in the future.

By the time debuted in 1998, cinemas were saturated with buddy cop movies, but this Jackie Chan showcase refreshed the genre by pairing one ridiculously talented cop (Chan) with a -esque dunce (Tucker). The result is a film that not only features one of the world’s most famous martial artists, but also isn’t afraid to get a little stupid. The move to not take itself too seriously paid off as the film was a global success and the Chan/Tucker pairing returned for two sequels. The pair also won the MTV Movie Award for Best On-Screen Duo, and if that isn’t an endorsement for this film, I don’t know what is.

You can’t help but turn on “See You Again” and get a little teary eyed when you think about the Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker) friendship in the franchise. What starts as a Point Break-style undercover cop/criminal pairing in the original film evolves until they become the de facto fathers of a gang of misfit street racers. After each starring solo in a sequel, the pair reunited for films four through seven until Paul Walker’s untimely death. While Brian is still alive and well within the film’s world, seeing Dom without Brian racing alongside him will forever bring a jolt of melancholy.

A genre of film can only exist for so long before it eventually goes meta, and in 2007, did for the buddy cop film what did for horror. In the clever Edgar Wright action comedy, Simon Pegg’s ridiculously talented cop is relegated to a small town in England where his partner is Nick Frost’s film-obsessed newbie. The result is a comedy that knows the tropes of the genre perfectly, both falling into and subverting them with masterful ease as Angel and Butterman use their differences to solve a crime. Because after all, what’s the point of a duo in an action film if they aren’t using their differences to solve a crime?

Finally we have arrived at the film that dared to ask the question, “What if the buddy cops were actually women?” While came out in 1988, and a half-dozen action films like popped up in the intervening years, it wasn’t until two of Hollywood’s most bankable funny women opted into the genre in 2013 that a big budget, female-led buddy cop film hit the big screen. follows many of the tried and true tropes of the genre with Bullock’s Ashburn being an uptight, by-the-book cop while McCarthy’s Mullins is more gritty and underhanded. A box office success, The Heat proved there was an appetite for action films not starring men, and the genre has continued to expand in the past decade.

No list of action films would be complete without at least one Marvel Cinematic Universe entry. Sure, there’s Captain America and Falcon, Ant-Man and the Wasp and Scarlet Witch and Vision, but we’re going with Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and her estranged sister Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) in . In this prequel, Natasha and Yelena team up to take down the evil organization behind the programming of young female assassins like themselves. Johansson and Pugh are two of the strongest actors of their generations, and watching them not only perform incredible stunt work, but also dish out quippy zingers at one another is a delight. We need Yelena to travel to an alternate dimension where Black Widow is still alive so we can see this pair back on our screens stat.

All hail Oscar-winning Best Picture , a sci-fi action film starring a pair of middle aged Chinese immigrants battling their way through an IRS office. After delivering impeccable and criminally underrated work for decades in Hollywood, Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan are teamed up here as a married couple fighting through multiple dimensions to save their marriage, their daughter, and all of human (and rock) existence. What makes the pair even more exceptional is that they’re portraying a dozen different versions of themselves, each with their own personalities and relationships. Whether they’re armed with dildos, fanny packs, or googly eyes, the Wangs are a force to be reckoned with.

2022 was another incredible year for action duos as , the (very loose) historical action drama about a pair of Indian revolutionaries, arrived just months after Everything Everywhere All At Once. The over-the-top Tollywood film sees the duo—played by N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan—not only swing through fiery bridges and fight alongside an entire zoo’s worth of wild animals, but also deliver jaw-dropping dance sequences (a kind of action in its own right). Perhaps their best dance number is the Oscar-winning and I defy any of the other acting pairs on this list to perfect this choreo. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover could never.