If we’re being rational, level-headed grown-ups about it, we’re saying no to revenge. It offers no closure. It creates a vicious cycle of pain. It amplifies negativity. I mean, we’ve all heard that adage – frequently but probably incorrectly attributed to the renowned Chinese philosopher Confucius – about the person embarking upon a journey of revenge needing to dig two graves, one for themselves. Truly sage advice.
But still. Years…scratch that, decades…scratch that, centuries of stories that have depicted wronged individuals seeking to redress the balance through cunning schemes or violent means have captivated audiences, and for a very simple reason: we can relate. Whether someone has broken our heart or broken into our house, cut us off in traffic or done something far worse, for many of us, our first response on a primal level is evening up the score. As I have been hurt, so shall you be.
However, we have a whole lot of social conditioning (and you know, laws) to deter us from committing extreme acts of payback, particularly violent ones. Perhaps, then, it’s a need for catharsis that underlies the popularity of movies where fictional characters played by charismatic performers enact their own forms of retributive justice.
The ’Best Served Cold’ collection, with a variety of titles available on SBS On Demand (and some featuring on SBS World Movies from April 2-12, see the for screening times), offers a global smorgasbord of getting even. And while Les Liaisons dangereuses author Pierre Choderlos de Laclos wrote that revenge was indeed a dish best served cold, you may find that these films – some of which explore the complicated nature of payback, some of which shoot first and don’t bother to ask questions later – leave you with a warm glow.
Riders of Justice
An accident that may be no accident at all. A dead woman. A surly widower with a short fuse. And motorcycle gang. At first glance, the 2010 Danish action-comedy Riders of Justice appears to have all the familiar ingredients for your typical revenge story. But the movie will sometimes zag when you feel it’s going to zig, and the result is a tale that meets many of one’s expectations while pleasingly confounding them in others.
When his wife is killed in a train crash, career soldier Markus (Mads Mikkelsen) returns from Afghanistan to console a teenage daughter with whom he cannot connect. But he finds meaning when a group of conspiracy theorists convince him that the crash was orchestrated by the Riders of Justice bikie gang to wipe out a witness in an upcoming trial. The group’s theory is pretty shaky, but Markus needs a purpose in life and avenging his wife’s death might be just what he needs. Of course, the road to revenge is full of detours, roadblocks and hairpin turns.
Riders of Justice airs 9.40pm Thursday 4 April on SBS World Movies and will stream at SBS On Demand for 60 days after it airs.
The Villainess
Vengeance isn’t limited to any one nationality, but in recent times our friends in South Korea would appear to have cornered the market on big-screen payback. I mean, acclaimed filmmaker Park Chan-wook made a whole cinematic triptych called The Vengeance Trilogy! (It includes the magnificent Oldboy, truly the greatest long game in history of cinematic revenge.)
Director and co-writer Jung Byung-gil was inspired by Luc Besson’s action classic La Femme Nikita in fashioning The Villainess, a blood-stained, full-throttle story of unstoppable female assassin Sook-hee (Kim Ok-vin), whose brilliant career wasting supposed enemies of the state for a shadowy government agency is built upon years of brutalisation, manipulation and deceit by men of varying degrees of scumminess. When the demons of Sook-hee’s past collide with the lies of the present, our anti-heroine, armed with the sharpest sword in town (among other weapons), sets out to right the many, many wrongs committed against her.
The Villianess airs 9.30pm Wednesday 3 April on SBS World Movies and will stream at SBS On Demand for 60 days after it airs.
Wild Indian
The revenge at the heart of Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr’s bold, provocative drama is not the rip-roaring rampage kind. Instead, it’s part of an intimate and meditative piece of work that examines the echoes and reverberations of a violent act over the course of years, poisoning everyone it touches. It doesn’t provide a vicarious jolt but a persistent, unsettling chill – believe it or not, that’s a recommendation.
When he was a young boy, Native American man Makwa shot and killed a fellow student and roped his friend Teddo into burying the body. Years later, Makwa has renamed himself Michael and assimilated himself into white society via marriage and a career but the scars of his crime and his abusive childhood are still present, and flare up even more when Teddo, fresh out of prison, comes back into his life.
Wild Indian airs 9.35pm Wednesday 10 April on SBS World Movies and is also streaming now at SBS On Demand.
Drive
There are a lot of filmmakers who relish and revel in violence, but few seem to fetishise it in recent years the way Nicolas Winding Refn does. The Danish writer-director takes his time, luxuriates in tension and dread, putting his characters and his viewers through the wringer, then lets the mayhem explode – he’s done so in pitiless medieval wildlands (Valhalla Rising) and merciless modern-day Bangkok (Only God Forgives) to bruising effect. And in his most high-profile project to date, the 2011 neo-noir Drive, he takes it to L.A.
