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Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →These 27 films show how revenge can power a Western, a horror story, a thriller, an action film or an intimate drama—and how often retaliation complicates the justice it promises. This is a curated selection, not a definitive canon: the choices reflect critical standing, revenge’s importance to the plot, variety of form and genre, and each film’s influence or afterlife. The order is editorial, not a statistical ranking.
The British Film Institute’s 2017 selection of ten revenge films offers a useful critical foundation, while also emphasizing that revenge stories range from serious drama to exploitation and do not fit neatly into high- and lowbrow categories. The list below broadens that conversation across styles, eras and countries.
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![Revenge [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41pYmc4IYPL._SL160_.jpg)
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Revenge [Blu-ray] | $19.00 | Buy on Amazon |
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Revenge (Director's Cut) | $16.40 | Buy on Amazon |
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![Revenge of the Ninja (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/517EEshZq6L._SL160_.jpg)
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Revenge of the Ninja (Special Edition) [Blu-ray] | $15.66 | Buy on Amazon |
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![Dragon Ball Z - Return of the Cooler / Cooler's Revenge (Double Feature) [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51lKBSzhVhL._SL160_.jpg)
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Dragon Ball Z - Return of the Cooler / Cooler's Revenge (Double Feature) [Blu-ray] | $24.49 | Buy on Amazon |
27 revenge films worth watching
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Winchester ’73 (1950)
A stolen rifle sets a Western revenge story in motion, but the weapon’s journey matters as much as the pursuit. The film unsettles the familiar division between virtuous heroes and villains, giving its characters psychological complications that make retaliation feel less like clean frontier justice. Its racial portrayals are dated, so it is best approached with that historical context in mind. BFI’s discussion notes both the film’s darker view of Western heroes and its dated depictions.
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The Virgin Spring (1960)
After his daughter is murdered, a father seeks vengeance in Ingmar Bergman’s stark Swedish drama. The film’s restrained, grave style turns the revenge into a moral and spiritual crisis, probing faith, guilt and the possibility of justification rather than offering uncomplicated release. The BFI also identifies it as an influence on The Last House on the Left. BFI’s overview places the film’s questions about evil and vengeance at its center.
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Lady Snowblood (1973)
Yuki is raised to carry out revenge against the men who devastated her family. This Japanese period epic renders her mission in highly stylized, blood-soaked imagery, making the violence part of the film’s striking visual design. Its influence is especially visible in Kill Bill; the BFI calls it a major inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s film. Read the BFI’s account of its revenge-film selection.
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Theatre of Blood (1973)
A disgraced actor takes revenge on the critics who rejected him, staging murders inspired by Shakespeare. This British horror comedy leans into camp, theatricality and macabre invention instead of solemn moral realism. Its premise makes retaliation a grotesque performance: entertainingly elaborate, but hardly a model of justice. The BFI highlights the film’s Shakespearean structure and theatrical killings. See the BFI’s selection.
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Rolling Thunder (1977)
A Vietnam veteran returns home to find his life shattered by violence and pursues those responsible. This grim American action film channels postwar trauma into a vigilante-revenge plot, but its violence is not simply presented as righteous correction. The BFI draws attention to the film’s treatment of violence alongside trauma, a useful reminder that catharsis and damage can coexist. The BFI discusses the film in its revenge list.
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Oldboy (2003)
After being imprisoned for years without explanation, Oh Dae-su is released and tries to discover who ruined his life—and why. Park Chan-wook’s South Korean thriller is a propulsive mystery as well as a revenge story, shifting its lead between hunter and prey. Its shocks and stylized violence serve a bleak examination of obsession rather than a simple revenge fantasy. The BFI describes it as the centerpiece of Park’s “vengeance trilogy.” Read the BFI’s discussion.
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Munich (2005)
Steven Spielberg’s drama follows an Israeli team assigned to retaliate after the 1972 Munich massacre. Its historical subject gives the mission grave stakes, while the story focuses on the ethical and psychological consequences of state-directed revenge. It is inspired by real events, not a factually faithful account; it should be read as dramatization rather than documentary history. The BFI makes that distinction and emphasizes the film’s moral repercussions. The BFI’s entry on Munich.
