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Best Underdog Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of underdog cinema — measured across 1,423 indexed frames from 15 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Underdog films over-index on baseball cap, microphone and wood paneling — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    A Few Good Men (1992)

    Rob ReinerDP Robert RichardsonIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    In this dramatic courtroom thriller, LT Daniel Kaffee, a Navy lawyer who has never seen the inside of the courtroom, defends two stubborn Marines who have been accused of murdering a colleague. Kaffee is known as being lazy and had arranged for a plea bargain. Downey's Aunt Ginny appoints Cmdr. Galloway to represent him. Also on the legal staff is LTJG Sam Weinberg. The team rounds up many facts and Kaffee is discovering that he is really cut out for trial work. The defense is originally based upon the fact that PFC Santiago, the victim, was given a "CODE RED". Santiago was basically a screw-up. At Gitmo, screw-ups aren't tolerated. Especially by Col. Nathan Jessup. In Cuba, Jessup and two senior officers try to give all the help they can, but Kaffee knows something's fishy. In the conclusion of the film, the fireworks are set off by a confrontation between Jessup and Kaffee.

  2. 2

    Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

    Jared HessDP Munn PowellIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    Preston, Idaho's most curious resident, Napoleon Dynamite, lives with his grandma and his 32-year-old brother (who cruises chat rooms for ladies) and works to help his best friend, Pedro, snatch the Student Body President title from mean teen Summer Wheatley.

  3. 3

    Moneyball (2011)

    Bennett MillerDP Wally PfisterIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Oakland A's GM Billy Beane is handicapped with the lowest salary constraint in baseball. If he ever wants to win the World Series, Billy must find a competitive advantage. Billy is about to turn baseball on its ear when he uses statistical data to analyze and place value on the players he picks for the team.

  4. 4

    Bleed for This (2016)

    Ben YoungerDP Larkin SeipleIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    In November 1988, Vinny Pazienza boxes Roger Mayweather for the WBC World Light Welterweight Title. He arrives late to the weigh-in, as he has been riding a stationary bicycle in order to make the weight limit. Vinny's final weight is 140 pounds even, which qualifies him for the fight. Instead of resting up for the fight, Vinny spends the night at a casino. The following day, he loses to Mayweather. At one point during the fight, Vinny is hit after the bell. His boxing manager Lou Duva causes a scene by going after Mayweather, but is punched as a result. Following the match, Duva tells the media that Vinny should retire from boxing. This angers Vinny's father Angelo (who serves as his coach), and he confronts Duva. In the ensuing argument, Vinny announces that he wants another fight, and hires Kevin Rooney as his coach..

  5. 5

    Edward Scissorhands (1990)

    Tim BurtonDP Stefan CzapskyIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    In a castle high on top of a hill lives an inventor's greatest creation - Edward, a near-complete person. The creator died before he could finish Edward's hands; instead, he is left with metal scissors for hands. Since then, he has lived alone, until a kind lady called Peg discovers him and welcomes him into her home. At first, everyone welcomes him into the community, but soon things begin to take a change for the worse.

  6. 6

    Not Another Teen Movie (2001)

    Joel GallenDP Reynaldo VillalobosIMDb 5.8TMDB 5.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    At John Hughes High School, the students are the same as just about every other teenager in a teen movie. The popular jock, Jake, takes a bet from Austin, the cocky blonde guy, that he can transform Janey, the pretty ugly girl, into the prom queen before the prom. But two people are trying to stop Jake from succeeding: his evil sister, Catherine, the cruelest girl in school, and Priscilla, the bitchy cheerleader. And all of their friends are the same as any other teen movie: Areola, the naked foreign exchange student, Les, the beautiful weirdo, Malik, the token black guy, the desperate virgins, Amanda Becker, the perfect girl, Ricky, Janey's obsessed best friend, and Sadie, the VERY old undercover reporter.

  7. 7

    Days of Thunder (1990)

    Tony ScottDP Ward RussellIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Talented but unproven stock car driver Cole Trickle gets a break and with the guidance of veteran Harry Hogge turns heads on the track. The young hotshot develops a rivalry with a fellow racer that threatens his career when the two smash their cars. But with the help of his doctor, Cole just might overcome his injuries-- and his fear.

  8. 8

    Creed (2015)

    Ryan CooglerDP Maryse AlbertiIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    Adonis Johnson is the son of the famous boxing champion Apollo Creed, who died in a boxing match in Rocky IV (1985). Adonis wasn't born until after his father's death and wants to follow his fathers footsteps in boxing. He seeks a mentor who is the former heavyweight boxing champion and former friend of Apollo Creed, the retired Rocky Balboa. Rocky eventually agrees to mentor Adonis. With Rocky's help they hope to get a title job to face even deadlier opponents than his father. But whether he is a true fighter remains to be seen....

  9. 9

    A Million Miles Away (2023)

    Alejandra Márquez AbellaIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    A biopic about Jose Hernandez and his path from a farm worker to becoming an engineer and an astronaut. A tale of perseverance, community and sacrifice to accomplish a seemingly impossible dream.

  10. 10

    Breaking the Waves (1996)

    Lars von TrierDP Robby MüllerIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Drama set in a repressed, deeply religious community in the north of Scotland, where a naive young woman named Bess McNeil meets and falls in love with Danish oil-rig worker Jan. Bess and Jan are deeply in love but, when Jan returns to his rig, Bess prays to God that he returns for good. Jan does return, his neck broken in an accident aboard the rig. Because of his condition, Jan and Bess are now unable to enjoy a sexual relationship and Jan urges Bess to take another lover and tell him the details. As Bess becomes more and more deviant in her sexual behavior, the more she comes to believe that her actions are guided by God and are helping Jan recover.

What underdog films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a underdog frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — baseball cap is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • baseball cap2.6×
  • microphone2.5×
  • wood paneling2.0×
  • desk1.8×
  • plaid shirt1.8×
  • white shirt1.6×
  • glasses1.6×

How underdog films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate underdog from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 10%interior indeterminatevs 7% baseline
  • 29%low keyvs 40% baseline
  • 16%high keyvs 12% baseline
  • 87%eye levelvs 69% baseline
  • 34%nightvs 43% baseline

What breaks the pattern

La Belle et la Bête (1946) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 1,423 frames from 15 films carrying the underdog label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/underdog

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These are real movie frames, shown at reduced resolution. All rights remain with their respective owners; they appear here for study, commentary and education under fair-use principles. How these are meant to be used