A list best served cold: Ranking the greatest revenge movies of all time

is a revenge tale as old as time. Two criminals, Walker (Lee Marvin) and Reese (John Vernon), steal $186,000 ($1,675,000 nowadays), only for Reese to betray his partner, leave him for dead and steal his half of the money. Oh, and he takes his wife for good measure. John Boorman’s tautly directed crime thriller arguably created the mold for the modern-day revenge flick, establishing countless tropes that filmmakers would use (and sometimes overuse) into the 2020s.

Sam Raimi’s first foray into the superhero genre, stars Liam Neeson as a scientist who’s brutally attacked by a mobster. Using synthetic skin to mask his disfigurements and assume different identities, he extracts his vengeance. It’s vintage comic book pulp from the future auteur, crammed with endearingly cheesy dialogue, as well as some still-impressive practical effects. Plus, the protagonist’s moral ambiguity set the stage for similar vigilante tales such as The Crow.

Vile exploitation cinema or revenge fantasy with women’s rights in its heart? This is the conversation that still surrounds more than 40 years after it was released. Extended portrayals of graphic violence led to the film getting critically panned and intensely censored. Nowadays, Meir Zarchi’s directorial debut has been reinterpreted by some as a feminist flick as it asks us to sympathize with the revenge-driven protagonist. Whether you love or loathe it though, you can’t deny the impact it had on the grindhouse scene.

The Dolly Parton vehicle was designed to affirm the country singer’s exalted place in the American mainstream. Considering it grossed $100 million and the theme song is her most generation-spanning hit, it did that and more. Dolly stars as one of three corporate secretaries—Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are the others—out for revenge against their chauvinist, bourgeois boss, played by a deliciously evil Dabney Coleman. The film is an extremely likable, often very funny feminist broadside against male dominated corporate culture.

Alexandre Dumas’ gigantic revenge novel has been translated to the screen countless times and to varying degrees of success. stars Jesus Christ Himself, Jim Caviezel, as Edmond Dantès, a nobleman falsely accused of treachery and subsequently imprisoned. What follows is a -style swashbuckler. It’s a Golden-Age, Hollywood-style adventure from a time when America desperately needed nostalgic distractions from such real-world horrors as 9/11.

is the quintessential fairy tale for modern times. It integrates fantasy tropes (the dashing hero, the irredeemable villain, a princess in need of saving, and, of course, revenge!) with a sense of humor from filmmakers who are clearly as familiar with these traits as their audience. The ever-quotable Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin) is a cornerstone of director Rob Reiner’s classic adventure, out to avenge the death of his father at the hands of “the six-fingered man.”

This visually lavish action horror helped kickstart the Nicolas Cage renaissance, casting the actor as a husband on a blood-soaked trip to avenge his murdered wife. This LSD-laden odyssey emphasizes an oppressive blue-and-red color scheme (similar to Cage’s 2019 vehicle, ) and stunning cinematography over its story. So if you want gorgeous aesthetics, bloody kills and Cage at his maddest, is certainly a must-see.

In paying homage to revenge films like Lady Snowblood (we’ll get to that) and Asian action cinema, Quentin Tarantino made a martial arts masterpiece. , which was split into two parts so no scenes needed to be cut, is crammed with instant classic setpieces, from The Bride’s battle with O-Ren Ishii to the still-haunting buried alive sequence. Superbly written, acted and directed, it’s one of its auteur’s finest moments.

is one of director David Fincher’s best films: considering he also masterminded , , and , that says a lot about how addictive it is. It begins with well-off writer Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) arriving home to find his wife, “Amazing” Amy, missing. Any plot details beyond that are spoilers, as the film darts from twist to twist to twist, yet all of them somehow make perfect sense. That ending’s still insanely disturbing, as well.

While most revenge flicks fall under the action umbrella, Brian De Palma’s —based on Stephen King’s first novel—is slow-burn psychological horror. For most of its running time, you watch the eponymous character (expertly realized by Sissy Spacek) get abused and tormented by her mom and classmates. Then there’s the payoff: that notorious prom scene where she enacts her paranormal revenge. It’s a tragic and blood-soaked culmination, yet it was also inevitable. That closing dream sequence was a prime inspiration for the slasher subgenre, too.

This Luc Besson co-scripted action thriller grossed almost 10 times its production budget at the box office. In the process, it reignited Liam Neeson’s career and launched a wave of “middle-aged men kicking ass” movies (many of which would also star Liam Neeson). ’s success was driven not only by its identifiable theme of a parent moving heaven and Earth to rescue their kidnapped daughter, but also that endlessly quotable monologue: “I will find you and I will kill you” became a meme when memes were barely a thing.

