So, today I present my Top Five Villains.
For this list, I eschewed the usual villains mentioned in other lists (Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader, James Bond villains, George W. Bush, etc.) and went for my own personal list. I chose these villains because of their relentless villainy during the movies they were in. Always plotting, always scheming, always bad. So here we go.
5. Chozen (played by Yuji Okumoto) in The Karate Kid Part II
I could have possibly gone with Johnny from the first Karate Kid. But I actually met the actor when I was in college, and he is a Christian and a really nice guy despite his bullying Daniel LaRusso and all. Chozen throughout this entire movie bullies, harasses and torments Daniel, all the while whining about his "disgraced honor." Destroying gardens, forcing Daniel to chop through blocks of ice, and then of course at the end where he threatens to kill Kumiko unless Daniel fights him to the death - true villainy there.
4. Warden Drumgoole (played by Donald Sutherland) in Lock Up
Kind of ironic that two movies on my list are '80's movies - if you saw my 25 random things about me on my Facebook, I kind of ripped the '80's and all - but I guess there were some pretty good movies back then. One of them was this prison movie starring Sylvester Stallone and a sadistic prison warden named Drumgoole (even the name sounds villian-ish) who wants to get revenge against Stallone for something - can't quite remember, perhaps he broke out of prison before or something? - and makes his life a living hades.
In the movie, we see the warden try to break Stallone's spirit in many different ways: hiring prison thugs to hurt him, killing a couple of Stallone's prison friends, and finally going after Stallone's wife and child. All this so that Stallone will get mad and break out of prison so that Donald Sutherland can lock him up for good, I guess? Pretty twisted.
3. Colonel William Tavington (as played by Jason Isaacs) in The Patriot
Jason Isaac's character in this movie was supposedly a real person, however it came out that Col. Tavington was not as bad as this movie portrayed him to be, which is a good thing - because if he was, we would have probably tried to wipe England off the map, not just kick them out of our country.
In The Patriot, Jason Isaacs is a cruel military leader who wants to wipe out the American rebels any way he can. He ultimately ends up killing two of Mel Gibson's sons and causing all kinds of havoc in his life. After this movie, every time I saw Jason Isaacs in another movie, I just wanted him to die. Event Horizon, even though he plays a good guy? Check. (I do have to say, Isaacs has this villain thing down pretty good. Lucius Malfoy from Harry Potter, anyone?)
2. Fernand Mondago (as played by Guy Pearce) in The Count of Monte Cristo
I love Guy Pearce as an actor. My favorite movie is Memento, which stars Pearce. I think he has incredible range and does a good job of picking the right movies to act in (Memento, L.A. Confidential, The Proposition, Count of Monte Cristo, Ravenous - well, okay maybe not the last one).
His portrayal of the villain Mondago in the movie version of the classic Victor Hugo book is spot on. Betraying his best friend, marrying his best friend's girl, raising his best friend's son as his own, (to his credit, he doesn't know that his son is not his son), squandering all his money away through frivolous things, and then after finding out his best friend is alive again and being given a chance of redemption - he again tries to betray and kill his best friend. By the way, if you haven't seen this movie - and I apologize for giving away most of the story - you need to see it. Great performances by Pearce and by Jim Caviezel.
1. Archibald Cunningham (as played by Tim Roth) in Rob Roy
Slimy. Slimy. And more slimy. If you haven't seen Rob Roy, you've missed out on one of the best villain performances by a great actor (it came out the same year as Braveheart, and since sometimes in cinema viewer's minds, there can only be one movie a year on the same kind of subject; in this case Scotland's fight for independence from England, many people missed this good movie). Roth's Cunningham is a twisted, sick individual who through his own scheming ends up causing lots of problems for Robert Roy MacGregor (played by Liam Neeson). With his powder, wig and effeminate mannerisms, Cunningham looks kind of like a pansy - but once he starts swordfighting, you realize just how mad this man is.
There is a very difficult scene in this movie that involves Cunningham and Rob Roy's wife - I couldn't watch it - but it just adds to the reasons why Archibald Cunningham is my number one villain, which makes his comeuppance at the end of the movie that much sweeter.
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So, there you go. Agree? Disagree? Want to add to my list? By all means, comment!
4 comments:
This is a 90's movie. The guy that was a total slimeball is Kevin Bacon in the movie "Sleepers". That movie is disturbing because of Kevin Bacon.
I can never look at the guy..even in "Footloose" and not think of him as being disgusting.
That's a good one. That was a hard movie to watch. And to think it all started with a hot dog cart.
Another movie with Kevin Bacon where there was a slimy villain is Murder In The First. This time Kevin Bacon is an inmate and Gary Oldman is the villain as the warden.
Come to think of it, there are a lot of movies with bad wardens. Shawshank Redemption could be added to that list.
Now maybe I would like Murder in the First. Maybe I would feel sorry for Kevin Bacon haha :)
Shawshank Redemption is such a classic!
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