7. The Matrix (1999)
Though there is some bloody detail on the exit wounds, and yes, there's a Marilyn Manson song that features the line "so fuck all your protests" countless times (albeit in the end credits), The Matrix is not at all a film with the style and tone of an R-rated film. Though it mimics the decidedly more hardcore, gory thrills of an early John Woo film like
The Killer, it is far more attuned to both a Hollywood aesthetic and sensibility, crafted more as a pulpy comic book in which the nameless, countless, unreal foes are dispatched so that our very real protagonists can live. There is no nudity, no especially strong language, and the violence is more focused on its gorgeous style than on fountains of gore. Furthermore, if the Wachowski's had intended to make it an R, then perhaps a Neo/Trinity sex-scene - or at least an allusion to it - might have been a worthy addition in order to strengthen their on-screen relationship, which is probably one of the film's weakest elements. The general feeling is that The Matrix got an R not for its infrequent use of blood, but the sheer amount of bullets fired, given the implication that this reflects extreme violence, when the film in fact better resembles a video game.