Best served cold: 20 iconic revenge scenes

Ridley Scott explores the dark side of the epic in The Last Duel,  which focuses on the enmity between Matt Damon’s Sir Jean de Carrouges and Adam Driver’s Jacques le Gris, who sexually assaulted Carrouges’ wife, Marguerite (Jodie Comer). The two engage in a duel, which leads to Jacques’ brutal death during the duel. Given that the film has made it clear that he really was the one who brutalized Marguerite, his death is a vindication of her point of view, even if she is still married to a brute like Jean. 

Rosamund Pike is at her icy best in I Care A Lot, where she plays Marla Grayson, a ruthless con artist who exploits the elderly. In the end, however, she ends up being shot by the son of one of her victims, whose mother died alone thanks to Grayson’s activities. The fact that Grayson seems to be on top of the world and to have achieved all of this despite being an amoral monster just heightens the sense of this being a bit of justice for all those she’s wronged.

What Braveheart  lacks in historical accuracy it makes up for in epic drama, focusing as it does on Mel Gibson’s William Wallace as he sets out to free the Scottish from the English yoke. One of the film’s most powerful scenes is the one in which Wallace brutally cuts the throat of the English soldier who killed his wife. The moment is an astonishingly brutal one, and in addition to being satisfying on an emotional level, it also highlights the brutality that was often part of medieval warfare.

Rosamund Pike gives a terrific performance in Gone Girl, in which she plays Amy Elliott Dunne, a woman who frames her husband for her murder after he cheats on her with one of his students. It’s an elaborate and ruthless plot with many twists and turns. It’s also quite ruthless and, while it might seem a bit extreme for Amy to go to such lengths to destroy her husband, one can’t help but admire her ingenuity. In many ways, the whole film is one giant payback scene. 

Martin Scorsese’s The Departed  has a number of twists and turns and, like many of his other films, it explores the dark world of crime and masculinity. Matt Damon’s duplicitous Colin Sullivan reveals himself to be someone who is willing to betray anyone to get ahead, and he almost gets away with it. However, he ends up being assassinated by Mark Wahlberg’s Sean Dignam. In typical Scorsese fashion, justice for the wronged often comes at the end of a gun.

The precipitating event in the John Wick films is the killing of his dog by Iosef, the spoiled and entitled son of a crime boss. This sets John on a course of death and destruction that leads, of course, to his killing the man who took away the last thing he had of his late wife, Helen. The moment suggests that revenge is sometimes a dish best served piping hot, contrary to common wisdom. When it comes down to it, any dog lover can see why Wick would go to such lengths to avenge his beloved canine.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes picks up several hundred years after the end of the preceding War for the Planet of the Apes. The big bad this time is the tyrannical bonobo Proximus Caesar, who kidnaps the hero Noa’s entire family and forces them to work for him. His ending is a poetically just one, since he falls to his death after the clan, led by Noa and his bonded eagle, drive him off the ledge. His demise shows that, as so often in this franchise, apes really are stronger together.  

Woody Harrelson gives a terrifying performance in War for the Planet of the Apes, in which he portrays the Colonel, who is determined to destroy all the talking apes he can, including the members of Caesar’s family. In the film’s climax, however, he falls prey to a mutated strain of the Simian Flu that robs humans of the power of speech. It’s especially vindicating that his doom is at Caesar’s hands, since the ape leader brought the infected doll into the Colonel’s presence. To add insult to injury, Caesar doesn’t even kill his enemy but allows him to do it himself, thus ending his tyranny. 

The character of Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road was so popular that she ended up getting her prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.  In the film, the young Furiosa’s nemesis is Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus, who takes her from her idyllic life and changes her life forever. Furiosa ultimately gets the last laugh, however, ultimately using her enemy’s body as a source of fertilizer for a peach seed. It’s a fitting end for someone who has brought such misery to many, both Furiosa and the other inhabitants of this bleak world.

Payback scenes don’t come much more satisfying than they do in the 2002 version of The Count of Monte Cristo. This is hardly surprising, given that most of the film is devoted to Edmond Dantès and his efforts to get vengeance on Fernand Mondego, the friend who betrayed him and stole his life. In the end, he gets his revenge and bests the other man in a duel. Their final duel is in some ways the emotional climax of the film, and it marks the moment at which Edmond finally reclaims the life that should have been his all along.

