The Definitive Psrhea Top Ten
by David Kennedy

The Top Ten Baddest Badass Muthafuckas In Movie History

Editor’s Note:  In recognition of the 20^th James Bond Film being released recently, this is a reprint of a Top Ten list we published almost a year ago.

I arrived at the top ten using the following criteria. The list includes movie characters from the big screen only, not from television. The characters on the list are just that, movie characters. We are judging how bad the characters were, not the actors who played them. Of course, how the actors played then contributed mightily to how “bad” the characters were, and we’ll mention them also.

So what qualifies as a “bad-ass muthafucka”? For starters, almost all of them are psychotic tough guys: to a man they took on trouble with a merciless zeal. It didn’t matter if they went against one man or forty; they kick major ass, kicked more ass, kicked still more ass, and in between maybe they got around to asking a few questions. Virtually all of the characters on this list had a compassionate side, but get on their bad side or stand in their way and there was nowhere in this dimension that you could hide from their lethal vengeance, so a large body count in their films was a measure. All except one character on the list were “good guys” but more in the vein of the “anti-hero,” bad-asses capable of insurmountable violence and evil but who always seemed to do the right thing. Exercising an acute ability to get the ladies, honeys, bitches and ho’s and their ability to screw like a rabbit was another criteria. In almost every case the character never lost a fight or a conflict. Style was another decisive factor; fancy clothes, flashy cars, lots of money, elaborate gadgetry and grown-up toys, exotic locales and of course lots of fine women on both arms. And most of all, these were characters that movie fans loved to see over and over again, which is why virtually all the bad-asses who made this list were in more than one motion picture. Only in an extreme case or two, when the character was truly memorable on a historic level, was the character in only one movie.

So here is our list of the baddest bad-asses on the silver screen.

1) The Stranger With No Name – Clint Eastwood:  The quintessential holy terror of the old west. His trademark was to mysteriously ride into town, never tell anybody who he was or why he was there, quickly spot the bad guys, methodically and dispassionately blow them away in massive numbers with nothing but his trusty six-shooters, and just as quickly ride out of town and disappear as enigmatically and bafflingly as he appeared but leaving both a long trail of dead bodies and the town burned to the ground. Two things made him devastatingly terrifying: (1) he perpetually had a bad disposition and was constantly in a bad mood, never once cracking a smile; and (2) nobody, not the townspeople or the audience, ever knew who he was or his reason for being there. Played with haunting mercilessness by Clint Eastwood, the Stranger With No Name first rode into our consciousness in three “spaghetti westerns” from the Sixties by Italian director Sergio Leone; A Fistful of Dollars; A Few Dollars More; and The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. And in each one The Stranger With No Name -- with his trademark slivery-eyed glower, partially-smoked cigarito and plaid poncho covering his gun belt -- trampled through town and lives with absolutely no emotion or feeling, first to kill two outlaw families, then to wipe out a band of Mexican bandits, and finally to capture hundreds of thousands of dollars of Confederate gold – all by himself. But it was in the American-made western High Plains Drifter that this enigma was at his evil best. In order to rid the town of three outlaws coming to seek revenge, all the townspeople had to do was let the Stranger With No Name kill the four gunslingers they originally hired to do the job, rape the town slut, make him the sheriff, let him have the town hotel all to himself while kicking everybody else out, have free food, beer and supplies at the expense of the town shopkeepers, have unlimited sex with the hotel proprietor’s wife with his full knowledge and helpless consent – and for good measure burn the town down when he was through. In the 1986 film Pale Rider, the Stranger was wrapped in even more anonymity and mystery when he took on the persona of a man of the cloth and proceeded to wipe out all the illegal strip-miners and their seven hired guns that were battling innocent sheep ranchers. The consummate anti-here, it was the cloak of secrecy, ambiguity and the unknown wrapped around a persona this vicious and repugnant that made him not just a badass but also a scary enigma all around. That is enough to make the Stranger With No Name the baddest badass.

