Every action comedy movie streaming on Criterion Channel in the US right now — 30 films ranked by rating, checked against Criterion Channel’s live catalog.
Updated July 2026 · Availability refreshed from Criterion Channel US
Directed by Clyde Bruckman
✦ MovieMuse AI takeSilent-era physical comedy meets locomotive-scale destruction; Keaton's deadpan precision orchestrates chaos with balletic economy.
During America’s Civil War, Union spies steal engineer Johnny Gray's beloved locomotive, 'The General'—with Johnnie's lady love aboard an attached boxcar—and he single-handedly must do all in his power to both get The General back and to rescue Annabelle.
Directed by Buster Keaton
✦ MovieMuse AI takeBuster Keaton's deadpan pratfalls inside a movie theater ingeniously blur fiction and reality, inventing the action-comedy meta-joke.
A film projectionist longs to be a detective, and puts his meager skills to work when he is framed by a rival for stealing his girlfriend's father's pocketwatch.
Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer
✦ MovieMuse AI takeHarold Lloyd's clock-tower hang defies safety logic; pure physical comedy built on genuine vertigo and silent-era ingenuity.
When a store clerk organizes a contest to climb the outside of a tall building, circumstances force him to make the perilous climb himself.
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
✦ MovieMuse AI takeMifune's comedic swagger cuts through Kurosawa's precise sword choreography, proving action heroes need personality before punchlines.
Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa's tightly paced, beautifully composed "Sanjuro." In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a proper samurai on its ear.
Directed by Kenji Misumi
✦ MovieMuse AI takeBalletic violence meets absurdist humor as a assassin navigates impossible odds while pushing a baby cart—tonal whiplash perfected.
Ogami Itto battles a group of female ninja in the employ of the Yagyu clan and must eliminate a traitor who plans to sell his clan's secrets to the Shogunate.
Directed by John Woo
✦ MovieMuse AI takeWoo's balletic gunplay becomes absurdist humor through sheer excess—two guns firing in slow-motion defies physics and logic simultaneously.
A cop who loses his partner in a shoot-out with gun smugglers goes on a mission to catch them. In order to get closer to the leaders of the ring he joins forces with an undercover cop who's working as a gangster hitman. They use all means of excessive force to find them.
Directed by Kenji Misumi
✦ MovieMuse AI takeMedieval Japan's grittiest revenge saga weaponizes absurdist baby-cart mechanics; exploitation meets philosophical contradiction.
Official Shogunate executioner Ogami Itto has been framed for disloyalty to the Shogunate by the Yagyu clan, against whom he now is waging a one-man war, along with his infant son, Daigoro.
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
✦ MovieMuse AI takeVerhoeven's satirical corporate newsbreaks and ED-209's malfunctioning rampage weaponize sci-fi satire against ultraviolence itself.
In a violent, near-apocalyptic Detroit, evil corporation Omni Consumer Products wins a contract from the city government to privatize the police force. To test their crime-eradicating cyborgs, the company leads street cop Alex Murphy into an armed confrontation with crime lord Boddicker so they can use his body to support their untested RoboCop prototype. But when RoboCop learns of the company's nefarious plans, he turns on his masters.
Directed by Kenji Misumi
✦ MovieMuse AI takeZatoichi's blindness transforms combat into visual comedy: he navigates chaos through sound while others stumble in confusion.
The adventures of a blind, gambling masseur and master swordsman. Zatoichi targets a yakuza-controlled village, because war with a neighbouring town's smaller gang is brewing.
Directed by Hideo Gosha
✦ MovieMuse AI takeThree mercenaries' banter undercuts their own competence, making each perfectly-executed rescue feel like controlled chaos by accident.
Shiba, a wandering ronin, encounters a band of peasants who have kidnapped the daughter of their dictatorial magistrate, in hopes of coercing from him a reduction in taxes. Shiba takes up their fight, joined by two renegades from the magistrate's guard, Sakura and Kikyo. The three outlaws find themselves in a battle to the death.
