John Wick, Taken, The Equalizer. Too many to name. Saw a preview for The Amateur (2025) which is another one coming out soon. It seems like that’s the ONLY justification for killing they can come up with.
Like this is the logic here: “Okay we need an action movie with lots of henchmen to kill, what evil thing can that bad guy have done in the 1st act so our hero is justified in killing tons of henchmen?” So the bad guy does some overtly evil thing at the start of the movie (often unrealistically evil). Then killing people is the rest of the movie. Revenge happens. The end.
I enjoy action movies, but I keep seeing the same revenge-killing movies that feel like copies of each other.
You need to expand your horizons. Here’s a list of action movies released this year that are not about revenge killing: Deadpool & Wolverine, The Fall Guy, Civil War, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Twisters, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Wolfs, Rebel Ridge, The Three Musketeers Part II, Jackpot!, Canary Black, Land of Bad, Sixty Minutes, One More Shot, Chief of Station, Damsel, Weekend in Taipei, Bad Hombres, The Killer’s Game
Disclaimer: I haven’t watched most of these so I can’t vouch for the quality of the films in this list
Wolfs was fantastic. A classic dad-action movie with some aging, charismatic dudes having fun making a silly little film with low stakes and just enough heart.