2) James Bond – Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Pierce Brosnan:  Cool, suave, debonair, stylish, classy, charming, cunning, cocksure, sarcastic, eclectic, smart, and elegantly handsome all accurately describe Her Majesty’s greatest Secret Service operative, Agent Double-O-Seven. And with a license to kill from MI-6, undoubtedly the most deadly single fictional character in movie history. Created by suspense novelist Ian Fleming, himself a military intelligence operative in his younger days during the 30’s and 40’s, there was nothing Commander Bond could not do or did not know, which made him otherworldly and almost surreal. Unlike the Stranger With No Name, Bond, with his self-assured swagger, operated with an almost conceited air about him, making sure everybody – be it allies or adversaries -- knew who he was (“My name is Bond – James Bond”) and why he was there. His glib nature and pithy retorts cut verbal wounds into even the most hardened criminals, and he used his rapier wit with lethal precision even in situations where he did not have the upper hand. But that just added to his deadliness; 007 killed in an almost self-congratulatory manner, always seeming to have a self-impressed smirk on his face when he did someone in. And nobody ever came up with more creative ways of killing so many people. Dr. No, Blofeld, Largo, Goldfinger, Kattanga, Scaramanga, and Hugo Drax – all of them tried to bring 007 to an untimely end before destroying the world – and none of them ever stood a chance. Given his marching orders by M and with the help of the most outlandish gadgets from Q, Bond blew up mountains, sank ships and submarines, destroyed cities both underwater and in space, wiped out whole armies, started wars, and overran whole countries – all in the name of the Queen and usually by himself. But 007 is best known for his unreal and insurmountable conquest of women. Ever the misogynist, Bond viewed all women almost never as intelligent, sentient beings but almost always as potential sexual partners. And the women – from Pussy Galore to Holly Goodhead to Xenia Onnatop -- just could not resist his disarming charm, animal magnetism and insatiable sexuality (now what guy could not admire that). Above all else, Bond had impeccable style. His car: Ashton-Martin or Mercedes. His women: drop-dead gorgeous and at some point naked. His cocktail of choice: vodka martinis – shaken, not stirred. A gambling man, Bond played casino baccarat, and he often did the Queen’s bidding in a tuxedo. Played true to Fleming’s vision first by Connery, then by Moore, and lately by Brosnan (we don’t include George Lazemby and Timothy Dalton because they never displayed enough of the idiosyncrasies that made Bond, well, Bond), James Bond is arguably the most popular single movie character ever. Although frequently duplicated (Matt Helm, James West, Jim Phelps), his appearance in over 20 movies through more than 40 years is testament to his enduring popularity. After every single movie we can never wait the requisite two years for the next installment, making James Bond an indelible movie icon.

3) “Dirty Harry” Callahan – Clint Eastwood:  “Go ahead, make my day,” he whispered as he held the business end of a .44 magnum to the head of yet another scumbag. And judging by the innumerable scumbags whose heads his hand-held cannon blew off, he and moviegoers had lots of good days. Yet despite his smoldering anger and vigilante demeanor, Inspector Harry Callahan of the San Francisco Police Department was not as filthy as his nickname would suggest. Dirty Harry, while never following the spirit of the law, never broke the letter of the law, even on those occasions when he so wantonly trampled on somebody’s civil rights. While his methods were often unorthodox and always courted trouble, Harry still believed in enforcing the laws he considered so flawed. Even though he made it plain to those he disagreed with that he didn’t like them, if they didn’t break the law then he had no axe to grind with them. Above all else he believed that upstanding, law-abiding citizens deserved to be protected, and it didn’t matter to him what persuasion they were or beliefs they held, even if they were contrary to his. It was the “human filth and slime” (his words) – the criminals and felons – whom Callahan had a gargantuan beef with. If anyone fell into this category then he took a personal and zealous interest in devoting his life to making their lives a living hell – at least before he killed them with that cannon, always quickly but oh so painfully. But what made Dirty Harry an historic badass was that he didn’t advertise; his quiet disposition and unassuming manner suggested that he was comfortable both in his own skin and with his core beliefs of law and order. Because of this, when he walked into a conflict the scumbags never believed he was as lethal and perilous as he was – not until the very moment that he blew them away. Once again the simmering acting of Clint Eastwood made for yet another memorable badass through five motion pictures: Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool. Interesting how it is that whenever moviemakers in the 60’s and 70’s wanted somebody to play the lead role of a truly ruthless muthafucka, they always seemed to call on Eastwood.

4) Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh – Mel Gibson and Danny Glover:  “Mayhem” and “Chaos” were their nicknames, and never were two nouns more appropriate. The consummate good cop-bad cop partnership, it’s a wonder how these two ever left any part of Los Angeles still standing. Riggs was the actual bad-ass, the former Army Special Forces soldier, the psychotic lone wolf who could withstand obscene amounts of pain, “do a guy from 1,100 yards in high wind” with a 9mm pistol, or just as easily twist a guys head off with his bare hands. Murtaugh was the cerebral, compassionate one, a 20-year middle-aged African-American veteran of the LAPD who was a family man and forever complained about being “too old for this shit.” But Riggs was a crazy wild card ready to go off the deep end before he partnered with the calming, almost familial influence of Murtaugh. Together, they were the classic “brawn and brains”, ready to bulldoze their way through the criminal element of L.A. It was almost as if good cop Murtaugh was the lion tamer, keeping bad cop Riggs on a very short leash before setting him loose on the criminal prey. And once they got on the trail of the bad guys they leveled everything in their path to get them. Without Murtaugh, Riggs was dangerous enough, but together they were a, well, Lethal Weapon. Through four movies they left a trail of destruction and pandemonium through southern California. And throughout all of their bedlam they always maintained a smart-alleck sense of humor, leaving us laughing as they flattened the most vicious of criminal enterprises. The ultimate anarchist cops were the best things about the LAPD. Too bad they weren’t real.

5) John Shaft – Richard Roundtree and Samuel L. Jackson:  The first truly “baaad” brotha (in every positive sense of the word) to hit the silver screen… And every black man in America wanted to be him. Harry Belafonte was darkly handsome; Sidney Poitier had an erect dignity about him; but Richard Roundtree and Samuel L. Jackson were “baaad.” Shaft was a loner, a private dick in New York City who knew everybody and everything that was going on on the streets. He was a proud black man who lived comfortably, wore hip clothing, and was never without female companionship. Shaft often had more than one woman at a time, and it didn’t matter of what race they belonged; it they were beautiful and attracted to him, then that was enough (the very first movie had Shaft making love to a white woman in the shower, the first of its kind in movie history). Because he was dashing, confident and smart, Shaft could easily slip into any environment; uptown or downtown, urban or suburban, law-abiding or larcenous, rich or poor – black or white. He clearly enjoyed his vices and pleasures, but when it came time to take care of business there was nobody more focused or loyal. He may have had to take you down, but he would never let you down. Shaft possessed a quiet disdain for the police, organized crime, and especially Whitey. When someone got in his face, he would just calmly gaze at him or her with this condescending thousand-yard stare, an almost bored look of lethality that said, “I could rip your head off, but I’m busy right now.” Anybody who threatened him he found amusing, and that was just before he sent them flying through a third-story window. But do Shaft wrong or get on his bad side and you spent the rest of your short life wishing that stare was the worst thing he did to you. He would come after you with a cool single-mindedness and waste not a single cell of conscience sending you to purgatory. That Shaft enjoyed enormous popularity with black audiences throughout the early Seventies in Shaft, Shaft’s Big Score, and Shaft in Africa was enough to get him on this list. That the remake of the original almost 30 years later resonates with both black and white audiences and brings an entire movie theater to sing along with the Isaac Hayes theme song makes Shaft one baaad mutha – shut yo mouth!

6) Lt. John McClane – Bruce Willis:  Rob a 40-story Los Angeles office tower of $600 million dollars in negotiable bearer bonds. Seize control of Washington Dulles International Airport and rescue the world’s leading drug dealer. Liberate the Federal Reserve of New York of $160 billion dollars in gold bullion. All were well-planned criminal enterprises, which would have been executed to perfection and like clockwork if not for the ultimate fly in the ointment and monkey in the wrench.  The NYPD’s McClane didn’t find trouble – trouble found him. In every instance he just happened to be there, off-duty, leisurely doing something else when criminal activity fell into his lap. But true to his own personal sense of right and wrong, it didn’t matter if he was out of his jurisdiction or not; if you were committing a crime then he took it upon himself to stop you --with great personal sacrifice. McClane would take a hellacious beating and withstand an ungodly amount of pain – and he still kept coming. And that was just if you were breaking the law. If you messed with his wife then the kid gloves came off. Right and wrong took a back seat to his loyalty to his spouse, and wearing his emotions on his sleeve he trashed anybody and anything that stood in his way, fellow cops included. Through three Die Hard films McClane just refused to give up, even when everybody else did. And in the end the bad guys met with especially violent demises, usually after he had really fouled things up and sent a number of insurance companies into bankruptcy. McClane wasn’t your over-the-top badass; he wasn’t flashy and stylish and he didn’t court danger. But he had heart, and was the right man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yippeekiyee!!!

