Prepare for an intense journey through cinema's most brutal and graphic films. We're counting down the most violent movies that pushed the boundaries of on-screen bloodshed, exploring how filmmakers have used violence to shock, provoke, and tell powerful stories across different genres and eras.
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00:00Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for those cinematic examples
00:10of excessive bloodshed.
00:11We'll be excluding horror movies for the purpose of criteria, since violence often
00:15exists at the centre of that genre.
00:22Writer-director Robert Eggers may prefer to live in the past with his filmography thus
00:36far, but The Northman proved that this past can also be a very violent place.
00:40Brutal and visceral revenge serves as the driving force behind Alexander Skarsgård's
00:45character, while The Northman also takes time to develop its mystical, Scandinavian lore.
00:50Eggers' penchant for long, uninterrupted takes often makes the bloody set-pieces in
00:54The Northman feel even more dangerous and exhilarating.
00:59The results make the audience feel enveloped within this cold and unforgiving world, perhaps
01:05warmed only by the gratuitous red stuff that seems to flow like wine throughout its runtime.
01:17We're thankful that director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Edward Neumeier decided to
01:29lean so heavily into satire with their adaptation of the 1959 novel, Starship Troopers.
01:35This political commentary makes the excessively gross battle sequences feel more satisfying,
01:40pleasing both our brains and our guts.
01:47Speaking of guts, there's a whole lot of that to be found within these interstellar
01:51conflicts between space marines and world-dominating bugs.
01:55Starship Troopers successfully subverts the expectations of average action movie fans,
01:59while never forgetting to remain completely entertaining.
02:02Oh, and did we mention that it's also technically a Disney movie, having been co-produced by
02:15their mouse-owned Touchstone Pictures?
02:35It was 1971's Man in the Wilderness that served as an inspiration for director Alejandro
02:40González Iñárritu to adapt the folktale of Hugh Glass for a modern audience, with
02:45The Revenant.
02:46Glass' alleged encounter with a grizzly bear and the subsequent abandonment by his
02:50accompanying party serve as a crux for all three stories.
02:53The bear attack in The Revenant, however, is supremely well actualised.
03:06The sequence goes on for an uncomfortably long period of time, and we're left with
03:09Leonardo DiCaprio's Glass as he seeks both recovery and revenge.
03:13Elsewhere, The Revenant also makes use of extended long takes for other violent skirmishes,
03:18and never shies away from the occasional brutality of frontier life.
03:36We could have easily populated this list with examples from the Hong Kong action scene
03:40of the 1980s and 90s.
03:42Perhaps we should do that someday.
03:44But for now, we have A Better Tomorrow from 1986.
03:52This defining example of the heroic bloodshed genre helped codify many tropes found within
03:57many of its successors.
03:59These include stylish gun battles, hard-boiled dialogue, and character themes that tend to
04:03focus on duty, loyalty and friendship.
04:06A Better Tomorrow is a ballet of bullets, and well-choreographed fight scenes, all of
04:10which never let up for a minute.
04:12If you watch one film on this list for the first time, then we highly suggest it be A
04:16Better Tomorrow.
04:27David Cronenberg may be rightfully lauded today as a master of body horror cinema, but
04:31the Canadian genre film legend also did great work outside of the scary stuff.
04:35Fast Company was a die-in-the-wall exploitation picture, while Eastern Promises proved that
04:40Cronenberg could also go gangster with the greatest of ease.
04:51This isn't a typical Italian mob movie, however, but instead one that focuses upon
04:54the Russian Mafia and its equally interesting traditions.
04:58A scene that takes place within a public bathhouse is probably the most infamously
05:01daring example of this film's violence.
05:04But it isn't the only one.
05:08Instead, Eastern Promises exists as a latter-day gem within Cronenberg's filmography, a mature
05:14and hard-hitting affair that still works well today.
05:27It isn't always about how much violence there happens to be in a movie, but rather
05:33how it happens to hit the audience.
