Well M. Carter @ The Movies beat me to the punch here(here’s her Anti-Heroes list), but I’ve had a draft sitting for a couple months unable to narrow my favorite Anti-Heroes down.  What is an Anti-Hero exactly?  Well he certainly isn’t what you’d call a typical good guy.  He might be a good guy who does right by going about it all the wrong ways, or maybe he’s just a criminal that we love too much hate?  The bad guy that we root for?  It’s an ambiguous title and many have fought for it over the years.  Today’s installment has the ten best in my eyes, along with someone honorable mentions and readers choices.  Jim’s list will be here later as well.  Until then enjoy the bad guys I most like to cheer for!

10. Marv

Sin City

Marv is pretty much a bad guy.  The scene near the end of the film featuring Mickey Rourke playing the vengeful Marv and his adversary the serial murderer Kevin, played by Elijah Wood is enough to consider him a bad guy you can’t help but root for.  When the prostitute he fell in love with is murdered he vows to find her killer.  When he does find Kevin he saws of his arms and legs dismembering him.  To add to the torture he adds tourniquets and allows Kevins pet dogs to eat him alive.  When frustrated with his victims lack of reaction he saws off his head and says in reflection:

“He doesn’t scream, not even when the mutt’s had its fill and the killer’s guts are lyin’ all over the place – somehow the bastard is still alive, still starin’ at me, not even when I grabbed the saw and finished the job.”

We root for Marv in spite of his violent behavior, because inside he has a heart of gold.

9. Leon

The Professional

“This is from Matilda.”

By all means and standards, Leon is a bad guy.  A killer for hire.  A solo human with no need for companionship until……..a little girl falls into his life and suddenly he becomes more than just a murder machine.  His affection for her and the final scene where he sacrifices everything for her is one of the most memorable scenes ever.  He may by technical standards be a villain but Jean Reno as Leon is very much so a hero.

8. Snake Plissken

Escape From New York

Snake Plissken is renowned for being one of the most popular anti-heros in cinema history.  The year is 1998 and as a result of huge crime rates, the United States turns the island of Manhattan into a maximum security prison where hardcore criminals are put for life. All the bridges leading into the city are mined, a large wall is built along the shoreline and a large police force army is based there to stop or kill any attempted escapees. Upon a terrorist attack on his plane The President ejects and escapes only to find himself in the middle of the prison.  Ex-soldier Snake Plissken is offered his freedom if he goes in. He agrees but the complications are many, even though his robust bravado is without question undeniable.  This is a great science fiction action film that shows where man kinds violence will eventually lead them.

7. Lestat de Lioncourt

Interview With The Vampire

“Evil is a point of view. God kills indiscriminately and so shall we. For no creatures under God are as we are, none so like him as ourselves.”

Lestat is my favorite fictional character in a novel of all time.  The greatest character ever created and Tom Cruise of all people somehow managed to play my literary hero Lestat with all the charisma, the sense of humour, the sarcasm, and the delicious hedonistic pleasure anyone could imagine to every degree of hope I ever had.  Cruise is Lestat, and no one, including Stuart Townsend could ever capture his spirit the way Cruise did.  This is a role I would have deemed Oscar worthy Cruise played it so powerfully and brilliantly.  There has never been a character so devastatingly wicked, that you simply can’t resist.  As good as Lestat could get off the page is as good as Cruise delivered.

6. Riddick

Pitch Black

“All you people are so scared of me. Most days I’d take that as a compliment. But it ain’t me you gotta worry about now.”

Somehow, though the vicious and menacing killer, Vin Diesal makes Riddick the most charismatic and likable character in each of the films he’s in.  In “Riddick”, his sarcasm and indifference to everything played perfectly against the enemies passionate campaign to make the universe one full of nothing other than Necromongers.  As an army they managed to destroy planet after planet, system after system, of those unwilling to be tolerant of their religious oppression, yet they meet one rogue bad dude, and can’t seem to stop him.  The best part is Riddick is entirely a reluctant hero.  Even at one point his friend Kyra announces that she “hates not being the bad guy”.  It’s funny.  The charisma of Vin Diesel as Riddick and his dark unbreakable persona is what makes “Pitch Black” and “Riddick”, two completely different movies; exciting.  If they put “Riddick” in a film and Vin Diesel plays him, I’m there, plain and simple.

5. Harry Callahan

Dirty Harry

I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Dirty Harry is Clint Eastwood at his very best.  Harry Callahan is perhaps one of the toughest character’s ever written.  His flawlessly smooth demeanor, and nonchalant indifference to his foes, along with a dry sense of humor make him a classic character in a great action oriented crime flick.  His sense of moral for the good, but his own ideals of what rules he should or shouldn’t follow make his character the kind of bad well all love to root for.