7) The Terminator – Arnold Schwarzenegger:  The consummate killing machine, and for one very simple reason: It was literally a machine. Unlike everybody else on this list – who as sentient beings of a higher order were capable of feeling emotion but for some reason just didn’t – the Terminator was incapable of feeling anything; it was literally not possible. A gun, a bomb or any other static object can’t feel, and neither could it. A T-800 cybernetic organism, or cyborg, sent back in time by a world ruled by computers trying to wipe out mankind in our future, the Terminator had an exoskeleton made up of skin and muscle but underneath was all nuts, bolts, wire, metal, and microprocessor. And like a computer, a gun or even a toaster, did what it was made to do. As a result, it had no conscience and felt absolutely no pain. Its very purpose said it all: it didn’t “kill”, it “terminated”. Anything that insomuch as got in the Terminator’s peripheral vision – a car, a wall, a building, a dog – was considered an obstacle to its objective and dealt with harshly. Which meant that if you were any living thing and you happened to be around him just by mere happenstance, your life expectancy took an immediate and drastic turn for the worst. Hell, it crashed through an entire police station and terminated every single police officer present. So if you were the objective, like Sarah Connors was in The Terminator, quantifying your life as short was a grave understatement. Unlike any sentient being, the Terminator didn’t stop for any reason; the only way to stop it was to terminate it. It wasn’t possible to reason with it any more than it’s possible to reason with a land mine, and it couldn’t stop due to injury. With half of it’s lower body missing it still kept coming for Sarah Connors. If its absolute ability to feel nothing as it “unpassionately” went about the task of wiping out everybody and everything in The Terminator wasn’t enough to put it on this list, then its battle with another terminator (Robert Patrick) in T2: Judgment Day certainly did the trick.

8) Michael Corleone – Al Pacino:  Outside of the one time, he didn’t kill anybody himself, but given who he was and his grand stature he had others kill people for him. The reluctant Mafia Don, Michael was the one Corleone offspring of Don Vito Corleone who was suppose to be legit and stay out of the family business. Ah, but for the best-laid plans. When a rival drug don put Vito in a coma, emasculated Vito’s oldest son Fredo and mutilated Vito’s other son Sonny, Michael – to save the Corleone crime family from destruction and total ruin -- had no choice but to take over the family business. A soft-spoken, small, unimposing and scholarly man, Michael was underestimated by all of his family’s rivals -- that was the biggest mistake they ever made. Michael used all of his cunning, guile, smarts and dispassion to become the most cruel, cold-blooded and merciless Mafioso in film history. Through three Godfather films he ruthlessly rooted out all of the family’s enemies – including his oldest brother, his brother in law, his chief under boss, five family heads, a police chief, two Las Vegas casino owners, three informants, a Latin American despot, and even a Vatican bishop  – and had them callously put to sleep. What made him all the more heartless was that he chalked it all up to “just business.” Inside those puppy-dog eyes, that unpretentious manner, bookish façade and pious deference to his religious faith lay a being so soulless, so malicious, so malevolent – so evil.

