One of Mark Wahlberg’s Highest Rated Movies Is Officially Named a Netflix “Instant Classic”

Published Aug 23, 2026, 4:00 AM EDT

In over three years at Collider, senior author Jake has now penned over 3000 articles covering a wide range of TV and film for the resources, lists, utilities, news, and interview teams. Alongside interviewing stars such as Selin Hizli, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Harlan Coben, and Chelsea Peretti, Jake was lucky enough to visit the set of Aardman and Netflix’s Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl in 2024, getting the chance to chat with four-time Academy Award winner Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham. Jake has also worked for other publications, including Agents of Fandom. You can also hear Jake every week as the resident film and TV journalist on Track Radio.

Of all the award-winning actors to still be active in Hollywood, Mark Wahlberg has had one of the poorest runs of recent projects. Of his 15 feature-length projects since 2020, only two have earned a positive average score on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. The likes of director Mel Gibson’s action thriller Flight Risk, the Prime Video original heist thriller Play Dirty, the action sequel The Family Plan 2, and the disastrous soccer comedy ***Balls Up ***all faced enormous backlash from both critics and audiences.

Among the dark clouds in Wahlberg’s filmography, there have been a couple of small shining lights. The best of these came in 2024, when Wahlberg starred in Arthur the King, based on Mikael Lindnord’s 2016 memoir Arthur - The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home. Telling the story of an extreme racer who adopts a dog to join him on his breathless adventures, this heartwarming story earned a strong critical reception, although it fell just short commercially with a $32 million box office haul against a budget of $19 million.

Wahlberg stars in the movie as Michael Light, based on Lindnord, and is joined by the likes of Simu Liu, Juliet Rylance, and even famous TV survivalist Bear Grylls** **as himself. Wahlberg is the highlight of the movie, called “a talented leading man with the right material,” in Nate Richard’s review for Collider, with many considering it his best role of the decade so far. Over two years since it first debuted, *Arthur the King *is a quiet hit again, officially ranking as one of the ten most-streamed movies on Netflix in the U.S. at the time of writing.

Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.

Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.

Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.

Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.

Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.

Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.

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