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If martial arts are your thing, the Raid and The Raid 2 are both excellent and showcases for silat. The first in particular is about as lean and as tense and insane as an action movie can get with limited resources. Second one is larger and nowhere near as tight but is far grander in scope and execution. In the same vein, The Night Comes For Us is also great but requires a strong stomach as the gore in it is extreme.
Donnie Yen has a patchy filmography, but Ip Man and SPL are genuinely good films even ignoring the action. I have a soft spot for Raging Fire as the goodbye for Benny Chan. We've passed peak Donnie, though; he was faster earlier on in his career. He's improved as an actor and as an action director, but physically he's past his prime and there's no real replacement.
I still recommend trying to power through Hard Boiled because you about stopped at the point it starts to get truly batshit. However, if you seek realism in your action, that's not where it's at.
If you enjoyed Heat, I recommend watching Cold Eyes, a Korean flick from a while back. It's not really an action film, but it includes some impressive action regardless and some tense, well-constructed sequences.
Mad Max: Fury Road is an ode to tricked-out car chases, to excess and beyond, with exceptional production design. Bullet Train is a remarkably funny and sharply edited movie, a fun distraction full of bright lights, charisma and cool people doing cool things even if the final act is subject to a bit too much CG nonsense.
The first Raid movie was the first time I watched a martial arts film that sold me on the "these guys aren't choreographed, they're hitting each other for real" element.
Which simply means that they were immaculately choreographed, but the EVERY strike was delivered like they wanted the other guy dead. And still maybe only time I've seen a two-on-one fight where I truly believed the two weren't holding back and the one was still winning.
There are a significant number of hits in that movie that were not pulled. People just ate hits for the action gods, and it was filmed in Indonesia, so paltry things like actor safety, insurance, etc. were not a primary financial concern. They also went through about half a year to eight months worth of physical training to even pull it off, and were lucky enough to have Yayan Ruhian involved.
Yeah, it surely helped that these guy were absolute no-names so no need to get prissy about the physical demands/possible injuries.
Which created a bit of a contrast when Ruhian and Rahman showed up in John Wick 3 and the fact that it was choreographed and they were pulling punches and waiting their turn was blatant by comparison. Not really buying it, even if they bother to spotlight the respect the fighters have for him.
Sorry John, if it is hand-to-hand then Mad Dog solos you.
Okay, to contrast and add to the point, the OTHER time I saw a two-on-one was that was a believable challenge is that infamous Mission Impossible fight. "Yeah, I can accept Henry Cavill getting bodied by an Asian half his size, that guy is badass."
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