9) Youngblood Priest – Ron O’Neal:  The only movie badass not to have killed anybody directly, but man this dude had style. Stated simply, he wasn’t just fly -- he was SuperFly. Priest was the epitome of the hip 70’s thug life. He was light-skinned, but with long “good” hair and a smoldering gaze he was menacingly good-looking. In his pimped-out attire he was dapped down in leather vines, diamond jewelry, boots, a long velvet coat and a player’s brim. He cruised the streets of Harlem at night in a one-of-a-kind purple Cadillac Brougham. He snorted only the best coke from his own supply. And he had the “baddest bitches in the bed” (words from the soundtrack) of all colors and any race, a testament to his player ways. Everyone on the streets knew him, every woman wanted him, and he could command the best seats in any nightclub without having to wait outside the velvet rope like everybody else. While it looked like pleasure, all of this was an integral and necessary part of doing business -- the business of trafficking cocaine, with some pimping on the side. Priest made the drug trade look downright glamorous. And he did it well, living in an uptown high-rise apartment and moving all over Gotham City in that rag top hoopdie plying his trade. When it came time to take care of business, though, nobody messed with him. If anyone got between him and his money he had no inhibition about either beating them within an inch of their life or turning out their wife to turn tricks for him, or even having a mafia bagman jacked. But even he was smart enough to realize that all the glamour and adventure was just the seedy allure to what is, in reality, a pathetically vicious cycle of violence and sinister crime, and he wanted out of the game for good. Convincingly played by Ron O’Neal through two films, Youngblood Priest was a ghetto legend. If every black man in America wanted to be Shaft in 1971 they actually tried to be SuperFly one year later. He was the dopest, flyest, hypest, OG pimp, mack-daddy, hardcore muthafucka.

10) Ripley – Sigourney Weaver:  In the interest of fairness and equality, there had to be a woman on this list somewhere. The most obvious choice was the one who appeared in four Alien films. Lt. Ripley was not a badass by choice but rather, like John McClane above, a hard-ass out of necessity. A cargo space ship co-pilot in the distant future, it was her misfortune to happen upon the most venomously deadly mutant species in the galaxy; A species with acid for blood, long razor-sharp claws, long serrated tails that could cut a man in half, hard melon-shaped heads and layers of teeth they can snap at their prey like a lizards tongue; an amphibious animal that was carnivorous and could breath in air and under water; and an alien being that could procreate in obscenely large numbers in a short period of time by producing offspring that gestated in a human stomach before exploding out of his chest cavity. In essence, an alien race that viewed all living things as either food or someplace to put their young. Ripley had the misfortune of running into this alien race four times over the course of several centuries, and these creatures’ very nature left her no choice but to have to kill them all with the zeal of the Terminator. Through four films they came after her and her cohorts often and in army-size numbers, and through all four films she killed every last one of them – soldiers, Queen and unborn pods -- and was usually the only one left alive. Nobody wanted to be in Ripley’s shoes, least of all Ripley, but she did what she had to out of self-preservation, and she resonated with m oviegoers.

Honorable Mentions:  What follows is a list, in no particular order, of badass movie characters with moxie, style, or ruthlessness but who just couldn’t crack the top ten, though they at least warrant a mention.

Mad Max – Mel Gibson:  The first memorable character by Gibson in his pre-Lethal Weapon days, and the first real post-Apocalyptic badass. Max started out as an Australian outback cop ridding the highways of motorcycle gangsters. But when those same gangsters killed his wife and infant child, all compassion went out the window as he hunted down every one of them and vengefully blew them away. A futuristic global war brought on total anarchy and turned the world’s inhabitants into savages who banded into violent warring factions struggling over gasoline, the new monetary standard, as Max became a detached loner. But he was able to feel compassion for the few helpless bands of civilization he found as he wandered the desert, and fought the anarchists to try and regain some semblance of civility. In three movies – Mad Max, The Road Warrior, and Beyond Thunderdome, Mad Max fought for some order in a world given in to chaos.

Indiana Jones – Harrison Ford:  Another near miss. As a college professor of archeology and ancient history, Dr. Jones wasn’t a real badass. His worldwide escapades and thrills-a-minutes adventures, while exciting and sometimes crazy, were to preserve society’s history and culture while repelling those raiders and treasure hunters who would destroy it. But he deserves a mention because through Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade, Jones was absolutely fearless and always did the right thing.

Darth Vader – James Earl Jones (& David Prowse):  In a galaxy far, far away he was the supernatural personification of evil. If The Force was the spiritual center of this galaxy, then Vader occupied its Dark Side. In an all-black suit draped in a floor-length black cape and with a black metal mechanical breathing apparatus covering his entire head, the former Anakin Skywalker was never anything less than menacing. And as a Jedi Knight, he clearly was the penultimate lethal weapon in the galaxy. As the head of the Evil Empire throughout the entire Star Wars saga this head of the Evil Empire was the biggest adversary of the Resistance. Only when his son became a Jedi Knight was he finally defeated.

Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lechter – Anthony Hopkins:  Quite possibly the sickest, most demented individual ever to grace the silver screen. This man actually took orgasmic joy in eating people alive – literally. This character was so sick that he had to be strapped from head to toe on a dolly and wear a leather muzzle just for any human being to get within ten feet of him. Dr. Lechter was the worst kind of super-predator: a learned, scholarly man whose blue-blood breeding masked a murderer so horrible that he made carnivores in the animal kingdom look tame by comparison. He was only in one movie, The Silence of the Lambs, but he was so memorable it earned Anthony Hopkins an Oscar.

Philo Beddoe – Clint Eastwood:  Another movie tough guy personified by Eastwood, but this time with neither a magnum nor a six-shooter. Beddoe used only his fists; he was a bare-knuckle fighter. He could take on a motorcycle gang or mob enforcers all by himself. He ate pain like candy; the more he got hurt the more dangerous he became. And you had to love his choice for his trusty sidekick, an orangutan named Clyde who could kick just as much but. Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can had some of the best bare-knuckle fight scenes, and Beddoe’s fight with Jack Wilson (William Smith) in the latter was one of the best film fights ever.

Axel Foley – Eddie Murphy:  This detective of the Detroit Police Department had absolutely no pretensions. In his raggedy Lion’s jacket, faded blue jeans, worn Adidas sneakers and old beat-up Dodge, Foley showed Beverly Hills what a motivated cop from the streets could do in their pristine little town when international criminals messed with his friends. In all three Beverly Hills Cop films Foley was out of his element, and all three times he proved that the villains were really out of his league.

“Snake” Plisken – Kurt Russell:  This one-eyed, sullen, and surly former Army officer was the perfect urban commando. Who better to infiltrate a futuristic prison where the inmates have taken over the asylum than a prisoner himself? When Snake had to go into the future’s most deadly prisons, New York and Los Angeles (how appropriate) -- first to rescue the president then to rescue the president’s daughter – he wiped out the criminal element by becoming the criminal element. Escape From New York and Escape From LA served as metaphors for contemporary suburban flight.

“Gator” McCloskey – Burt Reynolds:  Reynolds was one of the most popular movie tough guy of the 70’s and early 80’s, and this was his baddest role. This moonshine-running southern rebel with the suped-up Dodge was scared of only two things, “women and the po-lice” (his words), although you wouldn’t know it the way he appealed to every woman he came in contact with and every cop he beat down. A Mississippi Delta rogue in both White Lightning and Gator, McCloskey was a southern gentlemen when he needed to be and a southern firestorm when he was done wrong.

“Popeye” Doyle – Gene Hackman:  In both French Connection films Doyle was a walking cliché. An NYPD narcotics detective, Doyle was a hard-boiled, hard-drinking Irish flatfoot who dressed badly, showed no respect for authority and was not above bending the law in order to enforce it. He gets assigned a case and just would not let go until it was solved. When he couldn’t get the French drug dealer bringing smack into the eastern seaboard, he just killed him. Doyle makes the list because it earned Hackman an Oscar.

John Rambo – Sylvester Stallone:  Ronald Reagan’s favorite Red Hater of the 80’s. No matter how hard anybody tried – and believe me there were a lot who did – this guy just refused to die. Through three movies – First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Rambo III, -- Rambo was a one-man army. First he bulldozed his way through a Pacific Northwest town, then he annihilated a North Vietnamese prison camp, then he wiped out an entire Soviet division in Afghanistan. And along the way as he took more pain he became more dangerous. I’m sure there those who will think this character should be rated higher, but it’s just too difficult to justify a top ten ranking at the expense of somebody already there.

Virgil Tibbs – Sidney Poitier:  With his quiet dignity and unpretentious self-assuredness, detective Virgil Tibbs didn’t advertise how good he was – he just was good, and that made him bad. In In the Heat of the Night, he brought a small Mississippi Jim Crow town to heel by solving a grisly murder. And in They Call Me MISTER Tibbs he brought down an entire San Francisco mob family without any help from the local authorities. He neither hurt nor killed many people, but he always believed he was smarter than everybody else, and that alone made him dangerous.