4. Captain Jack Sparrow

Pirates Of The Caribbean

“She’s safe, just like I promised. She’s all set to marry Norrington, just like she promised. And you get to die for her, just like you promised. So we’re all men of our word really… except for, of course, Elizabeth, who is in fact, a woman.”

Captain Jack Sparrow has become one of the greatest iconic character’s ever on film and Johnny Depp’s strange interpretation of the madman pirate gave the world a fresh new way to view the cliched pirate persona.  Depp was without comparison a scene stealer, so much so that his peculiar performance won him an Oscar nomination.  Winning over the Academy in a role like that speaks thousands of words.  While Depp may have invoked a certain mocking of pirate cliche, he also managed to embrace the typical idealism’s behind pirates and make them fun and more compelling: FUNNY.  There may be something deranged about Captain Jack Sparrow, but there is some strange wisdom to this oddball character that gives him a depth that probably no one other than Johnny Depp fully understands.  I for one, adore the mystery and the obvious of CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow.

3. Mad Max

The Mad Max Trilogy

“Two days ago, I saw a vehicle that would haul that tanker. You want to get out of here? You talk to me.”

Rugged, self reliant, deadly.  A man from the world that came before surviving in the twisted time of the post apocalypse.  Obviously Max hits his stride in the second film of the series, coming across a situation he hopes to take advantage of, and ends up being used in return.  All along the way he displays skills of self preservation derived from equal parts guile, muscle and intuition.  Able to adapt to, and cope with an ever changing landscape of radiation, murders, traitors, predators and prey he survives all the world is able to throw at him. -Marc R. Luce

2. Tyler Durden

Fight Club

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off. “

At a crossroads in life Tyler Durden emerges and unleashes hell.  The narrator is at his wits end, in a mundane world, living a mundane life, with no essential meaning.  He runs into Tyler Durden a man bound by no rules or expectations society has set.  “Only after you’ve lost everything can you really be free” is Tyler’s mantra for life.  Though his actions seem to have meaning, his true intentions are an enigma.  He lives in the moment, embracing his desires, but only the carnal desires of true human nature.  Not something as capricious as a possession or title.  Tyler represents a rage against the drones of humanity.  He is a warrior against the pathetic emptiness of consumers making more garbage we don’t need to litter our minds and our bodies.  He is a mind that has evolved far beyond all of our own, and his idealism’s are so extreme the true owner of his thoughts cannot even face them for what they are, as he cowers and hides in fear of knowing and thinking the things he does, while Tyler has the strength to live them.  This character is so almighty and powerful, the only people who may truly understand Tyler is his creator and the vessel in which he is portrayed.

1. The Joker

Ledger and Nicholson

Batman

“Batman… Batman… Can somebody tell me what kind of a world we live in, where a man dressed up as a *bat* gets all of my press? This town needs an enema!”

When you look back and actually read the lines the Joker has in this film, it’s not sensational writing, but Nicholson’s performance made each and every delivery of those lines into something more.  The Joker was larger than life, but Nicholson’s interpretation walked that fine line between being a cartoon and something completely different.  He was sadistic and homicidal, but also charismatic and hilarious.  Nicholson’s Joker is one of the best character interpretations ever onscreen.  However, I wouldn’t dare compare his Joker to Ledger’s.  Each carry a genius that is very separate from one another, and the likeness only remains in the name.  Nicholson managed to make the movie called Batman more about the Joker.  That’s talent.

“Oh, you. You just couldn’t let me go, could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You are truly incorruptible, aren’t you? Huh? You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won’t kill you because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.”

Heath Ledger’s Joker is the best male performance of 2008 hands down.  His maniacal depiction of The Joker as a twisted sociopath with no real intention or motivation behind his actions makes him a vicious foe who craves nothing more than chaos, danger, and destruction.  The most interesting aspect of the performance was the layers behind the Joker’s seemingly mindless behavior.  Even as gruesome as the Joker was, there was something sadistically charming about him.  It was Ledger’s truly owning and living the character that made the Joker something so much more profound than a silly comic villain.  I found myself breathless during each scene he was in, and unable to move.  I can’t speak more highly of what he achieved, and to rise above the expectations I had, I literally find myself dumbfounded.  His demonic portrayal of the classic villain is staggering.

Honorable Mentions:

Chili Palmer (Get Shorty), Han Solo (Star Wars), Butch Cassidy And Sundance, Valmont (Dangerous Liasons), Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver), Patrick Bateman (American Psycho), Alex DeLarge (A Clockwork Orange), Draven (The Crow), Henry Hill (Goodfellas) and Jules Winnfield (Pulp Fiction)

Readers Choices:

The Bride ( Kill Bill), Selene (Underworld), Smith (Shoot ‘Em Up), Connor and Murphy McManus (The Boondock Saints), Sweeney Todd, and Mr. White (Resevoir Dogs)

Popularity: 16% [?]