Anyway, in the vain of that previous article, this time I've decided to go for another honourable mention style roll call.
More often than not, the most memorable thing about a film is it's villain, usually because they do shit we can't, as opposed to the hero who has to be good to be...well, a hero. Unless he's an anti-hero, but that's a story for a different time. We all know the famous ones, from Hannibal Lecter to The Joker to Jack Torrance to...dozens of others. But in between, some great perfomances and some brilliantly written shades of evil have come and gone. Here are ten that escape standard compliations, but are worth a mention.
A pre warning that there are spoilers.
10. Rizza, The Escapist
- "Sorry about your brother"
-"Why? You didn't kill him, did you? He was a junkie, and a cunt. No one liked him..."
One of the hugely underappreciated gems of more recent British film making, The Escapist is prison set story of escape and hope, using a slightly surreal backdrop and significant, though secretive, characters.
And the one who stands out most is the main anatagonist, Damian Lewis's Rizza, who serves almost as a human plot point, at least on paper. He is the big bad, the lord of the manor within the cells, and is untouchable. A challenge for the protaganists to work around, and adding more tension.
But the beauty of Lewis's performance is that he takes something rather indistinctive on paper and turns it into a bizarre, eccentric characterisation. Usually the hero, he delights in fleshing out Rizza as a somewhat camp, effortlessly intimidating cockney crime lord.
There is no back story to set him up as evil and scary, no long monologues or random acts of violence. He establishes himself from the start as the top dog with a straight backed posture, and contemptuous body language towards his fellow inmates. He doesn't threaten with words, he does so with his eyes, which glare with almost unnatural fire. When confrontation does arise, you fear for whoever is in his path, although he has done little. Aside from convince a prisoner to cut off his own thumb, of course.
9. Captain Dudley Smith, L.A Confidential
"What's your valediction, boyo?"
In such a complex, layered story, it makes sense that the bad guy behind the corruption conspiracy is the police chief. Smith's villain benefits from two strokes of genius which make him both highly effective, and the revelation of his true nature a deep shock.
The first is that, while each of the other characters is ambiguous and murky, with their own selfish agendas and dark secrets, Smith is the paternal influence, the charming and respectable senior master who seems to be the film's moral anchor, the one truly good guy. Then it's revealed that he's actually the worst of the lot.
The second is the casting of James Cromwell, fresh off the back of his Oscar nominated role in Babe, a picture of loveable and sympathetic acting. He brings the same amiability to the role of Smith, a smiling, experienced face for the cameras, which quickly becomes deeply sinister and disturbing when you discover he has been hijacking drug networks and murdering innocent civilians to cover his tracks, using the under srutiny LAPD as his own, unknowing, private army.
Although he is significantly tamer than his alter-ego in the original novel by James Ellroy, the film's Smith is a monster, fed by greed and personal ambition, just like the three protagonists. But rather than sneering and taunting his way through, he goes about his business calmly and coldly, never once coming off as anything other than how he presents himself. The good guy.
8. Jack Lint, Brazil
"Information Transit got the wrong man. I got the right man. The wrong one was delivered to me as the right man, I accepted him on good faith as the right man. Was I wrong?"
Speaking of genius casting...
The making of Brazil makes for almost as fascinating a story as that presented in the film, in which Jonathan Pryce's mousy bureaucrat is driven to fantasy in the surreal, anachronistic hell he lives, one part Orwellian nightmare, one part Monty Python horrific overdrive. From studio trouble to legal warfare with executives, it went through it's fair share of controversy and intrigue.
But one of the smaller nuggets of trivia is that director Terry Gilliam denied Robert De Niro the role of Jack Lint...because he had promised it to fellow Python Michael Palin, comedic actor and writer with no serious film roles to his name. It's a brilliant move. Lint is an old friend of Pryce's Sam Lowry, and is a family man working within the Ministry of Information, a cheerful careerist who wears a smile to all occasions...even moments after torturing a civilian for information.
Although he originally seems like a nice, harmless man, Lint is in fact a torturer and the most ruthless of villains because he is not a psychopath with evil plans, but as said, a husband and father so committed to his job that he is willing to sell his soul and commit horrific acts in the interest of promotion. He proves to be both a perfect crystalisation of one of the film's main themes, and also a blood chilling example of the ultimate villain: a good man who does terrible things. Palin brings something another actor would have missed, the contrast which makes it work, because he is so downright polite.
7. Noah Cross, Chinatown
"Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough"
One of the most highly respected films of all time, and potentially the best written noir of all time, Chinatown is not really a bad guy vs good guy type film, but rather a twisting journey into a rotten apple. But at it's core is philanthropist and corrupt businessman Noah Cross, father of Evelyn, who is another great villain archetype: the succesful kind.
The elaborate conspiracy behind Chinatown's story is the creation of Cross, a mega-rich statesman who decides he wants, nay needs, to be even richer. His motive is pure greed, greed fed by greed. Like all the richest of men, he earns his millions by always wanting more than he needs, and having the power to get it. Such is that power that he can speak eloquently, respectfully and with undeniable seniority, down to the screen presence of John Huston, even in the face of facts that would see a poor man destroyed, namely his tendency towards rape and incest.
In the scenes in which he appears, he seems to be a slightly dottery old man, keen on enjoying lunch in the sun and winding down from a long life, albeit with a dark edge that suggests, rather than dictates, his activities. Off-screen, he is a dark shadow that hangs ominously over the plot and the fate of the characters, and in retrospect, he is a horrific figure. And, in lieu with the film's tone, he escapes without justice. Underplayed by screen legend Huston, and played out in such a matter of fact way to make him seem normal, it's only after the credits begin to roll that you realise an evil man has just been allowed to continue his debauchery. Bummer.
6. Cutler Beckett, Pirates of the Caribbean
"It's just good business"
Venturing into the guilty pleasures section here, POTC is hardly in keeping with the previous film entries, yet the three films do occasionally produce creditable output between the choreographed sword fights, cheesy one liners and wooden acting of sex idols. One of the trilogy's best features are the villains, from the outrageous but hugely entertaining Davy Jones to the sinister lackie Mr Mercer.
But the most threatening, due to his constraint and control, is Lord Cutler Beckett. He is the antagonist in every sense of the term, with intentions as pure as rotting flesh and methods as devious as they are inspired. Rather than indulging in duels and sea battles, Beckett conducts his schemes with carefully placed words and the power of suggestion, manipulating key characters for his own benefits, unfathomable actions met with ruthless and effective results. He wins the second film, robbing the heroes and cheating the main villain, from the comfort of his own office, hundreds of miles from undead sea zombies clashing with perilous brigands.
It helps having Tom Hollander, a classically trained actor, taking such a delicious interest in the part, every word dripping with meaning and ambiguity, attitude confident and arrogant to the point of laziness, but always suggesting something deeper. Zero emotion, zero transparency, conducting his actions in the knowledge that everyone, even the morally upstanding protagonists, have a price. He's a joy to watch, the puppet master behind the curtain, utterly at odds with everyone else in the series, hence a much greater threat. He also enjoys a fairly epic exit from proceedings.
Continued in Part 2...
Jack Lint was hilarious but had a dark scary edge that showed Palin is no slouch as an actor. And wasn't Dudley Smith a shocker the first time round?
ReplyDelete