Updated December 23, 2022 5.8K votes 2.0K voters 288.3K views
Over 2.0K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of 16 Underrated Revenge Movies Where The Hero Goes Scorched-Earth
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Vote up the most underrated tales of righteous vengeance.
We all know about the motivation for John Wick's initial retaliatory vengeance. Ditto for Paul Kersey and Bryan Mills, of course. But there is a wide variety of less-heralded revenge pictures, both contemporary and classic, worthy of some time and attention. The films listed below detail one heroic character's trajectory from grappling with tragedy to enacting bloody retributive vengeance.
Be warned: A lot of the tragedies being avenged are fairly disturbing. Cumulative body counts (accounting for all deaths, not just those racked up by our avenging hero), when available (as sourced online, because memories occasionally fail), have been included.
The Vengeful Hero: Mob bodyman Michael Sullivan Sr. (Tom Hanks), raised from childhood by his boss, Illinois gangster John Rooney (Paul Newman). Rooney likes Michael more than his flaky, angry son, Connor (Daniel Craig).
The Tragedy: After Sullivan's son Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin) witnesses Connor take out his colleague Finn McGovern, Connor puts a hit on Michael Sr. and personally travels to the Sullivan family home to do away with Sullivan's wife Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and sons Michael Jr. and Peter (Liam Aiken). Michael Jr. hides, surviving the bloodbath.
The Body Count: 9
The Final Hit: Hitman/crime scene photographer Harlen Maguire (Jude Law), tasked with assassinating Michael Sr. by Rooney (who by this point has been slain by Michael Sr., along with Connor), finally gets his man, fatally shooting (and then photographing) Michael Sr. at a relative's beach house on the shores of Lake Michigan. As Michael Sr. bleeds out, he kills Maguire with his own piece before dying in his son's arms, making Michael Sr. technically the final kill of the film (although Maguire was Michael Sr.'s final hit). The vengeful spree convinces Michael Jr. to never hold a gun again, which was always his father's hope for him.
...So, if you really think about it, this is the movie where Forrest Gump kills James Bond in cold blood.
The Vengeful Hero: Marine-turned-thief Porter (Mel Gibson), a man with a predilection for leather jackets and snappy one-liners.
The Tragedy: In a movie called Payback, your hero had better have a pretty good reason for his righteous vengeance. In this case, Porter has been betrayed by his estranged heroin-addict wife Lynn (Deborah Kara Unger) and her partner Val Resnick (Gregg Henry), who double-crossed and ripped him off following their theft of $140K from a local Chinese syndicate.
The Body Count: 15
The Final Hit: After Porter kidnaps Johnny Bronson (Trevor St. John), son of local mob boss Bronson (Kris Kristofferson), the elder Bronson and his colleague Justin Fairfax (James Coburn) use their subordinates to torture Porter into seemingly giving them an address for Johnny. They arrive at a safe house rigged with incendiary devices (Johnny is being held offsite by Porter's new girlfriend Rosie, played by Maria Bello). Porter escapes their clutches and detonates the bombs before heading north of the border with Rosie. Johnny survives. Payback, like fellow list entry Point Blank, was adopted from the 1963 thriller The Hunter by Donald E. Westlake, although the newer film's body count is significantly more robust.
The Vengeful Hero: Impressive, mysterious armored truck company employee Patrick "H" Hill (Jason Statham) - secretly Hargreaves, a mob boss living under a forged identity.
The Tragedy: H's son Dougie (Eli Brown) is murdered by armored truck thieves after H steps away to grab food during a scout. Determining the truck was robbed by employees of the armored truck company, H assumes a fake identity to sniff out the killers by ingratiating himself at the company.
The Body Count: 11
The Final Hit: As tends to be the case in revenge pictures, H saves the worst for last, killing the man personally responsible for the death of his son. That man, Jan, is an ex-military loose cannon whose crew had been tipped off by an informant in the employ of the armored truck company, Haiden "Bullet" Blaire (Holt McCallany). H thwarts Jan's planned $150 million heist of the trucks by turning in the money to an FBI associate and fleeing the scene, bringing some closure to his life by avenging his son.
The Vengeful Hero: Introverted woodland logger Red Miller (Nicolas Cage), the grieving, tiger shirt-wearing hubby to the titular character.
The Tragedy: Mandy Miller (Andrea Riseborough), a bookish fantasy artist/gas station attendant, is slain by a wandering Manson Family-esque hippy death cult, the Children of the New Dawn.
The Body Count: 11 (including Mandy)
The Final Hit: Using an array of weapons (including, most memorably, a really big chainsaw), Red cuts a blood-red swath through both the Children of the New Dawn and their freaky fetishist colleagues, the Black Skulls. He saves the worst for last, though. He faces off against Children of the New Dawn leader Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roach) in a church. Jeremiah pleads for his life. Red will hear no such requests, and instead opts to crush his skull and then torch his corpse.
The Vengeful Hero: Jack Carter (Michael Caine), a British crook who's planning to elope with his boss's girlfriend Anna (Britt Ekland).
The Tragedy: After Jack's brother Frank dies in an apparent drunk driving incident, Jack discovers that Frank was actually slain by Jack's former underworld associate Eric Paice (Ian Hendry) and two of Eric's colleagues. Jack also finds out that an adult film featuring Frank's 16-year-old daughter Doreen (Petra Markham) was made by Frank and Jack's criminal rival Cyril Kinnear (John Osborne) and several of Jack's unsavory former underworld friends.
The Body Count: 8
The Final Hit: Jack's final kill is Eric, whom he beats to death with a shotgun. But the movie's final kill... is Jack, shot in the back by an assassin hired by Kinnear who has been tracking Jack. Yes, Jack gets his vengeance before the credits roll, but he also loses everything in the process.
The Vengeful Hero: Jen (Matilda Lutz), a party girl who has been having an affair with her married neighbor Richard (Kevin Janssens).
The Tragedy: On a peyote-spiked desert hunting trip with Richard and his friends, Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchède), Jen is assaulted by Stan while Richard is away. When he returns and discovers what has transpired in his absence, Richard tries to bribe Jen in exchange for her silence. She refuses, and Richard pushes her off a cliff. Jen is impaled on a tree and left for dead by the three men, who continue their hunting trip. But she is not quite done for...
The Body Count: 3
The Final Hit: After taking care of Richard's friends in the desert, Jen follows him to his house, where they enact an elaborate and deadly game of cat-and-mouse. Jen shoots him in the stomach, but the kill shot is a blow to the chest. She emerges from her experiences transformed and at peace.
