The Villainous Valuation

Every hero needs a villain. Villains have always been undermined throughout history. Period. Their only purpose in a movie has been to provide aesthetic fodder to the super-human antics of the heroes. They are the ones who get shot multiple times, sucked; by the handsome neighborhood vampire, sawed off with electric saws, thrown off unnecessarily tall buildings, gulped down by big fat snakes, fed in to aircraft propellers, light-sabered, bombed; with the bomb cleverly slipped into their pants, eaten; by the local werewolf-hunk, drowned, strangled, wrist-slashed, fed with cyanide and expelliarmus-ed; to name just a few. And as if this wasn’t enough, they also have to listen to the heroes blabber on about righteousness, good versus evil and saving the occasional hot girl.

But as time would have it, all of that is changing. Villains are not so easy to run over anymore. They are cold, vicious, macabre and calculating. They exact vengeance with a steely determination. They plot their schemes with commendable cunning and unleash evil upon the planet with grace. Times are a changin’. If they are going to be bad, they’re going to be the baddest of em’ all. And in doing so, they earn our respect and admiration.

Choosing the perfect villain can be a maddening pastime. There are so many unforgettable characters in scores of movies that were immortalized by incredibly accomplished and gifted actors that it proved to be almost impossible to pick a winner. I started by making a list in my notepad. The characters, actors and movies came to me in flashes. During morning tea, in the back of a rickshaw, at work (after lunch) I scribbled down whatever came to mind. And this went on for a week. Once I had a 25-30 character strong list, the main parameter that I applied to distinguish the great from the good was the impact that the character had on me. And as always the IMDB rating of the movie helped; in fact as it turned out, most of the characters happened to belong to movies which were in the Top 250 at IMDB. I also researched on how many of the actors had won/were nominated for an Oscar for their roles and surprisingly, most of them have, barring a few exceptions. And here is my list of the top 10 villains of all time.

Number 10 : Bill, Kill Bill: Vol 2

Bill, leader of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, employs the deadliest assassins to do his bidding. One of them is Beatrix Kiddo (codename: Black Mamba). Beatrix falls in love with Bill and bears his child only to realize that she does not want her daughter to be raised amongst murderers. She runs away, leaving Bill, to start life afresh and to get married to a normal guy. However Bill tracks her down, goes to her wedding rehearsal along with his team, kills the entire family along with the priest and the musician and ravages Beatrix which leaves her in a coma. Beatrix recovers and embarks on a mission to "Kill Bill", which is what the movie is all about. David Carradine is brilliant as a sharp witted, cold hearted, murderous fiend. A performance as amazing as it is unforgettable, a standing feature of a Quentin Tarantino film. David Carradine passed away in 2009 in Bangkok, Thailand.

Number 9 : Michael Corleone, Godfather Part II

Michael Corleone was the son of a mafioso who had no intentions of continuing in his father, and his family's footsteps. However after an assassination attempt on his father by a rival gang leaves him seriously injured, Michael goes crazy. Al Pacino has played the part of the Italian gangster to perfection. The cold unblinking stare, the impassive face and the steepled fingers of the tyrant sitting in the chair make for an unforgettable character. Al Pacino was nominated for an Oscar (1975) for his supreme performance.

Number 8 : Verbal Kint, The Usual Suspects

A boat has been destroyed, a lot of criminals are dead and the only man who has an answer is the sole survivor, Verbal Kint. The entire movie takes place in the space of an hour when Kint is being interrogated at the police station. He fabricates a story and an alibi so compelling that the intrigued police officers decide to let him go. Only to realize later that the story contained names and places derived from random objects that were in plain sight in the interrogation room. People from the pin-up board, objects on the table, places from the phone book. And the shrewd master criminal walks away. Kevin Spacey's awe inspiring performance won him an Oscar in 1996.

Number 7 : The Joker, The Dark Knight

"Why so serious?" No one else could have brought the Joker to life as Heath Ledger did. The psychopath with the perfect blend of searing wit and manic psychosis bordering on insanity. The immovable object against the unstoppable force. Batman could not have had a worthier villain. A performance that didn't just amaze the world with it's brilliance, but one that left behind a legacy, won Heath Ledger an Oscar (posthumously) in 2009 that was accepted by his family. It remains to be seen whether Tom Hardy (and Christopher Nolan) can deliver on 'Bane', the villain in the final edition of the Batman series "The Dark Knight Rises". Even though the trailers look extremely promising and Nolan's genius is known to be limitless, the Joker may have been his masterpiece.