A family driven vigilante piece that the likes of Taken would later shape themselves after, cast perennial badass Charles Bronson as an architect out for revenge on criminals that killed his wife and traumatized his daughter. At the time, the film came under fire for its alleged promotion of gun ownership and vigilantism. However, detach the politics from it and you get a charismatic Bronson in one of the most imposing turns of his career.

Despite being directed by writer/actor Leigh Whannell, eschews horror in favor of being a twisted and action-packed cyberpunk revenge thriller. It stars an excellent Logan Marshall-Green as a quadriplegic whose wife is murdered by a criminal gang. He then uses a computer implant to regain control of his limbs, attain superhuman motor skills, and effortlessly get even. It quickly unfolds into a commentary on the shrinking gap between man and machine that is ceaselessly compelling.

starts as a dystopian cop movie before ending like Saw. Mel Gibson found his career-launching role in Max Rockatansky, an upstanding policeman in a decaying Australia, whose moral compass implodes when his family is targeted by a biker gang. The end of the film is its most iconic moment, when Max is snapped by his trauma and takes the law into his own hands through sequences of deranged, revenge-fueled violence.

This Roman spin on the riches-to-rags-to-riches story (kinda) marked Ridley Scott’s return to form following a decade making and other disappointments. In , Russell Crowe stars as Maximus, father to a murdered child and husband to a murdered wife, who’s out to dethrone the emperor that killed his family and stripped him of his military rank. What follows is a slew of setpieces, while Crowe transforms what could have been a one-note character into a surprisingly well-rounded protagonist.

This Korean horror-thriller puts Oldboy lead Choi Min-sik on the other end of the revenge story dynamic. Here he plays a serial killer who murders the wife of secret service agent Kim Soo-hyun. In response, Kim takes two weeks off from his day job and embarks on a grisly manhunt. What happens when he finds the killer? We won’t spoil that here—but it darts in a myriad of enthrallingly effed-up directions.

Director Clint Eastwood’s tribute to Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, is a revisionist Western about aging gunslinger Will Munny (played by Eastwood), who comes out of retirement for one last bounty. Revenge is a key theme, especially in the climax, but it’s also a deconstruction of the tough-as-nails Western heroes of the ’40s and ’50s. Unforgiven’s killers actually experience remorse and guilt for their actions, which helped make this Best Picture Oscar winner the perfect epitaph for the classic Western drama.

A revenge story where the one seeking vengeance is the antagonist, Martin Scorsese’s remake stars Robert De Niro as Max Cady, a released convict who believes the negligence of his lawyer, Nick Nolte’s Sam Bowden, led to him getting an extended sentence. Cady uses knowledge of legal loopholes acquired during his imprisonment to terrorize Bowden and his family, making for 128 minutes of undiluted tension. This is one of Scorsese’s mid-career apexes.

’s premise is relatively standard revenge film fare: a gang of criminals rapes a woman and murders her husband, and she yearns for her daughter to grow up and seek vengeance. However, what makes Toshiya Fujita’s story stand out is its beauty. The cinematography, color and, bucketloads of crimson blood turn murder into a gorgeous visual art form, as does the graceful performance of Meiko Kaji; her sword swings are delivered and framed like a dance. Simply masterful.

Keanu Reeves reunited with his stunt double, Chad Stahelski, for , a thrill-a-minute gun-fu revenge flick. Its stoic protagonist shoots his way through the criminal underworld as vengeance for his murdered dog, and his lack of dialogue makes him the perfect blank slate so audiences can put themselves in his badass shoes. Factor in its very videogame-like fight choreography and you get the ultimate guy movie for the 2010s. No wonder it spawned a still-successful and beloved franchise.

Easily the coolest superhero flick of the 1990s, meshed goth rock and horror aesthetics to keep the genre relevant at a time when Marvel and DC were box office poison. Hammering home that darker edge is the narrative, where rock star Eric Draven returns from the grave as a face-painted avenger, killing the gang that murdered him and his partner. It should have been Brandon Lee’s breakout role, but he tragically died on-set at age 28.

, the breakthrough film from future director Christopher Nolan, uses a non-linear framework to put the audience in the shoes of its main character, who can’t create long-term memories. It’s a slow crawl backwards and forwards in time, uniquely positioning Leonard (Guy Pearce) as his own unreliable narrator due to his illness. Since Memento, Nolan has continued to trick his audiences with mind games like . But this remains the writer/director’s most “wow” moment.

There aren’t enough superlatives to convey how brilliant yet distressing is. Let’s start by saying that this story of a man imprisoned for 15 years before being released, both seemingly without justification, is full of some of the best cinematic action ever. There’s a reason why that hallway scene is so hallowed. Beneath that though, there are also thought-provoking ponderings on memory, hypnosis, trauma, and the nature and purpose of revenge. If you want a gun-toting action film, a disturbing psych-trip and an intelligent art film, you’ll get them all here. It’s that good.