I could have bet my house that Lecter was here!
The caller in Phone Booth.
I, too, am hoping that Denis Leary will kill Emilio Estevez and Cuba Gooding Jr. Were they in a movie together?
Mmm… I was the only one who didn’t use bold font for the movie title… :smack:
Livia was great, but I’d call it a draw between her and John Hurt as Caligula.
Annie Wilkes - Misery
As promised…
In Connan the Barbarian (I love the comic, but let´s talk about the movie) James Earl Jones makes a most interesting villain, instead of that pale shade of Connan Swartzennegger (yeah, I couldn´t spell it properly… best thing for this guy to make sure his name is written properly in the votes or there´ll be a lot of invalid votes in California “What? Nobody voted for Arnie?!”)
I was going to say The Proffessional with Gary Oldman and Jean Reno too, but it has been said before. Anyway, Gary Oldman IMO tends to steal the show in every film he makes.
A classic one, Burt Lancaster in Veracruz.
I´m sorry for Liam Neeson, but in Rob Roy Tim Roth is a really interesting amoral mf!
I don´t know if this one can be regarded as the evil one, but in Vikings I clearly preferred Kirk Douglas instead of Tony Curtis.
Anyone else?
Especially Richard III. Specifically (since this is a movie thread) the Ian McKellen version.
In opposition:
Key Largo (unless you want to argue that the hurricane is the bad guy, but I’m not buying that.)
To Have and Have Not
ANY of the four Alien movies (human and alien villians)
The 13th Warrior (maybe a cheat)
Rebus
Buffy the movie
I move that no work in which Satan is the bad guy can be used to support your thesis; Satan is the most fascinating character in history.
And Disney just can’t count.
Any Steven Segal movie.
Bartleby and Loki in Dogma. I’d even go so far as to say that Ben Affleck’s performance as Bartleby (his bits in the climactic scene sent shivers down my spine) make up for Jiggly. I do concede that Salma Hayek and Chris Rock are hardly dull, but… Bartleby and Loki!
If we include mentor figures, though, it’s a bit more difficult: Alan Rickman as Metatron does a fantastic job.
Not that this is difficult, but I should mention Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith in The Matrix. I know it is not very hard to be more appealing than Keanu, but Smith is really the only reason that I’ll see the third.
Pirates of the Caribbean
Barbossa was so much more interesting than that poor, washed-out character played by Orlando Boom.
How could I have missed that? He really stole the show in the first movie.
Also: Brick Top in Snatch. He’s not necessarily complicated… But he’s the most evil bastard ever.
Orlando was a decent hero. But Barbossa, while certainly a great character, was weak sauce next to Depp, who stole a nigh-unstealable movie.
Alan Rickman as the Sherrif of Nottingham and the Baddie in Die Hard. He simply stole the show.
I forget her character and real name, but the evil snippy sister of Mr. Bingly who has the hots and her claws set on Mr. Darcy. She doesn’t steal the show, but she is delicious to watch in the BBC production.
Angelica Huston as the Evil Stepmother in Ever After She was brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
The evil British Lieutenant that slaughters everything in The Patriot. So much more interesting that Mel Gibson. He is also Mr. Malfoy in Harry Potter.
Danny Divito in Romancing the Stone. He’s just so schmucky, it’s fun to watch.
If I ever acted, I’d rather play evil. It’s so much more fun.
John Lithgow in Buckaroo Bonzai as Dr. Emilio Lizardo. Overacting extraordinaire. I love this man. “Laugh while you can, monkey boy.”
Oh aye. No arguments there. He carried the movie start to finish.
It’s just that he wasn’t the Evil Guy or the Good Guy; he just was.
I nominate Heat as a counterexample to both sides of the argument. DeNiro and Pacino brilliantly play two similar characters on the opposite sides of the law. And the movie takes the necessary time tro build up the complexity of both characters. The cafe scene where they sit with their guard slightly down and get into each other’s heads – just mmmmmm.
I don’t think that it is a case of evil or good characters being more interesting. Rather it is the depth to which the characters are developed. Often good characters need less development because they are supposed to be the ones we relate to. Evil characters are different, intriguing and have twisted ways of seeing things and strange motives. (There – I just said twice as much about the evil character without intending to.)
Albert Spica in “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover” was the villain and the most interesting character in the movie. He was horribly cruel, nasty, and selfish and at the same time came across as a pathetic and stupid person. The other characters seemed like wallpaper compared to him.
Shirley Ujest
wow
And Miss Bingley may not steal the show, but the expression on her face when Darcy says, ‘… it is some months since I have thought her the most handsome woman of my aquaintance’, is BRILLIANT. The perfectly frozen features, with real hear-break in her eyes, save her from being just another upper-class cliche bitch.
Yes, Judgement Night. Unfortunately, Leary’s 20’s-style death ray malfunctioned, and he got tackled by a kid’s hockey team.
-lv