Number 6 : Frank Costello, The Departed

"I don't want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me". Frank Costello; narcotics mastermind, gruesome murderer, FBI informer. The man who didn't do it because he needed the money, but because he was the best at it. The modern-day criminal overlord who slips a mole into the police department that is investigating charges against him! But what does he do when he learns that the same police department has also planted a mole of their own into his own unit? How does he find the "gnawing, cheesy rat"? Never was there so twisted a character as Frank Costello, and the supremely gifted Jack Nicholson did him more than enough justice. In a movie which had Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin, Mark Wahlberg and Martin Sheen as the supporting cast, Jack Nicholson showed us why he is still the best at what he does. It was unfortunate that he wasn't nominated for an Oscar, but that in no way undermines the impact of his performance. I also considered Forest Whitaker in this slot for his role as "Idi Amin" in "The Last King of Scotland", but Frank Costello as a character had just a shade too many.

Number 5 : Agent Smith, The Matrix Trilogy

"Human beings are a disease, and we, are the cure". Agent Smith, a rogue computer program in the Matrix, a concept that revolutionized the movie industry in it's originality and execution. And the main ingredient in the success of the trilogy was Agent Smith played superbly by Hugo Weaving. Unlike other villains, Agent Smith was suave and smooth, the well cut suits, ties, glasses and ever-polished boots accentuated the presence of an order in the ensuing chaos. The diction that Hugo Weaving lent to the role was incredible, and lead to him being the most admired character in the entire trilogy. It is extremely unsettling that the Academy has never considered any of his performances Oscar-worthy, especially for his role as V in V for Vendetta. One can only hope that wisdom will prevail in the monkey-parlour, which seems to be prejudiced against action movies.

Number 4 : Col. Hans Landa, Inglorious Basterds

"Ooh, that's a bingo!". Col. Hans Landa is an SS officer who has a gift for 'finding people', and 'naturally' worked for the Nazis finding Jews. He despises them immensely and takes pleasure in his work, which involves finding and killing the ones that come across his path, which earns him the nickname of The Jew Hunter. He is also deeply conceited as far as his motives are concerned as he does not believe in victory for Germany, but is more inclined towards saving his own skin. Willing to make a deal to further his interests, he captures Aldo, The Apache (Brad Pitt) and The Little Man only to discover that they would be giving him a rather permanent Nazi uniform for his accomplishments (a swastika carved on his forehead with a knife). Christoph Waltz has delivered a mesmerizing performance in this movie for which he won an Oscar in 2010, which was just another of Quentin Tarantino's masterpieces.

Number 3 : Amon Goeth, Schindler's List

A more powerful movie, there has been not. Schindler's List is only one of the masterpieces that Steven Spielberg has directed. Ralph Fiennes has played Amon Goeth, a Nazi, with a finesse that is awe-inspiring. Hateful, barbaric, devoid of compassion, sadist, a revulsion towards Jews bordering on mania, an animal. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in 1994, but lost to Tommy Lee Jones. His rendition of Voldemort in the Harry Potter series and Francis Dolarhyde in Red Dragon was by comparison, nowhere close to the challenging character of Amon Goeth.

Number 2 : Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men

Directed by the Coen brothers and based on a novel by the same name written by Cormack McCarthy, this movie took the world by storm in 2007. Javier Bardem plays an insane hitman, Anton Chigurh, who uses a captive bolt pistol (used to kill cows) and a silenced shotgun as the tools of his trade. In the movie Chigurh is shown to have killed every single person he has spoken with except two people. The Coen brothers and Javier Bardem together have lent such menace to the personality of Chigurh that watching the movie can prove to be an extremely disconcerting experience, right from the first frame. Javier Bardem became the first Spanish actor to have won the Oscar (2008), for his portrayal of Anton Chigurh.

Number 1 : Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Silence of the Lambs

There are very few movies based on book/written material that are better than the books themselves, as was The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and The Bourne Trilogy to name the ones that come to mind. But Silence of the Lambs is the best of them all. Based on the book by the same name written by Thomas Harris, the movie explores the life and exploits of a brilliant cannibalistic psychiatrist with a penchant for the French cuisine. Played masterfully by the great Anthony Hopkins, this movie became legend. The follow-ups to the trilogy, Hannibal and Red Dragon continued in the same footsteps and proved to be the holy grail of brilliant film-making. Silence of the Lambs struck terror in the hearts of everyone who watched it and no other character has instilled as much fear as has Hannibal Lecter. "I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner."