Bad translation is bad.
The German officer played by Walter Gotell* in The Guns of Navarone:
Gregory Peck (Mallory): Tell us the location of the transmitter.
Gotell: I will not tell you
(Peck pulls out the Luger he confiscated from a guard and points it at Gotell)
Gotell: You will not hesitate to kill me for any number of reasons, but not for that one. In any case, I will not tell you.
(Peck does not shoot Gotell’s character, but merely has him gagged.)
*Gotell was another of those “go-to” villain actors. He played a top S.P.E.C.T.R.E. operative in From Russia with Love, then returned to the series to play Russian General Gogol in several of the Roger Moore Bond films, including The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only)
There is a surprising amount of admiration for Colonel Quaritch in Avatar, where he fought with unflagging courage and badassery to the very end and died a hero’s death.
I’ve noticed that most of the really good villains have some kind of good dimension to them. If the villain didn’t have some kind of really good qualities, he’d be pretty sad-sack no matter how powerful he is. In fact, most of the really pathetic villains with few-or-no redeeming value are actually hiding behind other, better villains.
Courage is a very good one for the villain to have. Audiences always love it when a villain is willing to fight (dirty maybe, but still) for victory. A villain who can’t or won’t risk anything is ultimately not much of a threat. Fortitude is another classical value good for the villain, but of course not the only one. Villains with strong senses of honor, or even compassion for those not in their way are always good.
I once had a bit of a thread on Voldemort from the Harry Potter series. He was pretty good in his original incarnation as a merciless monstrosity, but later on he became a huge mess. The problem with Voldy was that he was a completely worthless person, even as a villain. He was completely domineering when he was stronger, but had not the slightest ability to stand up to opposition. Basically, he had no balls. He had amazing abilities, but no real character to make use of them. The moment his absurd Captain Broken superpowers failed him, he had nothing left to fall back on. Nobody was loyal to him because he wasn’t capable of inspiring it aside from a few mad fanatics (who are apparently quite common among wizards). Nobody believed in his vision because he didn’t have one. He managed to get enough ruthless supporters with grudges, but half of them were either useless idiots or treacherous bastards who’d sell him out the moment it was convenient.
He something of an anti-Vader. What’s often forgotten is that for all his tyrannical appearance, Darth Vader was willing to march right onto the spaceship about two seconds after his soldiers cleared the first hallway. He was menacing but surprisingly treated his people with respect and listened to what his officers said. He may have been dangerous to cross - but it’s also clear he was reasonable and perceptive, and a dangerously savvy opponent. His later humanization didn’t make him any less deadly an opponent.
In Casablanca Maj. Strasser is told by Humphrey frickin’ Bogart twice that he will shoot if Strasser does not put down the phone. Strasser knows that Rick Blaine will in fact shoot him because he already has his gun out and is pointing at him and because he is played by Humphrey frickin’ Bogart and Strasser has seen Blaine shoot him all 34 times I have watched this film. He will shoot him. Dead. Does Strasser think twice about his evil Nazi duty to stop Victor Lazlo and saddle our hero with Elsa Lund, the whining love interest? No, he does not. He keeps talking on the phone and slowly draws his luger while Bogat, cool as a frickin’ cucumber, shoots him dead. No way is he gonna have that whining Sweedish woman come back and break his heart *again. * Strasser doesn’t even get the villain’s usual denouement publicly at the hands of the superior hero, his death is chalked up to frickin’ The Usual Suspects, and Verbal, who aren’t even born yet. Go quietly into that evil night Conrad Viedt, go quietly.
Count Dooku was against both the Jedi because it was complacent AND the Sith Lord because he was evil. Other than the red light saber and force lightning I think he was actually fighting the good fight.
I always thought the Palpatine was the best thing about the Prequels.
The Black Knight put up a hell of a fight against King Arthur.
I know what yer thinking. “Did he smite us with six bolts or only five ?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I’ve kinda lost track myself. But seeing as this is a Mk. I Lightning Bolt, the smallest and piddliest of my godly powers and it would still fry your head clean off, etc.
If we can count books as well as movies, Mayor Rudgutter from Perdido Street Station may well be a complete bastard, but he has a lot of excellent qualities. When faced with an unknown eldritch nightmare, he’s tough, shrewd, smart, decisive, willing to listen to counsel, and not afraid to delegate to experts when he knows his own people are outclassed. Like Moist von Lipwig, he’s a tactical thinker under pressure, and if one of his plans fails to come off he has backup options. Apart from the whole torture and stealing eyes bit, he’s actually an admirable leader. And he’s not afraid to enter negotiations with the Weaver, who is basically lunatic chaos personified, not once but several times, and get the deal he wants.
I think that was deliberate on Rawling’s part. That in the end, Voldemort was nothing but a hollow shell, a source of pointless destruction and harm.
Black Belltower Ninja and Nameless TIE fighter ace got their nods before I got here—I can die happy. 
But for my other suggestion, I’m going to go with something a bit peculiar…
Masters of the Universe.
The movie.
The live-action, Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, Frank Langella as Skeletor, set-mostly-on-modern-day-Earth-via-a-flimsy-stargate-plot-device-so-they-could-save-on-sets, movie. With Courtney Cox and Tom Paris.