Kaiser Sosay – Kevin Spacey:  Just the mere mention of his name struck terror in anybody who either spoke it or heard it. This international drug dealer from Eastern Europe was so smart and so deadly nobody was able to catch him. Not even a handful of people knew what he looked like, which enabled him to go anywhere. He cared about nothing or nobody but himself; when his wife and children were held hostage by Turkish terrorists, he himself slaughtered them before killing the terrorists, just to let the world know there was nothing anybody could possibly do to him. Another badass who appeared in only one movie, The Usual Suspects, and again it earned the actor who played him, Spacey, an Oscar.

Casey Ribek – Steven Segall:  The ex-Navy SEAL who was a cook on a battleship when it was seized by terrorists in Under Siege. No problem. Chief Petty Officer Ribek single-handedly took back control of the battleship, killed all the terrorist, and blew up renegade submarine – all without ever lifting a weapon. In Under Siege II: Dark Territory, Chief Ribek rescued a passenger train from terrorists set on using a satellite laser to blow up a city. Not as memorable as the other characters on this list, but the Zen-Buddhist Segall has to be here somewhere.

“Fast Eddie” Felson – Paul Newman:  He didn’t kill anybody (hell, he was beat up himself), never hurt anybody personally, didn’t have a lot of women, wasn’t a very good dresser, and wasn’t particularly stylish. But Fast Eddie, a pool hustler in The Hustler and The Color of Money thought he was bad. Get him into a pool hall and he swaggered with supreme confidence. His identity was his pool cue. Eddie played it both ways: He could take you for every last dime you had before you even knew you were being hoodwinked; or he could play it straight and still embarrass you. Nobody made being hustled look so easy.

Jack Ryan – Alec Baldwin/Harrison Ford:  You wouldn’t think much of this Naval Academy historian and CIA analyst at first glance. But if you needed a state-of-the art Soviet submarine smuggled (The Hunt for Red October), or an IRA terrorist cell subdued (Patriot Games), or a Columbian drug cartel neutralized (Clear and Present Danger), then he was the right man for the job. A reluctant hero who nonetheless made geopolitics and international intrigue downright exciting.

Colonel James Braddock – Chuck Norris:  A Vietnam War POW and civilization outcast, Col. Braddock never forgot the ordeal he faced as an illegal prisoner – in Missing In Action II: The Beginning -- long after the war ended. With his own certain knowledge that there were other abandoned and forgotten soldiers still held host by the North Vietnamese, Braddock illegally went back twice – In Missing In Action and Braddock: Missing In Action III -- to rescue his forgotten comrades – and kick major commie butt in the process. Like Rambo, a post-Vietnam War hero for the 80's who deserves mention.

Coffy/Foxy Brown/Jackie Brown – Pam Grier:  By far the most memorable African-American female badass, there was no one role which stood out for actress Pam Grier. But throughout the 70’s – in the movies Coffy and Foxy Brown -- she played the same confident, hip, beautiful, kick-ass woman who took on organized crime and corruption in her community, and she emasculated most men in the process. Black women wanted to be bad like her and black men wanted to be with her. But what really rated her a mention here is that over 23 years later, at the age of 47, both Hollywood and the viewing public remember those roles so well that Grier was cast in the same kind of role as a tough street heroin in Jackie Brown, which appealed not just to the black community but to the mainstream as a whole.

Cleopatra Jones – Tamara Dobson:  It seems that until the last ten years or so the only women playing kick-ass roles were two women, Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson, satisfying a demand for them in the black community. In an era, the 70’s, which celebrated confident, strong, self-sufficient African-American princesses, Jones – a tall, dark Amazon of a woman with a hard body, supermodels beauty (which Dobson originally was), and black belt in karate – fit the bill. In Cleopatra Jones and Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold, she just killed everybody, asked questions later, and let God sort out the rest. And those were some great catfights she got into with both film’s Big Mama (played by Shelley Winters and Stella Stevens, respectively). Man, could she wear some clothes… 

David Kennedy -- the creator and editor of the on-line cyberzine Psrhea and the host of the radio talk show The Sport Authority on 91.5 FM The Voice in Sacramento, CA. -- has been making noises and finding the evidence of things not seen for most of his thirty-eight years. This would be less of a problem for him if he could just find someplace that sells motrin and prozac over-the-counter -- cheap!