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Revanche (2008)
In Götz Spielmann’s Austrian drama, a wrongful death drives a man toward a revenge scheme. The slow-burn, character-focused approach gives more weight to grief, hesitation and consequence than to action. Rather than promising a satisfying payback, the film leaves space for fleeting hope and the possibility of redemption. The BFI describes its balance of revenge and hope.
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Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist World War II film brings together a group of Jewish American soldiers hunting Nazis and Shosanna, a Jewish cinema owner pursuing her own retribution. Its violence is stylized, its dialogue expansive and its alternate-history premise deliberately fictional. Shosanna’s story gives the film’s revenge a personal center even as the plot imagines a radical rewriting of history. The BFI includes it among its revenge-film selections.
Rank #2
Sale
Revenge (Director's Cut)- A young American (Kevin Costner) falls in love with an old friend's wife (Madeleine Stowe) in this gripping tale of uncontrollable passion and vengeance.
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The Salesman (2016)
After an assault disrupts a couple’s life, the husband in Asghar Farhadi’s Iranian drama pursues the person responsible. The film’s intimate scale and restrained tension turn attention toward shame, domestic power and the damage caused by treating revenge as a straightforward answer. The BFI’s formulation is apt: “Revenge is never as simple as an eye for an eye.” Read the BFI’s discussion of the film.
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Point Blank (1967)
After being double-crossed and left for dead, Walker methodically pursues the money and men who betrayed him. John Boorman’s American crime thriller is cool, fragmented and stylized, giving the revenge mission an almost abstract quality. Its hard-edged protagonist may be compelling, but the film’s atmosphere makes clear that this is an obsession, not a path back to a stable life.
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Death Wish (1974)
When violence devastates his family, New Yorker Paul Kersey begins hunting muggers himself. Michael Winner’s vigilante thriller is brisk and provocative, built around the fantasy of taking justice into one’s own hands. Its appeal lies partly in the force of that fantasy; its central question is whether private retaliation can be distinguished from the violence it claims to punish.
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Carrie (1976)
Brian De Palma’s horror film follows a bullied teenager whose humiliation culminates in a violent reckoning. Carrie is not a conventional avenger carrying out a planned campaign; the story turns accumulated cruelty into a supernatural eruption. The film is tense and tragic, making the consequences of abuse inseparable from the horror of retaliation.
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Ms. 45 (1981)
Abel Ferrara’s New York thriller follows Thana, a mute seamstress who survives sexual violence and begins retaliating against men. Raw, confrontational and deliberately unsettling, it puts the viewer close to her experience without making the resulting violence easy to celebrate. Its exploitation-film surface and angry point of view make it a challenging example of revenge cinema.
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Blue Ruin (2013)
Dwight, an aimless drifter, returns to his hometown to avenge his parents’ deaths. Jeremy Saulnier’s low-key American thriller rejects the competence and glamour often attached to movie payback: its protagonist is unprepared, and violence produces messy consequences. The film’s rough, tense realism makes the gap between a revenge plan and its aftermath impossible to ignore.
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John Wick (2014)
A retired hitman returns to the criminal underworld after a personal loss and an attack on his home. Chad Stahelski’s action film turns the revenge premise into a carefully choreographed spectacle, with clean visual geography and a rapid escalation of combat. Its stylized world makes vengeance exhilarating, even as its relentless cycle of retaliation keeps the cost in view.
Rank #3
Sale
Revenge of the Ninja (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]- Martial arts legend Shô Kosugi (Pray for Death, Rage of Honor) delivers a heart-pounding display of strength, speed and lethal Ninja know-how in this action-packed thriller that takes us back to the good old days of the kung fu extravaganza
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True Grit (1969)
Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross hires a U.S. marshal to help pursue the man who killed her father. This Western treats vengeance as a determined young person’s mission, but its frontier setting and older characters complicate the idea that justice is simple or clean. The story’s measured pace balances adventure with the lasting consequences of the pursuit.