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai
✦ MovieMuse AI takeWong Kar-wai's neon-soaked assassins stumble through betrayal and desire; style overwhelms plot in seductive, violent languor.
An assassin goes through obstacles as he attempts to escape his violent lifestyle despite the opposition of his partner, who is secretly attracted to him.
Directed by Jackie Chan
✦ MovieMuse AI takeJackie Chan's furniture-smashing rampage through shopping malls treats destruction as comedic choreography—stunts as punchlines.
Officer Chan Ka Kui manages to put a major Hong Kong drug dealer behind the bars practically alone, after a shooting and an impressive chase inside a slum. Now, he must protect the boss' secretary, Selina, who will testify against the gangster in court.
Directed by Buichi Saitō
✦ MovieMuse AI takeTattooed female assassins meet wandering executioner; graphic swordplay collides with genre pastiche and moral ambiguity.
Ogami Itto is hired to kill a tattooed female assassin and battles Retsudo, head of the Yagyu clan, and his son Gunbei.
Directed by Hideo Gosha
✦ MovieMuse AI takeGosha grounds swordplay in moral ambiguity, letting the absurdity of honor codes land harder than any blade.
Legendary swordplay filmmaker Hideo Gosha's Sword of the Beast chronicles the flight of the low-level swordsman Gennosuke, who kills one of his ministers as part of a reform plot. His former comrades then turn on him, and this betrayal so shakes his sense of honor that he decides to live in the wild, like an animal. There he joins up with a motley group who are illegally mining the shogun’s gold, and, with the aid of another swordsman, gets a chance not just at survival but to recover his name and honor.
Directed by Kihachi Okamoto
✦ MovieMuse AI takeTwo broke swordsmen stumble through clan warfare; Kill!'s tonal uncertainty—funny then brutal—defines its genre innovation.
A pair of down-on-their-luck swordsmen arrive in a dusty, windblown town, where they become involved in a local clan dispute. One, previously a farmer, longs to become a noble samurai. The other, a former samurai haunted by his past, prefers living anonymously with gangsters. But when both men discover the wrongdoings of the nefarious clan leader, they side with a band of rebels who are under siege at a remote mountain cabin.
Directed by Kenji Misumi
✦ MovieMuse AI takeZatoichi's rage becomes darkly comic when unleashed—his gentle masseur facade shattered spectacularly by emotional stakes.
Blind swordsman/masseuse Zatoichi befriends a young woman returning home with her baby. When gangsters mistake her for Zatoichi and kill her, Zatoichi determines to escort the baby to its father. He gains the reluctant help of a young pick pocket and together they travel to find the baby's father. But they do not reckon on the father's reaction to their arrival, nor on their own growing feelings for the child.
Directed by Kenji Misumi
✦ MovieMuse AI takeZatoichi's masseuse cover story collides with yakuza violence, mining comedy from his refusal to abandon civility.
The blind masseuse is targeted by the leader of a powerful yakuza group while also fending off a jealous husband bent on revenge. Zatoichi tours Edo's underground via a rousing onsen fight scene, gambling houses and the gender-bending character of Umeji, before a final, flame-filled conflagration.
Directed by Tsui Hark
✦ MovieMuse AI takeWong Fei-Hung's wire-assisted martial arts defies gravity while confronting colonialist forces; spectacle meets political substance.
Wong Fei-Hung faces the White Lotus Society, a fanatical cult seeking to drive the Europeans out of China through violence, even attacking Chinese who follow Western ways. Wong must also defend revolutionary Dr. Sun Yat Sen from the military.
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
✦ MovieMuse AI takeChaplin's doughboy pranks German soldiers mid-war; slapstick absurdism subverts combat itself through silent-era audacity.
An American doughboy, stationed in France during the Great War, goes on a daring mission behind enemy lines and becomes a hero.
Directed by Yoshiyuki Kuroda
✦ MovieMuse AI takeVendetta reaches apocalyptic scope as an entire clan descends on one man; graphically brutal and bizarrely operatic.