Erik Lehnsherr, also known as Magneto, remains one of the most compelling villains in the X-Men universe, and he bears deep scars from his time as a prisoner of the Nazis. It’s thus a powerful moment when, during the course of X-Men First Class, he uses a Nazi coin to murder Sebastian Shaw, the man responsible for so many of his sufferings as a child. The moment is a brutal one, and it’s all the more striking since Erik shares his enemy’s ultimate goals of mutant supremacy. Sometimes, however, revenge takes precedence over politics.

Get Out marked the moment when Jordan Peele demonstrated that he was a horror filmmaker of remarkable vision and talent. The ending is particularly satisfying, as it sees Daniel Kaluuya’s friend Chris rescued by his friend. Rose Armitage, Chris’s former girlfriend and the architect of his near-demise, is left behind, dying from a gunshot wound from one of the young people that she and her family have victimized. Given that she has led so many young African-American men and women to their doom, this is a fitting end for such a monstrous character. 

Emerald Fennell showed that she was a remarkable screenwriter and director with Promising Young Woman,  which stars Carey Mulligan as a young woman determined to get revenge on the people she deems responsible for her friend’s death. Though she perishes in the effort, she lays a trap that ensnares both the man who raped her friend and those who enabled him. The final scene shows them all being arrested, and it’s a remarkably satisfying moment that demonstrates, in film at least, that sometimes justice does prevail.

Carrie, the film based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King, sees Sissy Spacek’s character relentlessly tormented by her classmates, leading to the fateful moment when they dump pig’s blood on her. This, of course, leads to her telekinesis taking over and the death of her tormentors (as well as some innocents). It’s a haunting moment, to be sure, but it’s also cathartic, giving Carrie a momentary instant in which she can reclaim her own agency.   

Mad Max: Fury Road, like many post-apocalyptic films, features a disturbing villain in the person of Immortan Joe. He’s a cruel tyrant who treats women as little more than broodmares, which makes his ultimate demise at the hands of Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa all the more satisfying. She not only rips his face off — mask and all — but also gives his body to others to be mutilated and dismembered. It’s a fitting end for this despotic character, and it provides catharsis to both the characters and the viewer. 

Gladiator is primarily focused on the efforts of Russell Crowe’s Maximus to get revenge for the murder of his wife and son and the killing of his mentor Marcus Aurelius by Commodus, his son and the new emperor. Given just how evil Commodus shows himself to be, there’s something uniquely cathartic and satisfying about the fact that he is killed in the arena by Maximus, particularly since the corrupt emperor has tried to game the match by stabbing his prisoner first. In the end righteousness pays off, even if Maximus gives his life in the process.

Uma Thurman is the epitome of the action hero in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill  films, and her quest for revenge concludes the second volume. She finally gets to take down the man who left her for dead, David Carradine’s Bill. It’s the culmination of her entire journey and, as such, is a moment that has particular power for both the Bride and those who have followed her struggles through two different films. 

Ghost features one of the best payback scenes of the early 1990s. As the film draws to its conclusion, Patrick Swayze’s Sam Wheat gets a moment to reunite with his beloved while Carl, the man responsible for his death, not only dies but is essentially dragged to Hell by vengeful spirits. It’s a fitting end for a man who has caused such pain and betrayed his own best friend. It would seem that there is indeed justice in the afterlife.

The Shawshank Redemption is one of the better Stephen King adaptations, thanks to some stellar performances. Though Tim Robbins plays the hero Andy Dufresne, Bob Gunton is also terrifying as the warden Samuel Norton, who is corrupt and cruel to the inmates. He ultimately gets his comeuppance, however, and he ends up taking his own life when his money laundering scheme is uncovered. Given how much misery he’s caused to the men in his custody, something is fitting about his decision, and he ultimately chooses not to face the consequences of his actions.

The Princess Bride is beloved among both Gen X and millennials, and for good reason. It’s everything that makes fairy tales such an essential part of the fantasy landscape. Though it has many great scenes, arguably the best is when Mandy Patinkin’s Inigo Montoya finally gets to confront Count Rugen, who killed his father. It’s the kind of moment that was made for memes, and the fact that it regularly makes the rounds of social media has made “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die " one of the most beloved lines in cinema.