hetero 2

There seems to be in today’s movies a lack of genuine, real deal bad ass masculine characters. By “genuine” I mean non-douchebag, non-pretty boy hardasses. Characters who get the job done and don’t take shit from anyone. No stupid bullshit one liners to make them seem tough, only take no prisoner tactics that are tough. Today’s cinema is overrun with movies like The Transporter, and XXX, movies that are filled with lots of stylish violence and perfectly couched cool sounding phrases that are devoid of the true grit of past cinema in which men were men, and they did what they had to do in whichever way necessary. There were no bad jokes or flashy cars. They weren’t afraid to lose their temper, and show fear, and get dirty, and start shouting when shit got too hectic, and when they did so, they did it in a manner that didn’t look all that cool, but looked fucking awesome.
This is a review of some of the toughest characters (in my opinion) in cinema history. These are only my opinions, and they are only of characters; oftentimes the real actors portraying the characters were supposedly intolerable shitheels i.e. John Wayne. They span throughout the history of cinema, beginning with post-WWII war movies and ending in early 90s action films. I’m sure you’ll probably disagree with some of them, and that’s fine; this is, after all, my list of characters and mine alone.
Before we any further, I’d like to define my use of the term “masculine” as used in this article. It may differ from the traditional sense of what one considers masculine. I’ve attempted to distill and narrow down the basic qualities one traditional thinks of when they think of a “man’s man”, and, while I’m sure it’s not perfect I believe the qualities I’m about to discuss will help frame the definition of “masculine” in this article.
The following parameters will be laid down in order to better define “masculinity” for this purpose.
A. Virtue-the characters embody a realistic sense of virtuous behavior; namely, courage. They may be afraid to go into any given situation; however, they overcome that fear and in the end are better for it. Usually. I reject the archetype of the Fearless Hero; after, is he really doing anything great if he isn’t afraid of anything to be begin with? Can one control what one’s fears are? No, you cannot. But you can overcome those fears, and in overcoming those fears one becomes a true man’s man in my humble opinion.
B. Respect-Poor sportsmanship is a bad thing. It’s really annoying, and it makes you look like an asshole. That being said, not being full of yourself and overestimating your abilities is a good thing, both for practical reasons and for moral reasons. From a moral standpoint, it allows you to appreciate the good qualities of others. From a practical standpoint, it allows you to achieve your goal, be that goal killing German terrorists or protecting the mother of the future leader of the human resistance from a murderous cyborg.
C. Dedication-Sticking to your guns, as long as your goal is sensible and honorable, is a good thing. I generally can’t stand people who pride themselves on this characteristic using the phrase “sticking to your guns” in real life, because usually those people are total jackasses, but in the cinema world, it’s safe to admire such a quality. A resolve to see the situation through, in other words, makes these characters “masculine.”
D. Being well rounded- a real man isn’t afraid to show vulnerability, or compassion, or even cry. In other words, a real “man” isn’t afraid to show his feelings. Showing fear, as I mentioned before, and overcoming that fear is in the end tougher and harder than pretending to not be afraid. A real “man” can be sensitive, and gentle, and loving, all the while possessing the ability to kick ass.
To be fair, characters such as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s in The Terminator cannot be counted; after all, he was just a machine following out orders and had no choice to do otherwise. There’s nothing truly macho in that. But, on the flipside, characters such as the Predator can and will be counted; he might’ve been an alien, but he embodied all the primitive qualities considered ‘masculine’ in this day and age. Furthermore, women can and will be counted; after all, several female characters in the history of film embody characteristics that one typically considered masculine. I mean, come on, if not for Ellen Ripley, everyone would have died in Aliens. While Bill Paxton was crying and losing his shit and proclaiming doom and gloom for all of them, Ripley was staying frosty and keeping them together. Entries are chronological, and in no particular other order.

