20 highly entertaining, enjoyable, mindless thrillers to watch when you just want to shut your brain off

When it comes to mindless, yet enjoyable, action films and thrillers, Jason Statham belongs on the genre's Mount Rushmore. “The Beekeeper” was the “Dumpuary” gem of 2024 and is another foray into “brains 2, fun 7” filmmaking for the British actor. He plays, well, a beekeeper, but he also used to be the kind of nebulous government agent who can wreak havoc if he needs to seek revenge for Phylicia Rashad.

Keep Michael Bay away from Transformers (and Pearl Harbor) and he can usually deliver some fun. “Ambulance” is essentially an empty-calorie version of “Heat,” a crime thriller that takes place all over Los Angeles. The film is also helped by Jake Gyllenhaal’s delightful, scenery-chewing turn as a maniacal bank robber. He and his brother Yahya Abdul-Mateen II hijack an ambulance after a robbery goes wrong, and a chase ensues.

The first Dirty Harry movie, fittingly titled “Dirty Harry,” has a bit too much going on to fall into this category. Later films in the series aren’t quite good enough, especially “The Dead Pool.” It’s “Magnum Force” that threads the needle. The plot is potboiler nonsense — and what would a Dirty Harry movie be without at least a soupçon of problematic material? — but it’s largely an enjoyable ride.

“Die Hard” is a classic action movie, maybe the best of that genre. “Die Hard with a Vengeance,” the third movie in the series, is a good thriller. It’s not a coincidence both of those are directed by John McTiernan. “Die Hard 2,” though, is directed by Renny Harlin, whose ceiling as a filmmaker is “mindless, but enjoyable.” This movie is essentially “What if one of those thriller novels people only read at airports was set at an airport?”

John Woo’s “Face/Off” makes no sense. The plot, which involves a terrorist and an FBI agent literally swapping faces, is ludicrous. Nicolas Cage is playing John Travolta. John Travolta is playing Nicolas Cage. There are doves galore. It’s not a “good” movie in the traditional sense. However, there’s enough quality filmmaking mixed in with the delightful silliness to make for a good viewing experience.

“Con Air” is a Cage film that is somehow lower-brow than “Face/Off.” It lacks the ambition of Woo’s movie, but it remains trashy fun. Cage is a criminal (but the likeable kind!) who finds himself on a prison transport plane with some of the most-dangerous felons in the world. Naturally, some of these baddies want to hijack the plane, and it’s up to good-guy bad guy Cage to save the day.

John Malkovich is in “Con Air.” He’s also in “In the Line of Fire,” which also stars Clint Eastwood. Eastwood plays a man who is haunted by being a Secret Service agent the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. He returns to service to protect the current president from a madman who is planning out an assassination of his own. Yes, he’s played by Malkovich. This is the rare mindless thriller that earned an Oscar nomination, which went to Malkovich.

Kathryn Bigelow may have an Oscar, but she’s really just a director of trashy cinema. Give her something bleak and violent and she will run with it. “Point Break” is more of a brainless action movie than some of her work, but that has made it a cult classic. It helps that Keanu Reeves plays an FBI agent, and also that Patrick Swayze plays a Zen, surfing bank robber.

“The Net” stands as the defining entrant into the “This is not how the internet actually works” subgenre. Although, it did presage an era of people ordering pizza off the web. Sandra Bullock plays an early adaptor to the internet who finds herself accidentally enveloped in a grand conspiracy. “The Net” has a conception of how the internet works that may be laughable, but that’s part of the mindless fun.

Wes Craven mostly made horror movies, but he also made this thriller. Also, “Music of the Heart,” but that’s a story for another day. When a thriller sets itself on a plane, you can usually count on it being a candidate for this list if it’s executed reasonably well. “Red Eye” has Cillian Murphy as a terrorist on a red eye flight with nefarious plans, and it’s up to Rachel McAdams to stop him.

“The Fugitive” is a high-end thriller. Tommy Lee Jones won an Oscar. Harrison Ford was the star. Ford’s Dr. Richard Kimble did not return for the sequel, unsurprisingly, but Jones reprised the role of San Gerard in “U.S. Marshals.” This time around, the movie lands at the “worth watching on basic cable on a Sunday afternoon” level of quality. It’s not as clever, or as well-directed, but the movie is by no means a snooze. If “The Fugitive” is on TV, you say, “Ooh, nice!” If “U.S. Marshals” is on, you say, “Ehh, why not?”