05:35The brutality of drive tends to occur in short and sharp bursts, exploding from the screen
05:40without warning.
05:50Of course, it helps that Ryan Gosling's unnamed driver is a man of few words, but
05:55then again, this is also by design.
05:57Drive is a neo-noir soaked in synthesised neon and dangerous characters.
06:01Gosling's rage perpetually seems to be bubbling beneath the surface, so when it does arise
06:06in scenes such as the one in the elevator, well, it strikes like lightning and cracks
06:10like thunder.
06:13There's a good reason why so many fans of director Martin Scorsese seemingly always
06:24want the man to deliver a gangster picture.
06:26He's just so damn good at it, having earned this reputation helming all-time classics
06:30like Goodfellas.
06:38This is a film that walks a fine creative line.
06:41On one hand, it's endlessly quotable.
06:43It features complicated protagonists we're not supposed to like, yet we just can't
06:46help ourselves as we follow their story.
06:48This is why the frankly gruesome violence in Goodfellas is perhaps so easy to forget.
06:53This is a vicious film, and cuts no corners with the brutality of mob hits and assassinations.
07:04It's perhaps easy to ignore all of the violent
07:12goings-on present with Robert Rodriguez's and Frank Miller's Sin City.
07:16It all comes down to the fact that this adaptation of the latter's graphic novel is supremely
07:20stylised in its approach to action and violence.
07:28But make no mistake, because the R rating for Sin City is absolutely earned.
07:32The ensemble cast of Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Jessica Albert, Elijah Wood, Mickey
07:36Rourke and more all do a great job, and it's honestly surprising to see so many big names
07:41attached to a property that contains this much old-school bloodshed.
07:45It all comes together brilliantly, however, leaving us with set pieces that went on to
07:49define boundary-pushing cinema from the mid-2000s.
08:09When it was announced that a new film adaptation of the Judge Dredd comic strip was set to
08:12be produced, many movie fans that recalled the Sylvester Stallone film were less than
08:17excited.
08:18The big fans knew something we didn't.
08:25The potential of the property was huge, and when the end product was released, Dredd's
08:29visual effects and action, enhanced by the graphic violence, appeased many who'd been
08:34disgusted by the previous film.
08:36Involving a unique idea of showing the violence through the eyes of drug-addled viewers in
08:40slow motion lent the sci-fi flick an otherworldly, cool veneer.
08:59Goodfellas definitely incorporated the violence that enforces that world's rules, but there
09:03was one scene in Casino that outdid all of the destruction of its predecessor.
09:12When the film literally started with a bang, we thought we knew what we were in for, but
09:16when a man is later forced to watch his brother be beaten to death with baseball bats, even
09:20we were appalled.
09:21When he then suffered similar treatment but was allowed to just barely live so he could
09:25be buried alive, it sent a shudder down our spines.
09:39The harrowing nature of everyday violence is what makes City of God so impactful as
09:43a fictionalised account of real-life criminal lifestyles.
09:46The film tethers poverty and violence together in an eternal and inescapable dance, set against
09:51the backdrop of a Brazilian favela.
09:59There are no real heroes to speak of within City of God, but instead a survival-of-the-fitter
10:03story of desperate living.
10:05Generations of those living within this suburb of Rio de Janeiro find violence around them
10:10at every turn, with seemingly no way out of the growing urban walls that keep them
10:15prisoner.
10:24It should go without saying that a film depicting the bloody trail of a couple of serial killers
10:31was not going to get a PG rating, but the highly stylised violence of natural-born killers
10:36still caused much outrage when it was released.
10:45Scenes in which murder is given the sitcom treatment, laugh track included, may have
10:48been meant as a satire, but by the time a prison riot is shown, we know what's going
10:53on here, and it's no laughing matter.
11:09When Sylvester Stallone brought one of his trademark characters back to life 20 years
11:12after he last played the role, the decision was made to go for a grittier, gorier version
11:16of John Rambo.