1. John Wayne as Wedge Donovan in The Fighting Seabees-I didn’t think I’d really like any of John Wayne’s work. He seemed to star exclusively in movies churned out by Hollywood studios to capitalize on the virulent pro-war attitude that swept the country following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and I really don’t like many westerns, so I never really saw a point in watching any of his films. But, a few months ago, while hanging out with my grandfather, I caught this movie on TMC and decided ‘What the hell…worst case scenario, I’ll hang out with Pap.’ Turns out, I didn’t think it was half bad. Oh, to be fair, the acting left something to be desired, character development was mostly non-existent, and the portrayal of Japanese soldiers was pushing it even for a time in history when anti-Japanese sentiment was running high…but the story was there. Wayne’s character was a hard as nails construction manager building landing strips in the Pacific during WWII when he realizes his men, as civilians, aren’t technically allowed to fight the Japanese. But, since the Japanese obviously wouldn’t give them the same courtesy, Wayne had to do something. Did he let the laws of war stand in his way? Fuck no. He gave his men weapons and taught them how to fight. And when the Japanese land on the island, he and his men give it just as much as they get it. Long story short, as a result of this, the famed Construction Battalions (CBs) of WWII are formed, and soon John Wayne is kicking enemy ass all over the Pacific. Sure he dies in the end, killed by a sniper after the battle is won, but he got the job done. He manned up, took matters into his own hands and turned his meager construction crew into a gang of hardasses who weren’t going to wait for anyone else to do the job for them. If that’s not manly, then I don’t know what is.

2. Clint Eastwood as Inspector Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry-This movie was probably singularly responsible for every .44 Magnum sold after 1971. It’s also probably responsible for permanently fixing Clint Eastwood as the archetype for a bad ass cop who didn’t take shit from anyone and did whatever it took to nail fuckers who broke the law. And finally, it is, after The Empire Strikes Back, probably the most misquoted movie ever. But enough of the movie, and lets talk about the man. “Dirty” Harry Callahan is a cop who is notorious for his “shoot first and ask questions later” brand of police work that while getting the job done, doesn’t get it done in line with “proper” police work. His superiors are constantly rebuking him, and he is just as frustrated with them and a system that apparently gives more rights to criminals than it does to law-abiding citizens. I’ll spare the “do I feel lucky?” speech and instead go to what I think is the real defining moment for Eastwood in the film. Towards the end of the movie, Scorpio hijacks a bus full of school children intending on taking them hostage, when he sees in the distance Harry Callahan standing ominously on top of a railroad trestle that overhangs the road, waiting. Maybe it’s the long camera angle that makes Eastwood look like some avenging angel out of the Book of Revelations. Or maybe it’s the fact that Callahan was had to be there waiting a while for the bus to drive under him. Either way, that is the true moment in the movie when it’s apparent that Scorpio has badly fucked up and that Callahan is not the man to fuck with. Eastwood’s character was so memorable and on point that he kept it going through four sequels, all of which contain numerous other awesome moments, notably the “me, Smith, and Wesson” speech in Sudden Impact, followed by the second most famous line in the series: “Go ahead. Make my day.” Totally hard. After a suspect he took down gets off on a technicality and taunts him about it, Callahan corners him in an elevator and tells him: “To me, you’re nothing but dogs hit.” It’s more than a job for Callahan; it’s a mission. In a time when lawlessness was running rampant and hippie liberals were looking out more for the criminals than the public, he stood hard, a rock in an otherwise changing and flowing legal landscape.
3. Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa in Rocky-Do I really need to explain this choice? Sure, those movies are almost guilty pleasures, but Rocky really is a man’s man. He doesn’t care about winning. He just wants to prove to himself, and himself alone, that he can go the distance. He’s in it for the journey, not for the destination. At first. Only in the third movie does he really care about winning, and that’s just to shut Mr. T up. His crowning achievement is handing the apparently unstoppable Ivan Drago his ass in the fourth film, fighting a man who literally killed his last opponent. He talks about teamwork, and dedication, and respect, and all the other things that make an athlete great. In Rocky V, an otherwise unremarkable movie, we are shown that it is indeed the journey that makes the champion and not just having a title. Tommy Gunn may have held the title, but he wasn’t a real champion like Rocky, because he lacked everything that made Rocky great. Same with Clubber Lang, and Mason Dixon. They were physically tough, sure, and could probably beat the shit out of me in real life, but in the end they didn’t have the stuff that Rocky had. As he so eloquently puts it in the sixth film: “It ain’t about how hard you can hit, it’s how hard you can get hit and keeping going.” And his humble origins are another thing that makes him great. He came from nothing and trained with what he had. What made him great was the simple drive to keep going and not give up. Ivan Drago may have been bred to be a champion and may have been able to kill a man with only a few punches, but look where he came from. Drago was engineered from the beginning to be a perfect athlete. He was pumped full of steroids and trained using fancy and suspicious equipment. Drago was handed the ability to win on a silver platter, while Rocky actually had to fight for it. It’s why out of all of the tough guys in that franchise, only Rocky actually has what it takes to be make it to my list of guys I’d want on my side in a fight.

4. Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey in Death Wish-What do you do when muggers (including a young Jeff Goldblum) kill your wife and rape your daughter? Go to the inept cops, who treat a lost artistic dog seriously, you say? Wrong. Get yourself a gun and start bringing down old world style justice upon the criminals of the city. This movie is the classic Bronson film, long before Bronson became a doddering and wrinkled parody of himself in the later films of the franchise. In the beginning he’s every inch the classic man, taking saucy pictures of his wife as she saunters out of the Hawaiian surf, politely suggesting they fuck right there on the beach (or maybe she suggests it and he being the gentlemen that he is says they should go to the hotel room; either way, kudos to him.) He believes in the ability of the government to protect it’s citizens and he has faith in the civilized man. After he and his wife return to New York, a gang of thugs attacks his wife and daughter. His wife is killed, his daughter brutally raped and rendered into a state resembling autism. When Kersey goes to the police for help, they tell him there’s little chance of the criminals being caught. Here, we see a man who realizes the system he has put so much faith in his whole life has all but failed him, and everything he has believed in is wrecked and ruined, and his choices are let this injustice lie in the open and flaunt itself, or take matters into his own hands. Kersey decides he’s had enough, gets a handgun and wages a one-man war on the scumbags of New York City. Of course, the police denounce his vigilante ways, but that doesn’t stop him. Even in the end, when he is politely asked to leave the city and moves to Chicago, when some young punk insults him, Kersey coolly smiles and makes a gun gesture at him. He’s the embodiment of a man pushed too far, someone who has just had enough with how the world is and needs to do something about it, and isn’t going to let anyone stand in his way.

5. Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese in The Terminator- my personal favorite, and in my opinion, the hardest dude in any movie ever. If there were one man I would want to come back through time to protect me, it’d be Kyle Reese. I don’t think I need to give any sort of plot summary for the movie; that would just waste valuable space that could be used praising Reese. When we first see him, he’s shaken from coming back in time, but in moments, he’s pulled it together enough to ambush a cop and take his weapon from him with the quickness. After evading police and obtaining clothes and a shotgun (and a fresh pair of Nikes, might I add) he begins a race against his opponent, the titular cyborg, to get to Sarah Connor, a young college student who’s unborn son will be the future savior of the human race against Skynet, a murderous supercomputer. His moments of hardness are almost too numerous too count. From the moment we first see him jacking a cop up against a wall and disarming him like it’s nothing, to him strolling down the street moments later after stealing a shotgun from that same cop’s car, Reese is hard as shit. There’s the moment in the bar, when he finds Sarah and blows the Terminator out of a window with a shotgun before uttering the best line in the movie: “Come with me if you want to live.” There are the flashbacks of his past where he is shown as a hardened soldier strategically blowing up giant robots and then fighting Terminators in bunkers underground. Seriously, watch this movie, and when the scene where’s looking at the picture of Sarah comes up in the tunnels underground, check out the look on his face when he realizes the cyborgs are attacking. It is the face of a man who is ready for action. Then there’s the scene in the police station when he fucks a cop up (while handcuffed!) punches a window out of a door, and rescues Sarah just before the Terminator, who is methodically killing everyone in the station, can get to her. When she remarks about him being shot, he replies, “It’s just a flesh wound.” Totally hard. Even in the end, when he’s so hurt he can barely walk, he picks up a steel bar and challenges the Terminator to a fight. And after getting the shit slapped out of him, his last living act is blowing the Terminator in half with a homemade pipe bomb. But he is not without a soft side. There’s the classic scene between him and Sarah when’s she talking about how much pain he’s been through, and he tells her he has dealt with pain by shutting off all feeling. He hasn’t shut off all feeling because soon after he makes passionate yet gentle love to her. He has it all. The dedication and the commitment to see it through. The sensitivity and the compassion. The man is a fucking rock. He remarks early on that the Terminator can’t be reasoned with, and that it doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, and that it won’t stop until Sarah is dead. But the unspoken sentiment is that he himself won’t ever give up on Sarah, and that we won’t stop until the Terminator is gone. Maybe what he meant was “Come with me if you want to survive.” But to go with him, truly, is to live.