The Wikipedia introduction for “Salt” notes the action scenes in the movie were praised, while the plot was criticized as “convoluted” and “implausible.” If that doesn’t describe the fun, mindless thriller to a tee, what does? Angelina Jolie lent her star power to “Salt.” She plays a CIA agent who is accused of secretly being an agent for the Russians. Jolie has to clear her name and, well, a bunch of stuff happens. Convoluted stuff. What matters is the journey, not the destination.

Because of some of the imagery in “The Warriors,” the movie became something of a cultural touchstone. Given that, eventually one might find themselves watching “The Warriors” to see what it’s all about. At this point you realize it is much sillier than you expected. Then you remember one of those images you saw was of a New York gang dressed up as baseball players in face paint, and you start to wonder why you didn’t realize what you were getting into. “The Warriors” focuses on the titular gang on a dangerous journey back to their home turf of Coney Island with all the other gangs looking to take them down. It’s goofy, but it’s also dark, which is a weird mix. That leaves it working better if you don’t think too hard about it.

“Double Jeopardy” is one of those movies with a plot so clever in its stupidity you wondered how nobody had thought to do it before. Ashley Judd (a veteran of mindless thrillers, though most of them unwatchable) plays a woman who is set up by her husband as her killer so that he can fake his death. Thus, once paroled, she sets out to get revenge by actually killing him. See, the double jeopardy clause in the U.S. Constitution says you can’t be convicted of the same crime twice, so Judd is good to go! Of course, the actual legal realities of that plan are sketchy, to say the least, but we didn’t say these were mindful thrillers, now did we?

The president punches terrorists who have hijacked his plane. What more really needs to be said? Well, in addition to that plot, the president is played by Harrison Ford, and the lead terrorist is played by Gary Oldman. The cast is overqualified for, again, a movie about the President of the United States fighting off terrorists on a plane, which helps make it more enjoyable.

Oliver Stone’s conspiracy-laden thriller poisoned a lot of minds when it comes to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The version of the story that “JFK” puts forward is packed to the brim with tinfoil-hat ideas and refutable assertions. However, Stone does know how to direct. The movie is junk food presenting itself as insightful, but if you don’t take the bait, you can enjoy it as a piece of entertainment.

David Leitch, the director of “Deadpool 2” and “The Fall Guy,” among others, has carved out a space mixing action and comedy. “Bullet Train” is in that vein, but with a thriller/mystery element to it as well. The “trapped on a train” element gives it a bit of that “Murder on the Orient Express” feel. Brad Pitt gets to have some fun, and he helps make the movie work. We will say that you may need to gut it out for, say, 20 minutes. The “wacky” elements of the tone are laid on a little thick up front, to the point of being tiresome. Once that fades, it’s an enjoyable comedic thriller.

The first Jack Ryan film, “The Hunt for Red October,” is the last of the quality Cold War thrillers. It is also directed by John McTiernan. “Patriots Games,” the first film with Harrison Ford stepping into the role, is okay, but a little too dark to be a fun, mindless movie. “Clear and Present Danger” finds the right tone for that. Instead of being about anything serious or complicated, it’s just about Jack Ryan and the CIA going into Colombia to take down a Pablo Escobar analog. A bunch of stuff blows up.

John Grisham writes a solid legal thriller, but they aren’t always high-minded. “The Pelican Brief” is a sterling example of that. This is a good movie. It’s a taut thriller. Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts are both dynamic in the film. However, when you take a step back, you realize it’s a movie about a journalist and a law student unraveling a conspiracy involving the assassination of two Supreme Court justices. It’s just done so well that fact may escape your mind for the entirety of the movie’s runtime.

A thriller starring Mark Wahlberg and directed by Mel Gibson surely had a chill set where no alarming religious opinions were shared. “Flight Risk” is full nonsense, but the nonsense is entertaining. Like we said, give us a dumb thriller set on a plane and that shoulders a lot of the load. Wahlberg is well-suited to such a movie, and the thriller motions of the plotting are engaging enough to keep you entertained, if not intellectually invested.