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

A full 12 years before Mario’s first appearance in the Donkey Kong arcade game (and 14 before Luigi’s arrival), Paul Newman and Robert Redford joined forces to become the most likable pair of (mostly non-violent) bank robbers the cinema has ever known in After a pair of train robberies blew up in their faces (literally), Butch and Sundance hightail it for Bolivia, where they briefly attempt to go straight before realizing a life of crime is just too exciting to quit cold turkey. While Newman was a legend already, the film launched Redford to stardom and the duo was so popular they reunited four years later for . It should also be noted that Amazon is working on a fresh new spin on Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid with Regé-Jean Page and Glen Powell as the charming thieves.

A classic subsection of the action duo genre is the “buddy cop” film, which usually involves an odd pairing of two polar opposites thrust together to solve a crime. Many credit for popularizing the genre as hardened San Francisco cop Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) is forced to team up with imprisoned convict Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy in his film debut) in order to find the men who murdered his partners. The catch is that because Hammond is technically incarcerated, the pair only have 48 hours to crack the case before he’s thrown back in the clink. The film was such a success that the formula has been replicated numerous times (which you will soon see).

In light of the $1.48 billion and six Oscar nominations that earned in the past year, it would be a shame not to honor the dynamic duo that made the original such a hit. Before Tom Cruise’s Maverick was flying over an unknown country that resembles Russia with Rooster and Hangman, he was trying to graduate from the titular prestigious flight school with his bestie, Goose, played by Anthony Edwards. The pair were among the best of their class until a failed ejection from their F-14 sees Goose die upon impact with the ship’s roof, haunting Maverick and setting up the tense dynamic between Mav and Goose’s son in the sequel.

Only five years after 48 Hrs., delivered another pair of mismatched police officers solving a crime. In this case we have the erratic Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson), grieving the death of his wife and throwing caution to the wind, and the level-headed Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), forever exasperated, paired up by the chief to investigate a prostitution ring. The vastly different styles of policing lead to numerous entertaining disputes and the classic realization that perhaps each needs what the other is missing. Surprisingly, Lethal Weapon has also got a lot to say about mental health, and the various ways we process trauma (especially in a hyper-masculine setting like the police force).

In 1989, gave us a buddy cop pair so different, that one wasn’t even human. Several years before his rebranding as a dramatic actor with the one-two punch of and , Tom Hanks starred in this action comedy about a police investigator forced to dog-sit his dead friend’s pup while also solving his murder. Hooch, a French Mastiff, turns out to be not only the sole witness to the murder, but also an able detective. Sometimes man’s best friend is actually man’s best partner.

In the ’80s and ’90s it was nearly impossible to find an action adventure film starring a single woman, let alone a pair of them. Thelma and Louise, therefore, became instant icons as a pair of independent females on the run from the law after killing a violent stranger in a bar parking lot. Davis and Sarandon were both Oscar nominated for their performances as the best friends speeding across the U.S. in a high-stakes police chase. ’s final scene, involving a kiss, a convertible, and the Grand Canyon will forever be among the most iconic in film history, and it’s a shame that after the film’s success it took so long for Hollywood to pair two women as action movie leads again.

Only two months after the release of Thelma & Louise, a second pair of death-defying renegades entered multiplexes. In , the 48 Hrs. buddy cop device is flipped on its head as a cop (Reeves’s Utah) goes undercover and becomes close with a charming bankrobber (Swayze’s Bodhi). Seduced by Bodhi’s ethos and love of extreme sports, Utah begins to question his involvement in arresting Bodhi, slowly being sucked in by the leader of the mask-wearing bandits. The ever-shifting allegiances took the genre to new heights and proved that sometimes friendship is more important than the law.

You’d be hard pressed to find a more lauded and prolific action film director than John Woo, who’s credited with creating “gun fu,” a mix of martial arts, shootouts, and graphic violence. In his 1992 film , two Hong Kong police officers (one undercover and one not) find themselves embedded in a crime syndicate, where they must maneuver a high stakes tightrope to solve a series of crimes without giving up the mole’s true identity. Veteran actors Chow Yun-fat and Tony Leung Chiu-wai, whose work encompasses genres from action to drama, throw themselves into their roles with abandon, and the film remains one of Woo’s best.

You can’t discuss action films without touching on the work of Quentin Tarantino, who has created a number of memorable action duos (Foxx and Waltz, DiCaprio and Pitt, and Fonda and De Niro to name a few). Perhaps his most iconic twosome is the hitman pair from , played by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson with matching suits and instantly recognizable haircuts. As with most Tarantino films, this one is drenched in gore and a pop of humor. If this list were for “Best Big Screen Dance Duos” however, we’d have to sub out Jackson for Uma Thurman, as she steals the show along with Travolta during the .

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.