6. Sigourney Weaver as Lt. Ellen Ripley in Aliens- A women? Masculine?! Reign in your fury and restrain yourself from ripping this publication in half and at least hear what I have to say. Earlier, we had outlined the parameters for “masculinity” as what one traditionally considers being masculine, and at no point did I propose that being male was a necessary precursor to be masculine. That being said, I argue that Weaver’s role in Aliens, without a doubt, qualifies as something masculine. Now, note that I am excluding her role from the first movie, as I don’t believe her character in Alien would fulfill the requirements for what one considers masculine. Her gender is not at all in contrast with her portrayal of the character. However, in the second movie, there is a definite change in her character, one that will carry over in the third film of the franchise. The change takes here from a non-descript flight officer aboard a mining vessel just struggling to survive the onslaught of a single alien in the first film, to a hardened leader in the second film who is actively fightint to survive, a character arguably keeping herself together better than a squad of Marines sent with her to dispatch the alien threat. Out of the survivors of the initial attack early in the second film, only two of the Marines seem to have their act together. The rest of them, namely Bill Paxton’s character, are falling apart at the seams and are borderline hysterical. Not Ripley. Through the whole movie, she keeps her cool, doing what it takes to keep the rest of the group together. When the aliens attack their stronghold and kill all but her, Newt, and Hicks, she leads Hicks and Newt out of there to safety. When Newt is snatched away by an Alien, she takes Hicks to the drop ship, gathers a small arsenal of weapons, and goes back into the hell of the alien nest, fighting her way through alien drones, facing down the alien queen, and saving Newt from a most horrible fate of becoming an alien incubator. They get back to the drop ship, back up to the Suloco, only the find the alien queen had tagged along. How does she solve that dilemma? By doing what needed to be done, of course! After bravely distracting the alien queen and allowing Newt to escape to safety, Ripley engages the alien queen in a clash of the titans style battle using the super rad and unfortunately totally fictionally power loader, smacking the shit out of the queen and jettisoning her out into space.
There is another character in the Alien franchise that I believe deserves at least a nod of acknowledgement in this article. Charles S. Dutton plays the spiritual leader of the convicts in Alien 3, a man of God who makes no secret of why he is in prison; that being that he is a “rapist and murderer of women.” His two key moments in the film are his rallying speech to the rest of the inmates (“You’re all gonna die someday, but how you check out is up to you. Do you wanna die on your feet? Or do you wanna die on your knees, beggin?”) His second shining moment is his last stand against the alien. Trapped in a lead mold with no way out, he simply faces the alien, takes his glasses off, calls it out, and goes out fighting. Amazing.