Anyway—at risk of SPOILERS—the film actualy starts off in medias res, with Skeletor completing his surprise conquest of Eternia, his legions of troops appearing out of nowhere, the heroes’ forces caught off-guard, scattered and outnumbered.
Long story short, He-Man and sidekicks flee with the Portal Device to Earth, and Skeletor sends the requisite rag-tag evil mercenary bounty hunter team after them.
They fail. Naturally. As always happens in these kinds of adventures. But this isn’t about them.
Frustrated at the failure of the henchmen, Skeletor sends his second-in-command, Evil-Lyn through the portal, allowing her to take as many troops as she needs—possibly as many as a battalion of the troops she had ready. These guys are basically just stormtroopers—your standard, face-concealing helmet, interchangeable mooks with mediocre blaster aim. They might even be robots, for all the sparks they “bleed,” although at least one electronic warfare minion among them seems to have an actual personality.
They win.
It takes brains, trickery, and guile on the part of the villains, true. But the stormtroopers do the heavy fighting.
And with spirit. Even when it comes down to subdue He-Man himself, a towering, superstrong, muscle-bound blonde mayhem engine with a magic sword, hand-to-hand, they leap into the fray without a word. And no would-be one-on-one duels of honor—they rush him, en masse, half a dozen troopers holding his arms while another went for his head. All because the CO wanted him alive.
None of them surrender, none of them ran.
Their armor even seems to work at protecting against at least some of the heroes’ laser fire—in one case, definitely so, as He-Man blasts a couple with a pistol as he flies by on a stolen hover-platform…and the minion, a shot later, struggles to his feet, picks up a weapon, and returns fire.
And for all of the famed "Stormtrooper effect"s influence, and to be fair the troopers DO miss quite a bit, the heroes visibly miss their targets quite a few times, too. But the troopers actually get a aimed few hits in, themselves. Against big-named heroes.
So yeah, the nameless, faceless, action figure-less minions from a derided 1980s toy commercial movie spinoff. If I could find those dark helmeted sons of bitches, I’d give them each a medal.
I guess it’s safe to not spoiler box stuff from a move released 11 years ago.
How about a villain that you don’t actually see until the very end, and even then you don’t know that you are actually seeing him until the last second plot twist.
Although never given a name, the French Captain in Master and Commander was a worthy adversary. No matter what evasive maneuvers Captain Aubrey tried to get away from the French frigate, it was always there waiting for him when he emerged from the fog. Both ships eventually fought bravely, with Aubrey winning. The French Captain supposedly died in the battle, but later it is discovered that he survived by posing as the ship’s doctor (who had been killed) and thus was on board the ship, apparently to lead a revolt against the captors.
At one point in the film, Captain Aubrey wonders at the perseverence of the French Captain:
Another vote for Anton Chigurh.
Damn.
The plot by the French Captain ruined the character for me though. Masquerading as the ship’s doctor to avoid capture was very dishonorable behavior for an officer, even a Frenchman. I really wish they had left that out.
In Black Hawk Down it amazed me how willing the Somalis were to keep charging the Americans. The casualty rate must have been 100 to 1 and the medical care on offer to the wounded Somalis could not have been state of the art. Still at every corner there are 100 somali soldiers willing to charge the Americans while firing the AKs. It surpasses courage and goes into foolishness. There would not be enough money in the world for me to charge the Americans after seeing what happened to literally dozens of other people trying the same tactic. The crazy thing is that is was based on a true story. Estimates of Somalis killed are as high as 2,000 so it is not like the movie was exaggerating.
Throughout the whole series of Star Wars movies the Sith generally showed themselves to be much more capable, intelligent and generally competent than the Jedi. They fought with as much courage as the Jedi, but in both cases that might be more of a reflection of their faith in the Force than simple physical courage. In the Clone Wars series, the courage of ordinary clone warriors who don’t have Jedi powers and can be and often are easily killed by a stray laser bolt, generally matches or surpasses the Jedi and the Sith.
I somewhat agree with this, but remember, the French captain was a privateer, and privateers did not live by the same code as a naval captain of the English or French Navy. They were in many ways closer to pirates than their “official” brethren.
It was a plot twist specifically created for the movie, it was not present in the Patrick O’Brian books.
My favorite bad guys are in The Count Of Monte Cristo with Cavaziel and Pearce. The warden who imprisons and tortures people he knows are innocent because, eh, whatcha gonna do, it’s how the system works, quitcherbitchin and do your time. His response to the line “God will give justice” is one of the greats: "A bargain then. You cry out to God, and I’ll stop beating you the moment he appears.
And Pearce, the frenemy with no redeeming qualities who thinks being noble means he should get what he wants, period. He comes back to try and kill someone he’s royally screwed over, even at the cost of his own freedom, because he can’t stand the idea the guy might end up happy. There’s not even real malice in it - simply a conflicting worldview.
Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias from Watchmen (which was a graphic novel made into a movie, so I guess it counts for the purposes of this thread, even if the GN was superior). He hires an assassin to take him out AND faces down/catches a bullet, all in complete confidence of his own abilities.