The central character of Drive, a cool-customer wheelman/stuntman aptly named Driver and played by Ryan Gosling with an inversion of his charm and charisma that here proves compelling in a whole different way, comes close to love and connection in ways that have seemingly eluded him his whole life when he becomes enmeshed into the lives of the woman next door and her young son, only to have it snatched away by ruthless criminals. Driver may seem impassive and detached but he’ll use any tool at his disposal – sometimes an actual tool, like a hammer – to straighten out the bad guys.
Drive airs 9.30pm Friday 12 April on SBS World Movies, and is also streaming now at SBS On Demand.
Death Proof
You know who’s big on vengeance? Quentin Tarantino. QT made the definitive revenge epic of the 21st century with his Kill Bill duology (also streaming for a limited time in the ) but Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight are all populated by people out for payback. And so is Death Proof, maligned for a while there as Tarantino’s weakest effort but slowly, steadily gaining a bit of critical ground as both a loving, authentic tribute to the B-movies of the 1970s and a kickass action-thriller with a decidedly feminist bent.
The filmmaker’s half of the Grindhouse double feature (Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, also available during the ‘Best Served Cold’ season, is the other) takes its time in its first act introducing us to the seemingly charming, actually cold-blooded Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell using his aw-shucks affability as a deadly ruse on the characters and the audience) before revealing his horrifying grudge against the opposite sex. So, in the back half of the film, when Mike tries to use his ‘death proof’ muscle car to terrify a hot rod full of hotties, including legendary Kiwi stuntwoman Zoe Bell, it’s genuinely stirring when the women turn the tables and gain the upper hand.
Death Proof is streaming now at SBS On Demand, also part of the . It will also air on SBS World Movies 8.30pm Saturday 11 May, as part of a Saturday night Quentin Tarantino season in April and May.
Stream free On Demand
Death Proof
action • horror • 2007
action • horror • 2007
Planet Terror is also streaming now at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Planet Terror
horror • thriller • 2007
horror • thriller • 2007
The Quick and the Dead
Because they tend to take place in a lawless land, revenge is a frequent motif in the Western. And 1995’s The Quick and the Dead takes every archetype in the book and polishes them till they glow…then adds an intriguing twist. While the American Western is not without its female protagonists, female gunslingers were traditionally few and far between. Then Sharon Stone, hot off her star-making role in Basic Instinct, strapped on a six-shooter.
Stone’s Ellen rides into the dusty prairie town of Redemption (subtle!) to take part in a quick-draw showdown contest that only ever leaves one man standing, and that man is usually town patriarch Herod (Gene Hackman). Ellern claims she’s only in it for the money, but let’s not kid ourselves here: there’s definitely a darker motivation at play. Co-starring a young Russell Crowe (hand-picked by Stone as her love interest), an even younger Leonardo DiCaprio and a murderers’ row of great character actors, it’s brought to the screen with inventive, bravura gusto by Evil Dead and Spider-Man director Sam Raimi (also hand-picked by Stone, who clearly had good taste in collaborators).
The Quick and The Dead is streaming at SBS On Demand until 30 June.
Richard III
In so many stories, revenge is painted as righteous, or at least righteous-adjacent – a necessary response to an unjust misdeed. But what if it’s cruel, verging on petty, the response to years of resentment at perceived disrespect? That’s maybe a little tougher to rally behind, but William Shakespeare had the right way to pitch it to the crowd down at the Globe Theatre – he made the audience co-conspirators in Richard of Gloucester’s wicked plan to seize power by having the not-so-noble nobleman break the fourth wall and, with a venomous wit, share his scheme.
Naturally, this is catnip for actors. Look on YouTube and you’ll find an array of thesps trying their hand at Richard’s introductory “Now is the winter of our discontent…” monologue, and big-name actors as diverse as Al Pacino, Denzel Washington, Benedict Cumberbatch and Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage have tackled the role in stage productions. However, they all bow to the O.G. (that’s Original Gloucester to you), and that’s Laurence Olivier, whose 1955 film version – which he also directed – is viewed by many as the definitive Dick. To 21st century eyes, it may seem a stagy performance but it's also craftily, cunningly modulated, making viewers Richard’s partner in crime before pulling the rug out by revealing the depths of his depravity.
Richard III is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Richard III
Historical drama • 1955
Historical drama • 1955
Felony
The harshest revenge is often the one you will commit against yourself, with a guilty conscience proving to be the most ruthless and effective avenger of all. And while a story where the adversary is internal may not be as immediately thrilling as, say, Charles Bronson violently wiping an array of street scum off the board, it resonates because we’ve all had to wrestle with the consequences of our actions at one time or another.
Joel Edgerton writes and stars in the Australian-made 2013 thriller Felony, playing a police detective who drunkenly hits a young boy with his car and tries to deny committing the crime, finding himself drawn into an increasingly complex series of events involving two fellow cops (Tom Wilkinson and Jai Courtney) with diverging intentions, as well as his own shame and regret.
Felony is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Felony
Crime drama • thriller • 2013
Crime drama • thriller • 2013
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