7. Bruce Willis as John McClain in Die Hard-The sole exception to the “no catchphrases” rule, because this guy’s is awesome. Throughout four films, he never, ever stops kicking the collective ass of those doing wrong. Franchises rarely make it past one or two films before becoming redundant and stale, but he keeps it fresh and rad the whole time. He is shit on, time and time again, by his superiors and his family, and yet he never gives up. Whether it’s running across broken glass as German terrorists are shooting at him, blowing a plane up with a road flare, walking through downtown Harlem with a placard that says “I Hate Niggers” strapped to him because if he doesn’t a terrorist will bomb another building, or killing a sexy femme fatale by dropping a SUV down an elevator shaft onto her, McClain is one man who should not be taken lightly. He has a simple and fundamental dedication to justice: doing whatever it takes to bring about that justice, and that makes him unstoppable. By the fourth and most recent film in the series, this drive for justice has cost him almost everything. He talks of how everyone, including his own daughter, has left him. He has nothing. And yet even though the world has turned it’s back on him, McClain still does the right thing, no matter how hard it is. He’s usually filthy within twenty minutes of the beginning of the movie, covered in blood and dirt and God knows what. And why? Because he’s doing what no one else wants to do. And that’s just what has to be done. If I was a fictional bad guy trying to rob the Federal Reserve or shut down the nation’s power supply through a computer virus and I heard McClain was coming after me, chances are I’d simply give up and walk away while I still could, or at least not shoot my mouth off like an asshole and threaten one of his family members when he finally did track me down.
8. Kevin Michael Hall as The Predator in The Predator-Now, why is The Predator on this list, but the Terminator isn’t? For the same reason R2D2 isn’t the real hero of Star Wars, as some argue: robots, as non-sentient beings, cannot perform acts of courage because they cannot choose to do otherwise. The Predator, as a sentient being, can be counted according to the parameters set forth early in this article. We see the Predator in the first movie hunting a group of generic military guys doing something in some jungle (well…we don’t actually see him at first, just the aftermath of his exploits; namely, a one armed Carl Weathers and a dead Jesse Ventura). He fights Schwarzeneggar’s character in unarmed combat at the climax of the movie, displaying a sort of weird chivalry in the process. And while appearing to be a merciless killer, Predator pursues only worthy prey that are armed and capable of fighting back. He spares the life a captive Spanish woman, and in the second film spares a pregnant woman. Furthermore, in a weird way he honors those adversaries he considers worthy prey by keeping their skulls as trophies, as opposed to skinning them and hanging them upside down as he does to the prey he considers unworthy. In the second film, after Danny Glover kills on of their kind, the kin of that dead Predator acknowledge Glover’s skill by gifting him with a Civil War era pistol, which shows a respect for an adversary. And what happens if a Predator is defeated before being killed? A brand of alien seppuku involving a small nuclear explosion. If they’re going to die, they’re going to go out on their own terms and not at the hands of their enemies. I won’t say the Predator has a sensitive side, as the near unwatchable Alien Vs. Predator suggests, but I will say that it apparently has ability to show at least compassion for weaker beings, and that quality coupled with his ability to kick ass earns him a spot on this list.
9. Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2-Why only Sarah Connor in T2? Because in the first movie she’s too busy running and hiding and being terrified to count in this list. Just look at how she compares from the first movie to the second. Her first appearance in the first film is like a breath of fresh air. Her introduction is the first daylight scene. It is the first scene without some kind of violence. In other words, she is the first character who just exists in that movie. She is relaxed and carefree…for the moment. By the end of the movie, she shows some of her future resolve; her last words to the T-800 as she crushes it in a hydraulic press are, while not as iconic as “I’ll be back”, still just as memorable: “You’re terminated, fucker.” Now, take that change into the second movie. Her introduction, instead of showing us a carefree and happy character, shows us a woman preparing for the worst. She has been committed to an insane asylum for blowing up a computer factory, and when we first see her has turned her bed frame into a makeshift pull up bar. Her first words are asking her doctor how knee is, a few weeks prior she stabbed him with a pen. She breaks out of prison by knocking several guards unconscious and taking that same doctor hostage by threatening to inject him with antifreeze. When her, her son John, and the T-800 are attacked by the T-1000 in an elevator, instead of hiding and ducking and cowering like the old Sarah, she takes a pistol from the T-800 and begins shooting at the attacking Terminator. When she is stabbed through the shoulder by the T-1000 and threatened with death if she doesn’t “call to John”, she defiantly tells the Terminator “fuck you”. And, in one of the most memorable scenes of the movie, after the T-1000 nearly kills her son by mimicking her, she nearly shoots it off the ledge and into the boiling metal with a shotgun, dramatically chambering a new shell after each shot one handed. And yet, she is not without her soft side. After the escape from the asylum, she shows her maternal instinct by fawning over John. When she attempts to avert Judgment Day by assassinating the man who would invent Skynet, she realizes she cannot pull the trigger at the last second, and collapses on the floor in front of his family, crying until John and the T-800 show up. And in the end, after the T-1000 is destroyed and all is apparently right, she offers her hand in friendship to the T-800, an acknowledgment of the abilities of one warrior by another. While appearing to be a total nutcase through most of the movie, she is actually just a woman transformed by the knowledge of what is to come and what must be done, and yet she still holds tight onto the values outlined earlier.
10. Tony Todd as Ben in Night of the Living Dead-George Romero may have thrown racial archetypes out the window by casting Duane Johnson as Ben in the original film, but Tony Todd brought some of those racial archetypes right back in by re-defining that character in the remake. In the first movie, we see the character Ben as a frightened but tough businessman who arrives at the farmhouse just in time to save Barbara from a couple of zombies. Throughout the film, he is the glue that holds the group together, the rock for them to stand on. And, even though in the end everyone dies and he is mistaken for a zombie and shot by redneck zombie hunters, he is still the good guy, a semi-tragic hero. He just happens to be black. In the remake, Todd turns the character into a sort of blaxploitation throwback. He is apparently constantly on the verge of losing his grip on his temper and seems to be in a state of semi-rage throughout the whole movie. His fury is a palpable thing, and he routinely threatens to somehow hurt the character Cooper for getting in his way. When he falls from a truck on his way to a gas pump, he fights his way back to the farmhouse against a horde of zombies and somehow makes it. But like several of the other characters on this list, it isn’t just his tough moments that put him on this list. He comforts Barbara when he first finds her, and unlike in the original doesn’t slap her when she begins spewing nonsense. Upon seeing Cooper’s daughter lying upon the sawhorses after a zombie bites her, he offers to get her a blanket to keep her warm. And in the end, when he is shot by Cooper, he urges Barbara to flee and save herself, as he is beyond saving. He is tough, but he is thoughtful, a rational man paired with a rage that in the end while not saving himself at least saves someone else.
11. Samuel L. Jackson as Jules in Pulp Fiction-more on here for the shit he says than what he actually does, Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction is hands down the best in the movie. He’s so tough he’s almost unbelievably so. But look in his eyes during his “Ezekiel 25:17” speech, and you can see he doesn’t need to do anything more than shoot another unarmed man to prove how tough he is. I feel bad not really listing any of his accomplishments, because in all reality he doesn’t really do anything all that hard in the movie. But the shit he says so mind-blowing badass I couldn’t not put him on this list. I suppose I can acknowledge his ability to admit he’s wrong and change for the better by his speech at the end of the film. He realizes he’s going down the wrong path, a path of ill virtue, and decides to make a change. And apparently it’s just in time, because while he is off seeking wisdom, John Travolta’s character, the skeptic to Jackson’s believer, is getting shot to death by Bruce Willis after taking a shit.
