The 40 Greatest Movie Bastards
It's a love/hate thing. Deliciously nasty bad guys...
BY Jun 19th 2009 15:15PMFILED UNDER: Features
User Comments (16)
36. Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington)
Training Day (2001)
Gobshiteing, double-crossing drug peddler with a badge. Harris is a dirty cop who’s hawked his morals on a street corner and got a damn good price for them.
Prime Act Of Bastardy: Leaving rookie Officer Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) a mile up Shit Creek in the ghetto. While cop-hating hoodlums prepare to redecorate their bathroom with Hoyt’s brains, Harris is back home counting his loot and boffing the missus.
35. Withnail (Richard E. Grant)
Withnail and I (1986)
“All he ever did was booze and rant,” says writer/director Bruce Robinson of his Withnail-inspiring friend Vivian McKerrell. To every stranger he encounters, Withnail’s a shit: a cocktail of superiority and self-loathing.
But the viewer, like Paul McCann’s ‘I’, knows he lacks true callousness, which makes his comeuppance – left alone in the rain, soliloquising Shakespeare to the wolves – so desperately sad.
Prime Act Of Bastardy: Lording it over the startled pensioners in the Penrith Tea Rooms... "We'll buy this place! We'll buy this place and install a fucking jukebox - liven all you stiffs up a bit!”
34. Ed Rooney (Jeffery Jones)
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
If Ferris (Matthew Broderick) is the poster boy for free-living youth, then the small-minded Rooney is his bastardly opposite. Petty, smarmy, obsessive… Rooney is all these things.
Ferris can thank the God of cheeky loafers that Rooney's just too thick to ever nab him.
Prime Act Of Bastardy: “Fifteen years from now, when he looks back on the ruin his life’s become, he’s going to remember Edward Rooney,” hisses Rooney as he plans to destroy Ferris for taking a day off school. Get some perspective, man!
33 Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins)
The Player (1992)
Paranoia is the emotion that drives this amoral, back-stabbing Hollywood executive.
He’s the studio’s wonder boy, but he thinks he’s on the way out - his curdled fear fuelled by threatening postcards from an anonymous screen hack whose calls he didn’t return.
Prime Act Of Bastardy: Tracking down the writer he reasons is behind the postcards at an arthouse cinema, Griffin accidentally kills him in the parking lot. Then he goes out and bags his victim’s sexy girlfriend. Yuk.
Next: Jack Lint, Frank Mackey, Biff...
Print Comments (16)
1: ThrashGordon says
cool, glad to see Burke in there, he rules!! Could have done with Ellis from Die Hard to shore up the 80s sleaze... ''Show him the watch... Its a Rolex.' 'Hans, Boobie! I'm you're white knight!'' Class. Maybe Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore too... ah I'm just listing all my heroes here!
Posted: Jul 7th 2009 // 12:37PMAlert a moderator
2: alowe says
Good shout with Shooter. And we know we haven't included Daniel Plainview - but he's keeping for something else... :)
Posted: Jul 7th 2009 // 3:26PMAlert a moderator
3: weirdr0b0t says
lets be honest... brick top from s****h should have been up there!! He was an awesome character, completely lacking any defining positive features!!
Posted: Jul 7th 2009 // 3:34PMAlert a moderator
4: slowhands107 says
The fact that you left Don Logan (Ben Kingsley - Sexy Beast) from the list makes it totally void.
Mr.Blonde!!!
Archibald Cunningham (Tim Roth -Rob Roy)
Stephen Graham in THIS IS ENGLAND.
Posted: Jul 7th 2009 // 4:42PMAlert a moderator
5: mic2803 says
i'm sorry, but you have all forgotten about Jeremy Irons' "Scar" from the "Lion King". "Long live the king", throwing his own brother into the depths of a fatal stampeed (is that the correct spelling?)
Posted: Jul 7th 2009 // 4:45PMAlert a moderator
6: omniblue says
I'm sorry. b*****d list without...
Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) @ American Psycho
Fails
Posted: Jul 8th 2009 // 12:48AMAlert a moderator
8: BapNayak says
What about Clancy Brown's Captain Hadley in Shawshank. I'm sorry but what an evil b*****d!
Posted: Jul 10th 2009 // 11:50AMAlert a moderator
11: Mozkiwi says
How about two b*****ds in one film? Once Were Warriors' Jake Heke (Temuera Morrison) who dismisses the family trip to visit his son in borstal, in favour of drinking at the local pub with his mates - one of whom, Bully (Cliff Curtis) rapes Jake's daughter,while the parents and guests are partying downstairs, with that most b*****dly of lines, "Give your Uncle Bully a kiss." Ick and ick... but the actors were brilliant!
Posted: Jul 13th 2009 // 12:34AMAlert a moderator
12: casinoheat says
Robert De Niro in Raging Bull... The biggest c**k on film
Posted: Jul 20th 2009 // 7:27PMAlert a moderator
13: Kedders1986 says
How Tom Berenger as Sgt. Barnes in Platoon. Shooting fellow soldier Willem Dafoe and leaving him for dead is a good enough reason.
Posted: Jul 22nd 2009 // 12:28AMAlert a moderator
14: halo14 says
This list can not be complete without Gary Oldman. He makes the ultimate 'bad guy' in many movies. The best - his perfomance as the pshycho pill popping detective in The Professional.
Posted: Jul 31st 2009 // 7:00AMAlert a moderator
15: SCY385 says
I have seen other lists about cinema b*****ds, and they always seemed to leave a few of my picks off. But you guys did me proud when you mentioned Dennis Peck from Internal Affairs. Of all the Jason's, Freddie's,etc. Dennis Peck scares me more than any of them. Why? Because he has the potential to be real. A cop with that kind of charisma, ruthlessness, and evil magnetism is a scary prospect. This was the role that proved to me that Richard Gere could act. Good choice.
Posted: Jul 31st 2009 // 10:29PMAlert a moderator
16: carolineadams says
how about Captain Vidal from Pan's Labyrinth??
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