10 Amazing Revenge Films That Are Really Bleak
4. Dead Man's Shoes (2004)
If you want a raw British drama about sibling love and a twist of vengeance, look no further than Dead Man's Shoes.
The film follows a former soldier, Richard, (Paddy Considine) hunting down the low-rate drug dealers who humiliated and abused his mentally vulnerable brother while he was away.
The dealers are not portrayed as very smart, and flashbacks only serve to highlight the obnoxious and cruel behaviors of the targets. But as the story unfolds, the film reveals the fragile and unstable mind of Richard and the bitter guilt for allowing his brother to be abused in the first place.
Dead Man's Shoes culminates in Richard abducting the last member of the gang; the one man who eventually left the dealers and started his own family in a life of peace. But Richard's twisted mind cannot rest, and he forces the one that got away to kill him- or be killed himself.
A film like Dead Man's Shoes had to end only one way, and while the revelation that Richard had been talking to a figment of his late brother the whole time seemed obvious, it still hurt to know that no one innocent survived this tale.