12. Mickey Rourke as Marv in Sin City-I was a Johnny come lately to this movie, and I never read the comic, but I was definitely impressed with Rourke’s character in it. He plays Marv, a lovable psychopath hell bent on avenging the death of one of the few people who was ever kind to him, and all he has to get that revenge are his “mitts”; in other words, his bare hands….and razor wire, rubber tubing, and a hatchet. He manhandles cops, jumps out of windows several stories up with no ill effect, and gets the shit beaten out of him by the cannibalistic serial killer Kevin, and yet still comes throw to do what he set out to do. After subduing Kevin, who was indeed the killer of his beloved Goldie, he saws off the killer’s limbs and makes his dogs eat him alive. He then proceeds to kill a fucking cardinal of the Catholic Church after taunting him with Kevin’s severed head, and then eggs the cops on at his execution by telling them to “hurry up, cause I ain’t got all night.” His fellow Basin City outcast Dwight says that Marv was just born in the wrong era, that he should’ve been a gladiator. And who knows…maybe in his last days, Marv did make things rights, because as he says, “These are the old days, the bad days, the all or nothing days. They're back. There's no choice left. And I'm ready for war.” He’s a man who will do anything to right what has been wrong. To avenge the death of the women he loved. To return the kindness showed to him by exacting justice upon a corrupt religious leader.
13. Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach in Watchmen-okay, I was a little hesitant to put him on here, namely because I don’t think he’s actually a tough character, just sort of crazy. And upon further examination, he’s just a jumble of contradictions. But anyone who stands by their word as much as Rorschach deserves a place on this list, even if they are out of their mind. And, crazy or not, he’s undeniably a hardass. After being set up for a murder, he fights his way out of an apartment building by beating shit out of several cops and setting one of them fire, and is only subdued by even more cops outside. His golden moment is in prison when an inmate attempts to shank him, and instead of just merely defending himself, he throws a pot of boiling fat on his opponent and tells those watching that “I’m not locked up here with you, you’re all locked up in here with me.” Given the fact that he’s one man facing literally hundreds of pissed off inmates that he was responsible for putting in jail, saying anything like that is pretty ballsy. He faces down Dr. Manhattan in the end; preferring death to compromising his belief that evil must be punished, even if it is done for the greater good. Now I openly admit that such a choice appeals to the Kantian in me, but further examination of Rorschach nearly disqualifies him. First, as I mentioned before, I don’t really think Rorschach was being courageous and defiant during most of his exploits, merely crazy. Being crazy isn’t the same as being courageous because you don’t really know what you’re doing. Secondly, if we examine his character further, we notice several contradictions. Rorschach thinks the others are weak for staying silent about Ozymandias crime at the end, stating that it is never okay to kill someone and that doing so is always wrong. He believes Ozymandias must be punished for what he did, even if in the end it would cause the ill-gotten peace to unravel and possibly even more deaths. In other words, Rorschach believes that the ends don’t always justify the means, and that using people as mere means is wrong. But if we look at some of his actions we see that he has no problem early on in the movie and comic using brute violence against possibly innocent people to get what he wants. Think of the way he treats Moloch, a former supervillian who is now for all intents and purposes a straight laced and harmless old man. Rorschach tosses him around a room brutally, and for what? All he gets out of him is the fact that Comedian lost it and came crying to Moloch one night. Rorschach was treating Moloch as a means to an end, something that at the end of the film he felt was so wrong he was willing to die for it. In the comic, we are treated to an essay written by Rorschach as a child, in which he commends President Truman for dropping the bombs on Japan, because even though it killed thousands of Japanese it saves tens of thousands of American lives. This mindset was the same that he condemns Ozymandias for having in the end. So, in other words, I don’t think Rorschach was so much tough as he was insane. But since we’re talking fictional characters, we’ll let him stay.
So there you have it. My list of the toughest movie characters of all time. Some will argue I’m missing a few characters. I’m sure some think that Jean-Claude Van Damme’s character Frank Dux from Kickboxer belongs on here. Or maybe Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. But I’m pretty satisfied with my list. If you disagree, oh well. So next time some bullshit run of the mill action movie is playing on AMC, and there’s some slick overproduced asshole looking cool, just remember: there was a time when tough movie cinema characters weren’t annoying assholes, and as the last two entries show there are still are a few characters in recent cinema history that make you say “I definitely wouldn’t fuck with that guy” as opposed to “ugh, fuck that guy.”