While talking about revenge in movies, we would be coming across countless titles worldwide in cinema industries as the most prevalent idea behind making movies. A well-known movie director, Alfred Hitchcock, once said- “revenge is sweet and not fattening,” which means that getting back at someone who wronged you can be satisfying and enjoyable. It has no negative consequences on your health or weight like eating sweets can. Sure, there is an innate desire in the human heart to bring justice for those oppressed or harmed in a society weathered; it is about a friend, partner, child, or dog. That thirst for vengeance can only be quenched by bringing out clean justice to those to blame.
Movies provide the best opportunity to satisfy those feelings through their revenge genre and offer the most engaging form of a vengeance story that usually has fatal consequences. What’s even better about payback-based movies is that they can express the darkest ways of delivering justice, which can not be practically or legally possible, but in some way can be imagined.
Here , we would be listing some popular and some underrated films in cinema history for you, hope you would like to watch them.
Léon: The Professional (1994)
Léon, directed by Luc Besson, is a story of a 12-year-old girl Matilda (Natalie Portman), and her neighbor, a seasonal hitman Leon (Jean Reno), who teaches her ways of killing to avenge the murder of her family by a corrupt DEA agent Norman Stansfield (Garry Oldman). The main character in the film seems to be inspired by a female hitman character in La Femme Nikita (1990) by Luc Besson; when it comes to opening scenes and establishing sequences.
Though Leon has a much more professional approach as a hitman by being lonely, always on the move, and staying on edge, his life turns around when he witnesses his neighbor’s family getting killed through his peephole and gets a chance to save the only member left knocking on his door.
Braveheart (1995)
Braveheart is an epic historical drama directed, produced, and starred by Mel Gibson (Sir William Wallace) as the main character. It is a story of a man who takes revenge from a ruthless kind Edward the || of England, for killing his wife and father by inspiring and revolutionizing his small province of Scotland to rebel and go to war for freedom and independence.
In this slow-burning revenge story, you will experience finely sculpted pieces of art beautifully depicting every emotion in human existence. Many critiques have discussed the film’s historical accuracy, but here we are not going into that. Overall this film is a masterpiece and a pure art form, a timeless tale I would never tire of.
Gangs of Wasseypur (2012)
Gangs of Wasseypur is a Hindi-language, cult classic two-part crime drama directed by Anurag Kashyap starring Tigmanshu Dhulia (Ramadheer Singh), Manoj Bajpayee (Sardar Khan), Nawazuddin Siddiqui (Faisal Khan), Richa Chadha (Nagma Khatoon), Rajkumar Rao (Shamshad) and Huma Qureshi (Mohsina). The film tells a story about the fight for identity and legacy between two strong-armed families and a blood-filled revenge that passes on to generations.
The film seems to have the same inspiration as any Quentin Tarantino movie when creating a cult cinema filled with enough violence and hostility. It is also said to be an adaptation of The Godfather (1972) in terms of structure and the circle of revenge. However, both have entirely different central elements regarding storytelling and process.
I Saw The Devil (2010)
I Saw the Devil is an action thriller South Korean movie directed by Jee-Woon Kim and written by Park Hoon-Jung starring Lee Byung-hun (Soo-Hyeon), Choi Min-Sik (Jang Kyung-chul) and Jeon Gook-hwan (Squad Chief Jang). The story goes with a taxi driver, a mindless psychotic killing spree who kills just for pleasure using anything available at the moment, and a secret agent whose wife stumbles across the killer on the way home.
This happens within 10 minutes; the rest of the film is occupied by a new breed of retribution in cinema, where justice comes in pieces to the guilty, which also turns a normal man into a psychotic killer. The director leaves no stone unturned while making this a perfect revenge thriller with calculated violence, light cannibalism, sexual sadism, and some dark humor that takes you places where most of us would not want to go.
Kill-Bill 1&2 (2003-2004)
An American martial art action crime movie written and directed by Quentin Jerome Tarantino, released in two parts starring Uma Thurman (The Bride), David Carradine (Bill), Michael Madsen (Budd), Daryl Hannah (Elle Driver) and Lucy Liu (O-Ren Ishii). As Tarantino films always have a reference, this was conceived for a 1973 film Lady Snowblood, a Chanbara, slightly an abstraction of Western and Swashbuckler films.
The story is about a bride who was once a member of the Viper assassination squad led by her lover Bill, decided to leave her killer life after she found that she was pregnant with Bill’s child. In Texas, she meets a young man and decides to marry him; unfortunately, she is gunned down by her jealous ex on their marriage rehearsal day, along with her going-to-be husband and an unborn child. She wakes up from a coma after four years when she can barely walk, prepares to fight back, and takes revenge from the other associates in the viper assassination squad, including Bill.
OldBoy (2003)
Old boy is a South Korean Neo-Noir psychological thriller co-written and directed by Park Chan-Wook. The story starts with a boorish drinker and a businessman portrayed by Choi Min-Sik (Dae-Su Oh) who find himself captive in a windowless hotel room with nothing but a bed and a TV, through which he finds out that he murdered his wife. He spends 15 years in the same hotel room, ruminating over the mystery of his captor and his wife’s killer. Later he gets free in a mysterious way and decides to take revenge, which also involves solving the mystery of who kept him captive for so long and why is he free?
Inglorious Bastard (2009)
This movie is well known for its characterization of Col. Hans Landa, discovered and written by Quentin Tarantino, portrayed by Christoph Waltz, the main antagonist and an NSDAP colonel in charge of tracking down the members of the Jewish American guerilla team known as Nazi killers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). In German-occupied France, Hans Landa finds and kills a Jewish family after a long sequence of chilling interrogations with the owner of the house in which he suspected them to be.
Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) witnessed the act of killing her family and somehow managed to escape the scene just in time. Years later, she plots her revenge when a German war hero Fredrick Zoller falls for her and arranges a glorious movie premier at her own theatre with the promise of every principal Nazi officer in attendance, including Hitler.
The Equalizer (2014)
As the name of the movie suggests, an act of balancing reflects an image of a superhero who acts as a delivery guy for justice whenever it needs. In this film, Denzel Washington (Robert McCall) is that delivery guy who is a former special service agent who faked his death to live a peaceful life. But his desire to deliver justice reawakened when he came face to face with a brutal Russian Gang and a young girl in their captive. You can expect several action sequences along with his hard and cold style of retribution. This film, directed by Antoine Fuqua, is the first episode of the Equalizer trilogy, slightly based on the 1980s series of the same name.
Wrath of Man (2021)
When a random guy gets recruited as a cash truck security force, everybody treats him as a novice until they discover his deadly skills during a heist and start doubting his motive behind joining the force. Writer and Director Guy Ritchie, with his long-term collaborator Jason Statham, tried to give this revenge-based thriller a twisted approach story with some awe-struck character revelations. Like any other of Ritchie’s films, Wrath of Man is full of action sequences, quick cuts, split scenes, and casting of real-life actors or musicians; Post Malone is in this one as a robber.
The Foreigner (2017)
The movie starts with Quan Ngoc Minh (Jackie Chan) driving his daughter for shopping (the only family member left), getting killed by a politically-motivated bomb blast in a clothing store in London. Deeply hurt by the incident, Quan is forced to track down bombers on his own after several failed attempts to ask for help from an Irish government official (Brosnan) played by Liam Hennessy.