93 Best Assassin Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

From sneaking in the shadows undetected to all-out ballets of bullets and blood, the movies have long been drawn to the seductive cinematic flair of assassins and contract killers. It’s about getting down and dirty in an underworld of amorality, cruelty, and violence…yet upheld by its own sacrosanct code of ethics and principles. They probably gave John Wick a rulebook the size of a Chilton manual when he joined the club.

In our guide to the best assassin movies, we’ll witness its smoky origins in film noir, like This Gun for Hire or Murder by Contract, the latter of which Martin Scorsese cites as an early influence. The 1960s saw the assassin naturally go international with some stone-cold classics like Jean-Pierre Melville‘s Le Samourai and Seijun Suzuki‘s Branded to Kill. The paranoid cinema of the ’70s brought out the likes of The Day of the Jackal, while John Woo in the ’80s delivered the blistering The Killer, jumpstarting a Hong Kong tradition of action storytelling carried into today with the likes of director Johnnie To (Vengeance, Election).

Of course, ever since Quentin Tarantino wrought forth the modern hitman template Jules and Vince in Pulp Fiction, we’ve seen plenty more of banter-driven, pop culture-heavy films: Smokin’ Aces, The Boondock Saints, Lucky Number Slevin, and most recently Bullet Train. And, sure, you can make a killing doing the opposite: Keanu Reeves, Jean Reno, Angelina Jolie, and Matt Damon are earning their checks with less words per kill.

To rank the list, we listed Certified Fresh films first. Then we added Fresh movies, like the The Long Kiss Goodnight, Hanna, and the Jason Statham Cranks. After that, we included Rotten movies with positive Audience Scores. The Equalizer, Shooter, The Accountant, Colombiana: Critics weren’t necessarily in love with them but audiences were.

Read on for the best assassin movies ever ranked by Tomatometer! —Alex Vo