Ballerina

The title character in Lee Chung-hyun’s 2023 South Korean action thriller Ballerina may not be able to get her own vengeance, but her memory inspires it. The dying wish of talented dancer Min-hee (Park Yu-rim) is for the ring of sex traffickers that destroyed her life to be brought down, once and for all. Luckily for her, her best friend Ok-ju (Jeon Jong-seo) is just as graceful and highly trained as Min-hee herself — albeit in a very different discipline. One by one, the criminals find out that Ok-ju’s revenge game is en pointe. 

Do Revenge

Nobody does revenge quite so ruthlessly as teenage girls. Writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (whose directorial debut, Someone Great, dropped on Netflix in 2019) took inspiration from this incontrovertible fact for her second feature, the delicious dark comedy Do Revenge. When queen bee Drea (Camila Mendes) and new girl Eleanor (Maya Hawke) find themselves victims of the vicious rumor mill at their posh private school (presided over by Sarah Michelle Gellar’s glam headmaster), the duo join forces to ensure that their tormentors get what’s coming to them.

Eye For An Eye

When a cartel boss (Xan Cejudo) is released from prison, he moves into a nursing home for what he expects to be a restful retirement while his two inept sons lead his empire. But Spanish filmmaker Paco Plaza’s tense drama isn’t just about their fraught family dynamic: Unbeknownst to the drug lord, a nurse at the facility (Luis Tosar) suffered as a result of the kingpin’s disreputable career and can’t resist the vindictive urge to take advantage of his new position of power.

The Foreigner

Martin Campbell’s The Foreigner begins — like so many films in this category — with a cruel tragedy. When a terrorist attack results in the death of an innocent teenager, the girl’s father is consumed with the desire to avenge her. Jackie Chan stars as the grieving father Quan, a restaurateur and onetime Special Forces operative in the Vietnam War. In his pursuit of justice, Quan finds himself in a twisty game of cat and mouse with an ambitious Irish politician (Pierce Brosnan).

Kate

The clock is ticking in Cedric Nicolas-Troyan’s action thriller Kate, in which the titular heroine (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead), an assassin ready to retire after a troubling assignment, has one day to complete a final, self-imposed mission: to get her revenge. After discovering she’s been poisoned by a mysterious stranger, Kate endeavors to find out who orchestrated her murder and to repay them — all while her body steadily weakens from the toxin coursing through it.

The Killer

Vengeance may not have a name, but it’s served up with great style in 2023’s The Killer, a coolly minimalist thriller directed by David Fincher (and adapted from the French graphic novel by the writer Matz and artist Luc Jacamon). This time, it’s a meticulous assassin (Michael Fassbender) — known by many aliases but credited simply as the Killer — who seeks retribution. After one of his assignments goes awry, his girlfriend becomes a target to the men who hired him. So what choice does a nameless killer have but to methodically take out every single person involved in the attack against her? 

Léon: The Professional

At 13 years old, Natalie Portman made her big-screen debut as a hit man’s young protégée in Luc Besson’s action thriller (which has attracted some controversy in the years since its release due to Portman’s youth and her character’s presentation). Now a cult classic, the film begins with the murder of the young girl’s family, after which she takes shelter with her neighbor, the assassin Léon (Jean Reno), who reluctantly takes her in and teaches her the tricks of his trade as she dreams of revenge.

Message from the King

Chadwick Boseman headlined Fabrice Du Welz’s Message from the King two years before the late actor ascended to icon status with 2018’s Black Panther. The action thriller follows Jacob (Boseman), a man who receives a distressingly cryptic message from his sister in California, asking for his help. Jacob answers her plea only to find her dead, sending him on a vengeance-fueled investigation that takes him through the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles (featuring shady characters played by Luke Evans and Alfred Molina).

Oldboy

With 2003’s Oldboy, Park Chan-wook delivered not just an indelible revenge thriller, but a landmark work in Korean cinema. The second installment in the filmmaker’s aptly titled Vengeance Trilogy (bookended by 2002’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and 2005’s Lady Vengeance), the intense action thriller follows a businessman (Choi Min-sik) who is finally released after being imprisoned in a hotel room for 15 years. With no clue as to why he was held captive, he tries to uncover the truth — and get a decade and a half’s worth of revenge — only to find a much darker, more disturbing conspiracy than he might have ever imagined. 

Night in Paradise

Revenge comes early in Park Hoon-jung’s South Korean crime drama Night in Paradise — wherein a mobster’s retaliation after a devastating tragedy sets off a gang war between rival factions — but its profound impact is felt throughout. Our hero, Tae-goo (Uhm Tae-goo), escapes Seoul after sparking the conflict to hide out on Jeju Island, where he befriends a terminally ill young woman (Jeon Yeo-been); they both become swept into the violence as the syndicate tracks him to his refuge.

Your Son

A father’s rage drives the taut drama Your Son, from Spanish filmmaker Miguel Ángel Vivas. After finding that his son has been brutally beaten outside of a nightclub, surgeon Jaime (José Coronado) becomes determined to find out the details of what really happened and punish those responsible. As he learns more about the night of the attack, Jaime’s obsession only deepens — but the truth may be darker than he ever expected.

Find Your Next Netflix Obsession on TudumWhatever you love to stream, we’ve got tips on the latest releases, true crime, book adaptations, stand-up comedy, award-winning films and more.