11:17We'd seen the titular badass kill plenty of people before, but never had he done it
11:21in such a throat-ripping, disembowelling fashion as he does in the 2008 indie film.
11:30Ultimately, coming to a crescendo in a .50 calibre M2 machine gun shootout that begins
11:37with its first victim being turned to liquefied goo, Rambo definitely earned its credentials
11:43for our list.
11:49Coming out years before the Hunger Games, this Japanese action thriller sees a group
11:57of youngsters forced to hunt each other to the death.
12:00But instead of drama and melodrama, it focuses on the actual games and horror they create.
12:11This is a world where disrespect by the youth is so out of control that examples had to
12:15be made of them.
12:16With the worst behaving class being forced to kill, or be killed, each year.
12:20Upping the action by throwing in a few ringers with superior weaponry, you can rest assured
12:24nobody will be climbing and hanging out in trees in Battle Royale.
12:41The war film genre received a serious upgrade back in 1998, with the release of Steven Spielberg's
12:47Saving Private Ryan.
12:48The frequently glossy and overly stylised battle sequences of old were replaced by gritty
12:52and up-close accounts of realistic death and dying.
12:56No characters felt safe, and this aura of chaos and danger was amplified by the hand-held
13:01camera work that frequently peppered each attack.
13:08Saving Private Ryan remains uncomfortable viewing too, even some 20-plus years removed
13:13from its initial release.
13:14The tragedy and horrors of war are difficult to bear after all, and this film reminds us
13:19of the magnitude of challenges faced by the greatest generation.
13:33A man and his hammer can sure do a lot of damage.
13:37As Oldboy tells the story of a man consumed by a desire for vengeance, it makes sense
13:41that things are going to get a little gruesome, but the level things reach in this Korean
13:52neo-noir is both surprising and enthralling.
13:55Whether it was the legendary hammer-in-the-hall fight scene, or the torture and tooth-removal
13:59sequence, this film pulled no punches when it came to showcasing action and violence.
14:18Most war movies are inherently violent, but this medieval war drama's extended battle
14:22scenes step things up a notch in glorious fashion.
14:32Never cutting away to the men in the rear or focusing on the politics behind the death
14:35and destruction, the mayhem of the era's wars that is typically glorified is instead
14:40shown in grisly detail in Mel Gibson's Braveheart.
14:46The cherry on top of it all comes in the extended torture and beheading that comes
14:53late in the film.
15:08Much of the Robocop franchise in the 80s was child-friendly, including toys, animated shows
15:13and comic books, except for the film that started it all, which was the furthest thing
15:17from PG.
15:21This movie features a man who finds his way into toxic waste and is horribly mutated,
15:26only to be hit by a car and instantly pulverised.
15:29Even the protagonist meets a gruesome death before he becomes the title character, in
15:32a scene that includes his hand and arm being shot off before his entire body is riddled
15:37with bullets.
15:38All finished off with a final headshot.
15:52When a group of samurai-obsessed professional killers attempts to take out one of their
15:55own but doesn't finish the job, the table is set for a series of escalating standoffs.
16:00In the first of the two films in the series, that was certainly the case, as Volume One
16:04ends off with a sword fight so brutal and bloody, that Tarantino had to make the scene
16:08black and white to get past American film censors.
16:13Though several other of the director's films like Reservoir Dogs and Glorious Bastards
16:19and Django Unchained use violence, it was this film that showed it off in perfect Tarantino
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16:54Most movies based on the Bible eschew violence and opt instead to bring a sanitised version
16:59of the famous stories to celluloid.
17:01When Mel Gibson decided to tell the story leading up to Christ's death, he bucked
17:04that trend in what appeared to be an effort to have viewers marinate in it all.
17:13Showing a vicious whipping, Jesus' head being ripped apart by the crown of thorns
17:18and ultimately his gore-filled crucifixion in all its grandeur, this film has more than
17:22earned the top spot on our list.
17:27So, at what point does violence become too gratuitous?
17:32Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.