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Unforgiven (1992)
Clint Eastwood’s revisionist Western begins with a brutal assault and the offer of a reward for revenge. A retired gunfighter takes the job, but the film steadily strips away the romance of the avenging hero. Its deliberate pacing and unsparing violence question what vengeance does to the people who carry it out, and to the myths that make it seem noble.
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Gladiator (2000)
After a Roman general is betrayed and his family killed, he fights his way toward the emperor responsible. Ridley Scott’s historical action drama offers a clear, crowd-pleasing revenge arc, driven by spectacle and a protagonist’s refusal to surrender. Its scale makes retaliation feel epic, while the personal grievance at the heart of the plot keeps the stakes grounded.
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Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
After her former allies attack her and leave her for dead, the Bride sets out to kill them. Tarantino’s martial-arts revenge film moves through sharply differentiated chapters, drawing on genre conventions and the stylized violence of films such as Lady Snowblood. It is a deliberately heightened revenge fantasy, though its protagonist’s focused mission leaves little room for the moral uncertainty of more contemplative examples.
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Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
The Bride’s pursuit continues, but the second volume gives more space to her history, relationships and the consequences of the vendetta. Its pace is more reflective than the first film’s, mixing action with long conversations and character revelations. Together, the two volumes make revenge both a spectacle and a personal reckoning.
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Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)
In Park Chan-wook’s South Korean thriller, a desperate man’s attempt to save his sister leads to kidnapping and escalating retaliation. The film is stark and violent, tracing how one act of harm generates another rather than offering a clean line between victim and perpetrator. It is a particularly bleak counterpoint to revenge stories built around triumphant payback.
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Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)
After serving time for a crime she did not commit, Lee Geum-ja seeks revenge on the man who framed her. Park’s film is visually composed and emotionally complex, balancing the satisfaction of a long-awaited reckoning against questions of punishment and forgiveness. It completes a thematic conversation with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy, though the films are connected by theme rather than a continuous story.
Rank #4
Sale
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The Last House on the Left (1972)
Wes Craven’s horror film turns the attack on two young women into a brutal revenge story involving their parents. Its rough, disturbing style refuses the polish of a conventional action thriller, and its retaliatory violence is difficult to mistake for uncomplicated justice. The BFI notes the influence of The Virgin Spring on the film’s premise. See the BFI’s discussion of that connection.
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Promising Young Woman (2020)
Emerald Fennell’s thriller follows Cassie as she confronts people connected to the assault and death of her friend. Its shifts between bright pop-inflected comedy and disturbing drama unsettle expectations about what a revenge film should feel like. Cassie’s actions are purposeful, but the story’s final turns resist the idea that retaliation can restore what has been taken.
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Lady Vengeance and the case for international revenge cinema
Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is already on this list, but it bears emphasis as part of a wider reminder: revenge cinema is not confined to Hollywood. Alongside Japanese Lady Snowblood and South Korean Oldboy, it shows how international films can shape the genre’s visual language and moral questions. The BFI’s ten-film selection includes both Lady Snowblood and Oldboy. Consult the BFI selection.
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Payback (1999)
After his criminal partners betray and shoot him, Porter sets out to reclaim the money taken from him. This lean crime thriller gives revenge a blunt, transactional objective and a hard-boiled sense of humor. Its protagonist is less interested in moral transformation than in settling a score, which makes the film a useful contrast to stories where retaliation gradually consumes the avenger.
How to choose a revenge movie
Start with the kind of payoff you want. For stylized action, try Kill Bill or John Wick; for moral unease, choose Oldboy, Revanche or The Salesman. Theatre of Blood offers theatrical horror-comedy, while The Virgin Spring and Unforgiven take a more grave, reflective approach. Revenge can be cathartic, obsessive, comic or ethically damaging; the strongest examples often make the viewer feel both the pull of retaliation and its cost.
These are films, not historical records. In particular, Munich is a dramatization inspired by real events, not a factual account. The BFI’s 2017 list is a critical selection rather than a definitive ranking; community list titles such as “The 25 Best Revenge Movies of All Time” show the appeal of the phrase, not agreement on a single canon.
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