With most of his family already dead at Ogami Itto's hands, Retsudo launches one final plot to destroy him, and when that fails, unleashes the fury of every remaining member of the Yagyu clan.
Directed by Tsui Hark
✦ MovieMuse AI takeJet Li's anti-colonialist hero executes acrobatic wire-work against foreign invaders; nationalist fervor meets stunt spectacle.
In late 19th-century Canton, legendary hero Wong Fei-Hung battles foreign forces' (English, French and American) plundering of China. When Aunt Yee returns from America totally westernised, Wong assumes the role of protector. This proves difficult when his martial arts school and local militia become involved in fierce battles with foreign and local governments. As violence escalates, even Aunt Yee has to question her new western ideals, but is it possible to fight guns with Kung Fu?
Directed by Ricky Lau
✦ MovieMuse AI takeHopping vampire choreography transforms horror into slapstick; the Taoist priest's rituals clash brilliantly with physical comedy.
After the planned reburial of a village elder goes awry and the corpse resurrects into a hopping vampire, a Taoist priest and his two disciples attempt to stop him.
Directed by Tsui Hark
✦ MovieMuse AI takeThree women weaponize operatic disguise, theft, and rebellion simultaneously; 1913 Beijing becomes feminine action-comedy playground.
In 1913 Beijing, three fierce women—disguised rebel Tsao Wan, jewel-seeking Sheung Hung, and opera heiress Pat Neil—embark on a daring quest filled with intrigue and betrayal, challenging societal norms amidst political turmoil and the vibrant world of Peking Opera.
Directed by Kazuo Ikehiro
Blind masseur Zatoichi is nursed back to health by a young woman after he is shot by a gang member. Zatoichi, who had come to the village to repay a debt, now feels further indebted. He commits himself to use his amazing sword skills to help the young woman's father, whose river-crossing service is under attack by the same gang responsible for Zatoichi's wounds.
Directed by Christian-Jaque
✦ MovieMuse AI takeA peasant soldier's romantic delusion propels him through increasingly absurd military escapades with deadpan French charm.
Fanfan is a young handsome peasant. He joins the army to escape marriage because a gypsy girl predicted he will get glory and the king's daughter as a wife. But the gypsy girl was in fact Adeline, the daughter of the recruiting officer. Once he has discovered the stratagem, Fanfan refuses to forget this dream and decides to fulfill the destiny of the fake prediction.
Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda
✦ MovieMuse AI takeZatoichi's polite determination becomes tragicomedy when thrust into gang violence—he's too honorable for the chaos around him.
Zatoichi is sworn to protect the life of a young girl and without any real allies finds himself in the middle of a bloody turf war.
Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda
✦ MovieMuse AI takeThe blind detective stumbles through investigation with dignity intact, each swordplay eruption feels earned and darkly funny.
Blind swordsman/masseuse Zatoichi befriends a young woman looking for her father, a village leader who has disappeared. As he helps her investigate the disappearance, Zatoichi also becomes involved with another young woman who is trying to help her brother, who has murdered someone at about the same time and place as the missing man was last seen.
Directed by Yuen Woo-Ping
✦ MovieMuse AI takeA laundry man versus murderous theater troupe—the mundane hero juxtaposed against operatic villainy creates tonal whiplash magic.
Mousy, a timid laundry man, crosses paths with a violent criminal known only as 'White Tiger', who hides amongst a theatre troupe, murdering anyone who discovers his identity.
Directed by Jackie Chan
✦ MovieMuse AI takeChan's gravity-defying rooftop escapes and explosive setpieces collide with comedic timing—stunts as structural comedy.
The Hong Kong super-cop must stop a group of blackmailing bombers at the same time that the villains of the first Police Story are out for revenge.
Directed by Lam Nai-Choi
✦ MovieMuse AI takeRicky's hyperviolent prison rampage ignores logic entirely, embracing cartoonish gore as its own comedic language.
In 2001, where all correctional facilities have been privatized, martial artist Ricky finds himself victim to the corrupt system, found "guilty" of the manslaughter of an infamous crime boss.
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