CineBrawlBest revenge movie
The 16 movies of the “Best revenge movie” bracket, with year, director, runtime and rating for each — then play the knockout tournament and let your own duels pick the winner.
▶ Play this tournamentWhat is in this bracket
The bracket spans 51 years of cinema, from 1973 to 2024, with an average TMDB rating of 7.8/10. The dominant genres are Action (10 movies), Drama (9 movies), Thriller (8 movies), Crime (5 movies). Quentin Tarantino appears 2 times — a good sign of how much one filmography weighs on the outcome. Watching the whole line-up back to back would take about 34 hours. The 2000s are the best represented decade with 7 entries.
The highest-rated entry going in is Léon: The Professional (1994) at ★ 8.3/10 — but a bracket is not a ranking: it only takes one duel against a favourite of yours for it to go out in the first round.
The full line-up (16 movies)
Seeded in the order they enter the bracket. 16 titles means 4 rounds and 15 duels to a champion.
-
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
An assassin is shot by her ruthless employer, Bill, and other members of their assassination circle – but she lives to plot her vengeance.
-
Oldboy
With no clue how he came to be imprisoned, drugged and tortured for 15 years, a desperate man seeks revenge on his captors.
-
Gladiator
After the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, his devious son takes power and demotes Maximus, one of Rome's most capable generals who Marcus preferred. Eventually, Maximus is forced to become a gladiator and battle to the death against other men for the amusement of paying audiences.
-
Django Unchained
With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.
-
John Wick
Ex-hitman John Wick comes out of retirement to track down the gangsters that took everything from him.
-
Memento
Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why.
-
The Count of Monte Cristo
Edmond Dantès becomes the target of a sinister plot and is arrested on his wedding day for a crime he did not commit. After 14 years in the island prison of Château d’If, he manages a daring escape. Now rich beyond his dreams, he assumes the identity of the Count of Monte-Cristo and exacts his revenge on the three men who betrayed him.
-
Man on Fire
Jaded ex-CIA operative John Creasy reluctantly accepts a job as the bodyguard for a 10-year-old girl in Mexico City. They clash at first, but eventually bond, and when she's kidnapped he's consumed by fury and will stop at nothing to save her life.
-
The Revenant
In the 1820s, a frontiersman, Hugh Glass, sets out on a path of vengeance against those who left him for dead after a bear mauling.
-
Léon: The Professional
Léon, the top hit man in New York, has earned a rep as an effective "cleaner". But when his next-door neighbors are wiped out by a loose-cannon DEA agent, he becomes the unwilling custodian of 12-year-old Mathilda. Before long, Mathilda's thoughts turn to revenge, and she considers following in Léon's footsteps.
-
Promising Young Woman
A young woman, traumatized by a tragic event in her past, seeks out vengeance against those who crossed her path.
-
The Northman
Prince Amleth is on the verge of becoming a man when his father is brutally murdered by his uncle, who kidnaps the boy's mother. Two decades later, Amleth is now a Viking who's on a mission to save his mother, kill his uncle and avenge his father.
-
Cape Fear
Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sa
-
Taken
Bryan Mills, a former government operative, is trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter Kim. After reluctantly agreeing with his ex-wife to let Kim go to Paris on vacation with a friend, his worst nightmare comes true. While on the phone with his daughter shortly after she arrives in Paris, she and her friend are abducted by a gang of human traffickers. Working against the clock, Bryan relies
-
V for Vendetta
In a world in which Great Britain has become a fascist state, a masked vigilante known only as “V” conducts guerrilla warfare against the oppressive British government. When V rescues a young woman from the secret police, he finds in her an ally with whom he can continue his fight to free the people of Britain.
-
Lady Snowblood
A strikingly beautiful young woman is trained from birth to be a deadly instrument of revenge against the swindlers who destroyed her family.
How this tournament works
- 16 movies enter a knockout bracket.
- Two titles face off at a time — you pick the one you would rather watch.
- Winners advance round by round until one champion is left: your pick for tonight.
There is no “right” answer and no algorithm deciding for you: the bracket only forces a series of small, easy comparisons instead of one impossible choice in front of a catalogue. You can also play it with friends — everyone votes the same duels from their own phone in a Brawl Room.
Related tournaments
- Best heist movie
- Best time-travel movie
- Best zombie movie
- Best spy movie
- Best gangster movie
- Best post-apocalyptic movie
Prefer to build your own? Create a custom tournament from any films or shows, or browse all community tournaments.